If Lord Marchmain holds in himself all of the Flyte offspring, a friend has pointed out that Charles does as well. Sebastian the degenerate is in Charles. Julia the adulterer is in Charles, Bridey the rational, detached observer is in Charles, and in the end Cordelia, the believer is in Charles too. Charles, coming from his own dysfunctional family, is a tabula rasa–a blank slate: a canvas waiting for the paint and the artist. At Oxford he is the impressionable,... Read more

Consider Cordelia. Her faith is just as certain as Bridey’s, but it is faith from the heart and faith in action. What are Cordelia’s virtues? She not only has a sense of humor, she has a sense of humor about her faith: nice touch calling her pig ‘Francis Xavier’ She also has a down to earth piety with no time for frippery or sentimentality or spiritual blackmail: “I don’t think Our Lady cares two hoots whether my gym shoes are... Read more

I must first make it clear that I actually like Bridey. He’s affable enough. He’s a comic character, and is not an apparently evil person. He doesn’t do anything wrong as such…and there lies the problem: he doesn’t do anything at all. It is true that Bridey is not a drunken homosexual or an promiscuous adulterer, but it is all too easy to mistake not doing anything wrong with virtue. We should not ask ourselves, “What evil does Bridey do?”... Read more

This is precisely what Sebastian does: takes flight. Why is the poor boy (who has everything) on self destruct? One of the greatest things about Brideshead Revisited is Waugh’s uncanny portrayal of the dynamic of a dysfunctional family. J.Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie discusses the phenomenon of families who scapegoat a particular family member. Most often they are families who have got everything and have got it all together, but beneath their pasted on perfection great cauldrons of... Read more