In Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, the characters undergo many spiritual changes. Brideshead, the Flytes’ family home, is the main place where the members of the family find grace and contentment. Although they come and go, the members of the family, along with Charles Ryder, find restorative grace in the estate. The family only leaves when disgraced or forced, and comes back when in need of a spiritual ‘medicine’. This relates to how people come to the Church, the bride of Christ, coming closer to him or farther in relation to their state of grace.
Charles and Julia, Sebastian and Cordelia, and Lord Marchmain, all come to Brideshead to estore their faith in God and the world, and leave when abandoning hope in it. Charles and Julia come apart and together at Brideshead, discovering their faith and abandoning it while at Brideshead. When Charles first arrives, the faith s revealed to him through Brideshead and Sebastian. When he stays there after Sebastian’s injury, he discovers more about the faith and Catholicism in particular. He leaves after being disgraced while helping Sebastian sustain his addiction.
Julia, on the other hand, grows up at Brideshead with the full bounty of the faith in front of her. She leaves when she is older, straying from her faith while trying to find a husband, while she realizes her faith is a detriment to her husband seeking, yet as she says,” As it seemed to her, the thing was a dead loss. If she apostatized now, having been brought up in the Church, she would go to hell, while the Protestant girls of her acquaintance, schooled in happy ignorance, could marry eldest sons, live at peace with their world, and get to heaven before her. (Waugh 56) she drops it as she grows closer to Rex, becoming his lover, than wife. She simultaneously moves away from Brideshead, and in extent, God. As she drifts away from God, she realizes that something is missing from her life. She has an empty void of irredeemable sadness. On the ship, she tries to fill this void up with Charles, and brings him home with her. Her returning is her recognizing she needs more out of life. Although it takes her two years, she realizes that to earn God’s grace she has to leave Charles.
She explains her reasoning to him when they finally split, “That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. […] But I saw to-day there was one thing unforgivable … the bad thing I was on the point of doing, hat I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s. […] It may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won’t quite despair of me in the end. “( 247). There was no other place she would have realized this other than Brideshead.
Charles realizes he should go too, as there is nothing left for him there without Julia. Coming back years later with his platoon, he embraces praying in the chapel at Brideshead. His conversion through beauty allows him to open up to God, and finally experience religion for himself despite his previous agnostic beliefs. It only makes sense he would do it at Brideshead, the place where he has been influenced heavily with the faith. Julia and Charles both find fulfillment with God, although apart from each other. Another person who opens up to God and lets him into their life is Lord Marchmain.
The original owner of Brideshead, he built a chapel and converted for his wife, Lady Marchmain. Through her, Lord Marchmain first accepted Catholicism and the faith. However, as he grows deeper and deeper into alcohol addiction, he leaves Brideshead, turning his back on his family and faith. His parting from Brideshead is symbolic of his parting from the Church, as he rejects Catholicism and takes on a mistress, Cara. He dislikes Catholicism, because he renounces anything connected with his ex-wife, haing the Curch,”Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood – innocence, God, hope.
Poor Lady Marchmain has to bear all that”. He goes as far as to approve a Protestant marriage for Rex and Julia because he knows it is against his wife’s wishes. Although he was living in sin for the last years of his life, he goes home to die. At his deathbed, he finds God’s grace and makes a sign of the cross with one of his final breaths. This shows how by coming home, he is entered in the folds of his Church. He has reconciled with Julia and Cordelia, and became a better man at death. Cordelia and Sebastian are on the opposite spectrums of their faith.
The pious outlook of Cordelia’s faith, such as offering to pray a rosary for Charles’ agnosticism, is contrary to Sebastian’s claims of being a half heathen and believing in faith because it is so charming. As Charles questions him, “I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass. “”Oh yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea. ” “But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea. “But I do. That’s how I believe. ” (Waugh 67). Unlike Sebastian, Cordelia knows and believes the doctrine, and prays unfailingly for a vocation, which she never receives.
Sebastian, on the other hand, knows the faith, and believes it, but states it is so hard to be Catholic. No one is holy without suffering, yet Sebastian suffers his addiction and that prevents him from being completely holy. He is also the only character to receive God’s grace outside of Brideshead. However, it is not in the full glory, as he is with the monks but not really a part of them, such as someone trying to find God without the Church, it is a good thing to do, but will not let you receive the whole bounty of his grace.
Brideshead, named so because it is at the mouth of the river Bride, is connected to the Church, the Bride of Christ. The description of the place, even the Italian fountain, is reminders of the Church and her glory. Lord Marchmain, Julia, and Charles have their faith shaped at Brideshead much like how participating in Church shapes Catholic faith. The way the characters interact with Brideshead estate correlates with their reactions to God. Charles,by the beauty at Brideshead because he believes in art, “Of course, you are right really,” he said. You take art as a means not as an end.
That is strict theology, but it’s unusual to find an agnostic believing it. “(Waugh 122). Julia finds it through the remembrance of her Catholic childhood growing up at the estate. Brideshead certainty is the center of the novel. Page 1 of 4 Thibault 1 Cassidy Thibault Literature Ms. Geradts 11 May 2016 Embracing their Homecoming In Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, the characters undergo many spiritual changes. Brideshead, the Flytes’ family home, is the main place where the members of the family find grace and contentment. Although they come and go, the members of the family, along with Charles Ryder, find restorative grace in the estate.
The family only leaves when disgraced or forced, and comes back when in need of a spiritual ‘medicine’. This relates to how people come to the Church, the bride of Christ, coming closer to him or farther in relation to their state of grace. Charles and Julia, Sebastian and Cordelia, and Lord Marchmain, all come to Brideshead to restore their faith in God and the world, and leave when abandoning hope in it. Charles and Julia come apart and together at Brideshead, discovering their faith and abandoning it while at Brideshead. When Charles first arrives, the faith s revealed to him through
Brideshead and Sebastian. When he stays there after Sebastian’s injury, he discovers more about the faith and Catholicism in particular. He leaves after being disgraced while helping Sebastian sustain his addiction. Julia, on the other hand, grows up at Brideshead with the full bounty of the faith in front of her. She leaves when she is older, straying from her faith while trying to find a husband, while she realizes her faith is a detriment to her husband seeking, yet as she says,” As it seemed to her, the thing was a dead loss. If she apostatized now, having been brought up in the
Church, she would go to hell, while the Protestant girls of her acquaintance, schooled in happy ignorance, could marry eldest sons, live at peace with their world, and get to heaven before her. ”(Waugh 56) she drops it as she grows closer to Rex, becoming his lover, than wife. She Page 1 of 4 Page 2 of 4 Thibault 2 simultaneously moves away from Brideshead, and in extent, God. As she drifts away from God, she realizes that something is missing from her life. She has an empty void of irredeemable sadness. On the ship, she tries to fill this void up with Charles, and brings him home with her.
Her returning is her recognizing she needs more out of life. Although it takes her two years, she realizes that to earn God’s grace she has to leave Charles. She explains her reasoning to him when they finally split, “That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. […] But I saw to-day there was one thing unforgivable … the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s. […] It may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won’t quite despair of me in the end. 247).
There was no other place she would have realized this other than Brideshead. Charles realizes he should go too, as there is nothing left for him there without Julia. Coming back years later with his platoon, he embraces praying in the chapel at Brideshead. His conversion through beauty allows him to open up to God, and finally experience religion for himself despite his previous agnostic beliefs. It only makes sense he would do it at Brideshead, the place where he has been influenced heavily with the faith. Julia and Charles both find fulfillment with God, although apart from each other.
Another person who opens up to God and lets him into their life is Lord Marchmain. The original owner of Brideshead, he built a chapel and converted for his wife, Lady Marchmain. Through her, Lord Marchmain first accepted Catholicism and the faith. However, as he grows deeper and deeper into alcohol addiction, he leaves Brideshead, turning his back on his family and faith. His parting from Brideshead is symbolic of his parting from the Church, as he rejects Catholicism and takes on a mistress, Cara. He dislikes Catholicism, because he renounces anything connected with his ex-wife, haing the Curch,”Alex is hating all
