HAROLD PINTER: THE DUMB WAITER (3)

Major characters

Wilson

Wilson never appears in the play, but he is directly or indirectly behind the messages from the dumb waiter and speaking tube. His obvious theatrical corollary is Godot in Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Both are off-stage characters who exercise a powerful, god-like influence over the on-stage characters. When Gus suggests that Wilson is playing "games" with the men (the orders for food), it raises the possibility of Wilson's having a sadistic personality—a malevolent god. Not only is he going to execute Gus, for unknown reasons, but he will put him through an agonizing final day. Gus also mentions that Wilson put them through tests several years ago to prove themselves, so we know that Wilson may also be paranoid (a reasonable expectation for the head of a crime syndicate).

As with Godot, there are two characters, one dominant, one submissive, who share the amount of letters and syllables in their names (although Pinter's Gus and Ben are simpler names—and simpler characters—than Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon). Gus's difficulty in putting on his shoe corresponds to a similar problem with a boot in Beckett's play. In both plays, moreover, the characters have been stranded in one place with an unclear purpose, at least from the audience's perspective. The single location is a staple of Pinter's other plays, as well.

Pinter's use of repetition and silence also harkens back to Beckett's work. Beckett's primary use of these is to suggest the ideas of alienation and the approach of death, but Pinter fashions them with a more sinister, violent touch. Pinter has said that silence is a form of nakedness, and that speech is an attempt to cover this nakedness. Gus keeps wanting to ask Ben something but is interrupted, an exchange that will repeat throughout the play. The dialogue in between is often Ben's attempt to delay answering Gus's question—here, a trivial matter about the toilet. Ben also uses silence to deflect the potential for more intimate probing from Gus. Not only are Ben's delays and interruptions a form of silence, but even they are interrupted—Ben's reports of the death of the elderly man and the cat, serious matters of mortality, are quickly aborted in favor of more mundane concerns. The men do not break the silence themselves usually. Rather, the sound of an inanimate object—the toilet—jolts them back into discussion.

The toilet serves as a base for Gus throughout the play. It represents repetition, and the futility of repetition. Like the choppy dialogue, the toilet works on a delay—the flush is preceded by a long pause—solidifying the notion that repetition effects little change. Just as Gus transfers the flattened matchbox and carton (both defective objects) from his shoes to his pocket—one receptacle to another—the receptacle of the defective toilet transfers human waste to the receptacle of the sewers. The waste, however, does not disappear; it will return in some form, and is part of the cyclical nature of life that bores Gus, the dull repetition of work and sleep.

The characters' complete separation from the upper class is also introduced and will be explored in further depth later. Their unfamiliarity with the sporting terms of posh cricket and their affection for the more working-class game of soccer immediately defines their social standing.

In ways, The Dumb Waiter is a precursor to a major conceit of modern gangster films, such as those of Quentin Tarantino, films that juxtapose, often to comic effect, the violence of the criminal's job with his banal, but revealing, small talk. The argument over "light the kettle" is seemingly trivial but divulges key information about the men: Gus no longer sees his mother, and Ben is the senior partner.

The debate also produces the men's first physical confrontation after much verbal build-up. It is no accident that Ben screams and chokes Gus at the same time. Pinter is known for the innate violence in his characters' language, violence that lurks beneath the clipped structure of the language, and Ben's dialogue is a part of, and nearly causes, the physical violence. The violence is offset by the comic effect, which occurs after the confrontation, when Ben unconsciously uses the same language as Gus. Moreover, his comical use of Gus's phrase after displaying intense hostility to it implies that repetition of language can dull its effect, and that it can mechanically flow between people as an unconscious transaction.

Pinter reinforces the mechanical feeling with his use of repetition. Gus twice says that he doesn't know what the envelope is, and twice that "no one" and "nothing" were outside. These last two statements both express an absence—both of knowledge and of the physical presence—that constitute a type of silence, and Ben's repetitive queries try to cover this naked, fearful mystery with extraneous speech. He later deflects Gus's question referring to who they will victimize, answering with silence and then ordering Gus to make tea. The other theme behind repetitiveness in the play is how it dulls life into a cyclical routine, and we can view Gus's running out of matches as a symbol of how life continually burns down and then refuels. Ben's scolding Gus over not wasting the matches is almost pointless. Sooner or later, they will be wasted, but their supply will be replenished.

it becomes clearer that Ben is perhaps not telling Gus the complete truth about their operation—they are certainly in the kitchen of a working café, not merely a basement, and something is odd about their interaction with the person or people upstairs. In Godot, the two men wait around for a man named Godot who never arrives, yet who exercises great power over them. In The Dumb Waiter, Ben and Gus are at the beck and call of Wilson, a mysterious character who dominates the duo even when he's not around—or perhaps especially when he's not around. Ben is more reverent of Wilson, while Gus is wary of their relationship to the mysterious figure. It is therefore not surprising that Gus is the one who looks up and wants to shout up the hatch—investigating the god upstairs, so to speak—and not Ben, who seems fearful of angering the gods and who is anxious to please them. He is noticeably embarrassed when the tea is returned. Gus also seems to hold a greater sensitivity to his job. He is not only disturbed about their murder of the girl, but he wonders who has the task of cleaning up the remains.

The characters' anxiety over their lower-class status hangs over the food sequence. It begins with their inability to pay for the meter, which inhibits their ability to make their own food, or at least to brew their own tea. Their anxiety amplifies when they feel they need to send more food back up the hatch, and then with the orders for increasingly fancy food with which they are not familiar. Much of this class tension is bound up in language. Gus tries to dress up their own standard food by announcing the brand names associated with the items, names that pale in comparison to the exotic names of the ordered dishes, such as "Ormitha Macarounada." Ben noticeably tries to cover up his lower-class status by pretending that he knows how to make the dish. The characters' dialect is also distinctly lower class, abrupt sentences peppered with idiomatic utterances like "Kaw!" Many productions of The Dumb Waiter emphasize Ben's and Gus's different relationships to class by giving Ben an accent of a slightly better-off Englishman, while Gus often speaks in a lower-class Cockney accent. American audiences may not be able to distinguish between the particular accents so readily.

Interruptions and abbreviations continue to play a significant role in this section, as Gus's continuing questions about the nature of their job and the café are twice broken by the sounds of the descending dumb waiter. As of now, Ben and Gus's communication with the upstairs via the dumb waiter has been based on written notes with abbreviated sentences at that. This limited communication will assume a more symbolic form in the next section.

The dumb waiter, with its accompanying speaking tube, becomes an agent for murder as the play ends, but the device is also a metaphor for the type of communication that has already split apart Ben and Gus. Whenever Gus broaches an important topic—here, especially, Wilson and his "games"—Ben deflects the question or descends into silence. They communicate as if with a dumb waiter; one says something, it travels to and registers with the other, and then a reply is made (if at all). It is impossible for both men to speak their minds at once, just as the dumb waiter restricts language (either in the form of a note or the speaking tube) to one person at a time; its very name indicates muteness. They do not converse in true dialogue with one other. Rather, they

they speak to each other, not with one another. Fittingly, when he finds the speaking tube, Gus ironically says, "Funny I never noticed it before." He and Ben have had a block in their communication with each other that is highlighted by his reference to the tube used for communication.

This lack of communication heightens the sense that Ben has been withholding information from Gus and perhaps even betraying his partner. Whenever Gus strays too close to the truth—a truth Ben seems to be more aware of—Ben withholds and alters crucial information (such as his lie about the café's changing ownership), almost as if he were retracting the evidence on a dumb waiter and adjusting it for the return trip. His language throughout the play, then, stands on its own as a betrayal, a closely monitored transaction of information that takes pains not to give too much away. Betrayal is a constant theme in Pinter's work—he has a play titled Betrayal—and here we must take Ben's word that the job is about to commence, but we do not know if it will be carried out the way he originally indicated or whether he will end up actually shooting Gus.

But the repetitive, mechanical quality of language is the ultimate murderer here. The characters' repetition of their newspaper routine—an act that surely occurs every day—is part of the slow approach to death that Gus spoke of at the start of the play when he bemoaned his dull, cyclical life. Ben's instructions, which Gus repeats, similarly drain the life out of an act that itself seeks to end life. Gus's toneless echo is actually a form of silence that seeks to avoid having to perform the horrifying act.

HAROLD PINTER: THE DUMB WAITER (2)

Major characters

Ben

Ben is the more dominant of the two criminals. As such, they resemble the various couples in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, who also complement each other with submissive and dominant traits. Ben broods and reads his newspaper, and his silences are as much a feature of his character as his dialogue. Whether Gus is asking him about the job, Wilson, or if he ever gets bored with life, Ben refuses to enter into a meaningful discussion. Part of the reason, of course, is that he does not want to reveal the purpose of the job: to execute Gus. The other reason is that Ben's chilling silences are laced with a defensive violence. Harold Pinter has defined speech as a strategy designed to cover the nakedness of silence, and Ben is a prime example. He compensates for his naked silences with a constant aura of violence and intimidation. And just as he frequently checks his gun to maintain his potential for violence, his often-venomous speech further obscures his naked vulnerability. In the argument over the phrase "Light the kettle," the marriage of violent speech and violent action seems appropriate when Ben chokes Gus while screaming "THE KETTLE, YOU FOOL!"

Ben's language denotes other parts of his personality, especially his shame over his lower class. He feigns understanding the names of the orders for exotic dishes sent down via the dumb waiter (where upstairs, presumably, someone of higher standing, physically and socially, presides). When they run of food in the basement, he tells Gus (who yells up the hatch) to observe decorum, then strains to make a formal apology. He is also immensely pleased when the person upstairs uses Ben's phrase "Light the kettle." Like Gus, Ben is a slave to the organization (one with several "departments"), but he does not have the same class-consciousness as Gus; his partner is more aware of their unfortunate lot in life, while Ben considers themselves "fortunate" and diverts himself with hobbies. He also accepts whatever Wilson tells him to do, making him as much a manipulated mute carrier of actions as Gus is to Ben—a human "dumb waiter." His betrayal of Gus at Wilson's behest is an unsettling reminder of what workers will do to gain the acceptance of their superiors.

HAROLD PINTER: THE DUMB WAITER (1)

Major Characters

Gus

The audience is meant to sympathize with Gus, the well-meaning, slightly slower junior partner-in-crime to Ben. We are in the same position as Gus: like Gus, we are not familiar with the job they are going to perform, we don't know what exactly is happening upstairs from the basement, and Ben's betrayal should be as much of a shock to us as it is to Gus. Gus is somewhat child-like, pestering Ben with numerous requests, complaints about their environment, and questions. He is generally submissive to Ben's orders—everything from making tea to investigating outside the door—though he stands up for what he believes in, as with the "Light the kettle" argument.

Gus is more sensitive than Ben to issues of traditional human concern. He often touches upon deeper issues Ben does not wish to contemplate—about death, the dull routine of life, and the nature of the elusive employer Wilson. He is concerned with the consequences of his job. He is haunted by the image of their messy murder of their last victim, a girl, and is anxious about this next job. He is fed up with the dull routine of life, but can do nothing to get out of it. His recurring trips to the bathroom underscore his imprisonment to routine, especially in contrast with Ben, who never goes to the bathroom. Unlike Ben, he has no hobbies, which accounts for his awareness of his static life.

If one were to read The Dumb Waiter as an allegory of capitalist slavery, then Gus is the employee who, because life offers him so little, recognizes something wrong with the class structure. He sees cracks in the façade of Wilson—he is unafraid to yell and peer up the serving hatch to where the god-like figure reposes—but still feels uneasy in his presence, as most underlings do with their powerful bosses. He also places accountability on Wilson as the controller of the means of production; although Ben tells him otherwise, Gus believes that Wilson owns the café and should therefore pay for the gas meter (he is also miffed that Wilson, or the person upstairs, wants tea while they are hungry and thirsty). Gus's class-consciousness includes some shame about his poverty, but it is less than that exhibited by Ben. When they send their working-class food up the dumb waiter, Gus calls out the brand names as if announcing a fancy dinner menu. Many productions of The Dumb Waiter will give the actor playing Gus a Cockney accent to emphasize his lower-class standing, but little else is known about his background. We learn that he has not seen his mother in a long time, that he enjoys soccer, and is somewhat unfamiliar with the richer sport of cricket.

By the end of play, Gus becomes somewhat resigned to his life enslaved to routine. He accepts Ben's instructions to kill by mechanically repeating them. When he realizes that Ben is betraying him, his silence does not seem like one of shock. Rather, he has turned into a dumb waiter—manipulated by others to carry out their directions, unable to speak for himself.

JOHN FOWLES (4)

The Collector

It was John Fowles' first published novel, but it reads like the work of someone far more experienced. The title character is Frederick, a butterfly collector (who prefers to be called Ferdinand), who decides to "collect" the long-admired-from-a-distance object of his fantasy, an art student named Miranda.

Frederick keeps Miranda prisoner in a room in his secluded basement. All he wants is for Miranda to love him and, other than keeping her prisoner, he treats her like a queen, fulfilling her every need or want. This is where The Collector succeeds best, in making Frederick not a monster, but a pitiful, lonely man in need of love and willing to give Miranda everything except her freedom.

Chapter One gives us Frederick's viewpoint and Fowles makes an interesting choice to use quotations around Miranda's dialogue but not Frederick's. Perhaps this is meant to signify that he lives so much in his head that his thoughts are inseparable from his speech.

Chapter Two makes us privy to Miranda's diary, kept secretly during her captivity. Fowles' skill at characterization really comes to light in this diary, where we are allowed into the mind of a captured woman who, desperate in her solitude, comes to realize her need for the company of her captor. Unfortunately, the pace slows at this point as Miranda goes deeply into the history of a past relationship. I found this tedious and felt these sections should have been cut. A story like The Collector works best the shorter it is and, even at just 300 pages, a little trimming could have improved this novel immensely.

Near the end, an unexpected tragedy occurs, and we are thrust into the true terror of the situation, discovering in the process what Frederick is really made of through his response to the situation.

A thread of Shakespeare's The Tempest runs throughout their relationship. Frederick sees himself as "Ferdinand" to his Miranda, but she instead refers to him as "Caliban" in her diary.

I see in retrospect that Miranda is one of the great female characters in literature. The book begins as the story of Frederick/Ferdinand but really comes to life as Miranda details her inner thoughts, schemes, and struggles — and even sympathies — on paper. The Collector becomes not the story of the collector, but of the collected.

The Collector is the story of the abduction and imprisonment of Miranda Grey by Frederick Clegg, told first from his point of view, and then from hers by means of a diary she has kept, with a return in the last few pages to Clegg's narration of her illness and death.

Clegg's section begins with his recalling how he used to watch Miranda entering and leaving her house, across the street from the town hall in which he worked. He describes keeping an "observation diary" about her, whom he thinks of as "a rarity," and his mention of meetings of the "Bug Section" confirms that he is an amateur lepidopterist. On the first page, then, Clegg reveals himself to possess the mind-set of a collector, one whose attitude leads him to regard Miranda as he would a beautiful butterfly, as an object from which he may derive pleasurable control, even if "collecting" her will deprive her of freedom and life.

Clegg goes on to describe events leading up to his abduction of her, from dreams about Miranda and memories of his stepparents or coworkers to his winning a "small fortune" in a football pool. When his family emigrates to Australia and Clegg finds himself on his own, he begins to fantasize about how Miranda would like him if only she knew him. He buys a van and a house in the country with an enclosed room in its basement that he remodels to make securable and hideable. When he returns to London, Clegg watches Miranda for 10 days. Then, as she is walking home alone from a movie, he captures her, using a rag soaked in chloroform, ties her up in his van, takes her to his house, and locks her in the basement room.

When she awakens, Clegg finds Miranda sharper than "normal people" like himself. She sees through some of his explanations, and recognizes him as the person whose picture was in the paper when he won the pool. Because he is somewhat confused by her unwillingness to be his "guest" and embarrassed by his inadvertent declaration of love, he agrees to let her go in one month. He attributes her resentment to the difference in their social background: "There was always class between us."

Clegg tries to please Miranda by providing for her immediate needs. He buys her a Mozart record and thinks, "She liked it and so me for buying it." he fails to understand human relations except in terms of things. About her appreciation for the music, he comments, "It sounded like all the rest to me but of course she was musical." There is indeed a vast difference between them, but he fails to recognize the nature of the difference because of the terms he thinks in. When he shows her his butterfly collection, Miranda tells him that he thinks like a scientist rather than an artist, someone who classifies and names and then forgets about things. She sees a deadening tendency, too, in his photography, his use of cant, and his decoration of the house. As a student of art and a maker of drawings, her values contrast with his: Clegg can judge her work only in terms of its representationalism, or photographic realism. In despair at his insensitivity when he comments that all of her pictures are "nice," she says that his name should be Caliban--the subhuman creature in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Miranda uses several ploys in attempts to escape. She feigns appendicitis, but Clegg only pretends to leave, and sees her recover immediately. She tries to slip a message into the reassuring note that he says he will send to her parents, but he finds it. When he goes to London, she asks for a number of articles that will be difficult to find, so that she will have time to, try to dig her way out with a nail she has found, but that effort also is futile.

When the first month has elapsed, Miranda dresses up for what she hopes will be their last dinner. She looks so beautiful that Clegg has difficulty responding except with cliches and confusion. When she refuses his present of diamonds and offer of marriage, he tells her that he will not release her after all. She tries to escape by kicking a log out of the fire, but he catches her and chloroforms her again, this time taking off her outer clothing while she is unconscious and photographing her in her underwear.

Increasingly desperate, Miranda tries to kill Clegg with an axe he has left out when he is escorting her to take a bath upstairs. She injures him, but he is able to prevent her from escaping. Finally, she tries to seduce him, but he is unable to respond, and leaves, feeling humiliated. He pretends that he will allow her to move upstairs, with the stipulation that she must allow him to take pornographic photographs of her. She reluctantly cooperates, and he immediately develops the pictures, preferring the ones with her face cut off.

Having caught a cold from Clegg, Miranda becomes seriously ill, but Clegg hesitates to bring a doctor to the house. He does get her some pills, but she becomes delirious, and the first section ends with Clegg's recollection: "I thought I was acting for the best and within my rights."

The second section is Miranda's diary, which rehearses the same events from her point of view, but includes much autobiographical reflection on her life before her abduction. She begins with her feelings over the first seven days, before she had paper to write on. She observes that she never knew before how much she wanted to live.

Miranda describes her thoughts about Clegg as she tries to understand him. She describes her view of the house and ponders the unfairness of the whole situation. She frequently remembers things said by G. P., who gradually is revealed to be a middle-aged man who is a painter and mentor whom Miranda admires. She re-creates a conversation with Clegg over, among other things, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She gets him to promise to send a contribution, but he only pretends to. She admits that he's now the only real person in her world.

Miranda describes G. P. as the sort of person she would like to marry, or at any rate the sort of mind. She lists various ways he has changed her think- ing, most of which involved precepts about how to live an authentic, committed life. Then she characterizes G. P. by telling of a time that he met her aunt and found her so lacking in discernment and sincerity that he made Miranda feel compelled to choose between him and her aunt. Miranda seems to choose his way of seeing, and he subsequently offers some harsh but honest criticism of her drawing, which seems to help her to become more self-aware and discriminating. Her friends Antoinette and Piers fail to appreciate the art G. P. has produced, and Miranda breaks with her Aunt Caroline over her failure to appreciate Rembrandt. Miranda describes her growing attraction to G. P., despite their age difference and his history of sexual infidelity. In the final episode about him, however, G. P. confesses to being in love with her and, as a consequence, wants to break off their friendship. She is flattered but agrees that doing so would probably be for the best.

Miranda says that G. P. is "one of the few." Her aunt--and Clegg--are implicitly among "the many," who lack creativity and authenticity. Indeed, Miranda associates Clegg's shortcomings with "the blindness, deadness, out-of-dateness, stodginess and, yes, sheer jealous malice of the great bulk of England," and she begins to lose hope. She gets Clegg to read Catcher in the Rye, but he doesn't understand it. Miranda feels more alone and more desperate, and her reflections become more philosophical. She describes her reasons for thinking that seducing Clegg might change him, and does not regret the subsequent failed attempt, but she fears that he now can hope only to keep her prisoner.

Miranda begins to think of what she will do if she ever gets free, including revive her relationship with G. P. on any terms as a commitment to life. At this point, Miranda becomes sick with Clegg's cold, literally as well as metaphorically. As she becomes increasingly ill, her entries in the journal become short, declarative sentences and lamentations.

The third section is Clegg's, and picks up where his first left off. He tells of becoming worried over her symptoms and over her belief that she is dying. When he takes her temperature, Clegg realizes how ill Miranda is and decides to go for a doctor. As he sits in the waiting room, Clegg begins to feel insecure, and he goes to a drugstore instead, where the pharmacist refuses to help him. When he returns and finds Miranda worse, Clegg goes back to town in the middle of the night, to wake a doctor; this time an inquisitive policeman frightens him off. Miranda dies, and Clegg plans to commit suicide.

In the final section, less than three pages long, Clegg describes awakening to a new outlook. He decides that he is not responsible for Miranda's death, that his mistake was kidnapping someone too far above him, socially. As the novel ends, Clegg is thinking about how he will have to do things somewhat differently when he abducts a more suitable girl that he has seen working in Woolworth's.

JOHN FOWLES (3)

Daniel Martin

The novel begins in 1942 as 15-year-old Danny Martin is helping with "The Harvest," title of the first chapter. He is terrified by a low-flying German bomber and repelled by the more localized violence against rabbits that have become trapped in the center of a field as the circles of the reaper grow nearer. The chapter ends with his retreat into a beech wood, "innocent, already in exile..."

The second chapter, "Games," takes place in the early 1970s, in Hollywood, when Daniel Martin is now a middle-aged, successful screenwriter who is divorced from Nell, with a daughter named Caro. He is dissatisfied with script-writing as well as with his life, and is thinking of trying to write a novel. He receives encouragement from his girlfriend, a young English actress named Jenny, who proposes that he name his fictionalized self Simon Wolfe. The chapter ends as Dan receives a telephone call from England.

The third chapter, "The Woman in the Reeds," takes place in a third time period, when Dan was attending Oxford University in his early twenties. Dan is on a picnic with Jane, sister of his girlfriend Nell, when they discover a body in one of the canals. Andrew, a baronet's son, helps them recover from the shock while they wait for the police to arrive. Dan uses the word "games" to describe their superficial lives at Oxford.

"An Unbiased View" is written by Jenny as a contribution toward Dan's novel. The chapter describes the world of filmmaking as well as how they met, and how she found him attractive because she could not read him easily. "The Door" picks up with a telephone call from Jane, who tells Dan that her terminally ill husband, Anthony, wants to see Dan before he dies. Dan is stunned, and the next chapter, "Aftermath," helps to account for his reaction. After they had returned from their Oxford outing, Jane proposed that they go to bed together, just once, as a gratuitous, Rabelaisian act. "Passage" switches the scene back to the United States, where Dan is flying from Los Angeles to New York, en route to England, and thinking about what it means to be English.

"The Umbrella" returns to Dan's boyhood in the 1930s, as Dan describes how the son of a vicar grew into an atheist. Allusions to Citizen Kane help to emphasize Dan's father's lack of demonstrative love for his son. The next chapter, "Gratuitous Act," describes Dan and Jane's sexual intercourse in Dan's room at Oxford, where they are almost discovered by Barney Dillon, who lives in the room above. "Returns" takes place on the airplane from New York to London, where Dan coincidentally encounters the older Barney, who is now a media critic for a London newspaper. Dan's daughter, Caroline, is his secretary.

"Tarquinia" provides another reminiscence of the Oxford days, on a vacation when Dan, Nell, Jane, and Anthony visited Italy and "played Pagan" in the sea near the Etruscan ruins. In "Petard," while Dan stays over in London with Caro, she tells him that she is having an affair with the still-married Barney. On the subway to Padding- ton Station, in "Forward Backward," Dan thinks back to a trip he took to Devon with Caro to show her where he grew up and ended up buying a farm he found for sale, named Thorricombe. In "Breaking Silence," while riding the train from London to Oxford, Dan thinks back further to the early years of his marriage to Nell--his successes as a playwright that gained him entrée to the film world, his infidelity with an actress, Nell's acquisitiveness and growing discontent with their marriage, her accusation that Dan must be having an affair with his assistant, and her demand for a divorce.

In "Rencontre," Dan meets Jane for dinner, and in "Crimes and Punishments," he recalls how a play of his with obvious parallels in their lives had led to anger all around and a letter from Anthony that wrote him out of their lives. Now, in "Catastasis," Dan goes to the hospital to meet Anthony and finds that Jane long ago told her husband of her gratuitous act, with Dan. Anthony explains that they have had a somewhat bloodless relationship in their marriage, due in part to his religiosity, and he wants Dan to be a friend to Jane when he is gone. After he leaves, in "Jane," Dan takes Jane to dinner, where she explains why she is thinking of joining the Communist Party. When they return to Jane's house, in "Beyond the Door," they learn that Anthony committed suicide shortly after Dan left. In "Webs," NelI arrives with Andrew, whom she has married, and their daughter Rosamund. Dan and Caro drive back to London, where Dan watches an old man on the street and thinks about how separated people are from one another.I

Jenny writes "A Second Contribution," which describes her view of Dan's Jewish friends Mildred and Abe and of Dan, whose discussions have enabled her to see that he is in love with loss, and that his seeming untypicality is really what is most typical of the English: their ability to hide their true selves from others. "Interlude" provides a narrator's view of Dan, who does expect to lose women, and illustrates Dan's life with a "fable" about twin sisters, Miriam and Marjory, whom Dan allows to move in with him; they are unsophisticated (except as sexual partners), but Dan genuinely likes them. At the end of the chapter, they have moved away, and Dan is haunted by their loss.

In "Hollow Men," Dan meets Barney for lunch, and they discuss his life, including Caro. At breakfast the next day, in "Solid Daughter," Caro tells Dan that Jane thinks him to be two persons, and Caro suggests that he does not want her to know him either. The topic leads Dan to write "The Sacred Combe," about why Robin Hood is the perfect myth for England because the English love to retreat behind masks, to melt into the trees. Dan notes that his own impulse to write a novel may be evidence of this wish to escape from social responsibility into a self-chosen exile, into a private world of self-indulgence.

In "Rituals," Dan meets with David Malevich, his producer, about their next film project, and David suggests that Dan visit possible shooting locations in Egypt. Dan attends the inquest into the suicide and then takes Rosamund, Jane's oldest daughter, to dinner. Dan spends the weekend at "Compton," the title of the next chapter and country estate of Nell and Andrew, where he ponders the existence of the upper class and discusses the state of England with a cynical ultraconservative named Miles Fenwick.

"Tsankawi" is another reminiscence, of a visit to an archeological site in New Mexico. Dan identifies strongly with the place, and is offended that Jenny wants to make gifts out of potsherds she finds there.

In "Westward," back in England, Dan invites Jane and her teenage son Paul to visit Thorncombe. Paul is somewhat obsessed with medieval agriculture, so he agrees to come along if he can visit some sites of historical interest. Dan recalls how he acquired his gardener and housekeeper, Ben and Phoebe, and then, in "Phillida," how he fell in love as a boy with Nancy Reed, who then lived on the farm Dan has bought, until their parents put an end to the romance. After they have arrived, in "Thorncombe," Dan tells Jane about his wish to try writing a novel, and she tells him about Marxist views of the novel and of culture. On impulse, Dan invites Jane to accompany him to Egypt. That night, "In the Orchard of the Blessed," Dan ponders the devaluation of happy endings in contemporary culture but decides that his novel will have one nonetheless. In "Rain," Jane reluctantly agrees to go along to Egypt, and Dan has two strained transatlantic telephone conversations with Jenny.

In "A Third Contribution," Jenny describes a supposedly fictional but extremely detailed sexual liaison with her costar, Steve. When they talk by telephone again, in "The Shadows of Women," she apologizes for having sent it.

Jane and Dan arrive in Cairo in "Pyramids and Prisons," where Dan discusses the film project with an Egyptian agent and Jane visits the pyramids. They attend a dinner party at which the jokes told by an Egyptian playwright reveal much about Egyptian culture, including, in Dan's view, much it has in common with Jewish culture. In "Barbarians," they start a tour up the Nile at Karnak and reflect on the ancient Egyptian obsession with size, which reminds them of ancient Rome and the modern United States. An old German archaeologist named Otto Kirnberger befriends them and offers suggestions about purchasing artifacts. In "Nile," they encounter other tourists, including an American couple, the Hoopers, who disagree about Vietnam but are enthusiastic about visiting Palmyra, Syria. In "The River Between," Kirnberger tells about himself and offers insights into cultural and biological differences. When they arrive at Aswan and "Kitchener's Island, they find a paradise surrounded by technology run amok. Jane imagines living in a house there and accepts some beads from a little girl. Dan increasingly wants to reveal the growing affection he is feeling toward Jane, but instead, he proposes a side excursion to Palmyra on their trip back to England. Back at the hotel in Aswan, "In the Silence of Other Voices," Dan experiences a mental crisis of anxiety that he must choose himself, and of confidence that he alone can create a world in film or fiction, let alone in life, but he sits down and composes a scene that he believes will work. The chapter title "Flights" refers to the return by air to Cairo and to Jane's demurral when Dan declares that he does not want to leave Jane, that there was something right about their day in Oxford, that they should try living together.

In "North," Dan feels depressed. After they arrive in Beirut, he sits in a bar and feels that he must be condemned to pursue emotional situations that contain the structure of their own destruction, for which his thwarted relationship with Nancy Reed was the seed crystal. The drive to Palmyra in the fog takes them to "The End of the World," a desolate landscape Dan compares to the possibilities Jane has destroyed over the courses of their lives. He persuades her that she should stop conforming to an ideal of nobility and sacrifice, acting as if Anthony is still watching her, and instead join him in movement toward a sympathetic, loving relationship. For the first time on the trip they sleep together. The next day, in "The Bitch," still wary of love but proceeding on instinct like the mother dog of the chapter title, Jane buries her wedding ring in the sand.

In the last chapter, "Future Past," Dan meets Jenny in a London pub to discuss why he is ending their relationship. They walk on Hampstead Heath and part. Dan goes into the Kenwood Museum and looks at the Rembrandt self-portrait there, which seems like a sentinel. Dan will not turn back but will continue to choose and to learn to feel and to write his novel. Indeed, the last sentence of Dan's novel, which exists only as an idea in Daniel Martin, John Fowles as Dan's "ill-concealed ghost" has adopted as the first sentence of this novel: "Whole sight; or the rest is desolation."

JOHN FOWLES (2)

The Ebony Tower (a novella)

David Williams, an English art critic and color-field painter, arrives in northern France to interview an older painter named William Breasley, who is living in self-imposed exile from England and Paris. Away from his wife, David finds himself affected by the atmosphere at Breasley's manor, which is deep in one of the old woods of Brittany, filled with priceless paintings, and inhabited not only by the great painter but also by two young art students, Diana and Anne.

The girls befriend David, and warn him that he can expect to be baited by their host. At dinner, as Breasley becomes increasingly drunk, he attacks the art establishment and, sometimes, Williams himself. Finally, the girls put Breasley to bed, and Diana explains that Breasley's reference to an "ebony tower" was his attempt to denigrate contemporary artists who work with abstraction because they are afraid to be clear; then she encourages David to dismiss what Breasley has said by telling David that an ebony tower is where you dump things you are too old to appreciate.

The next day Breasley is back to his usual cantankerous self. They all go on a picnic in the woods, where Diana and Anne go swimming in the nude as Breasley explains to David that he passed a kind of test the night before. After lunch--an enactment of Manet's Le Dejeuner sur I'herbe--Breasley goes to sleep and the women tell David about their lives. The three of them go swimming, and then the four of them return to the house, where David conducts one more interview, about Breasley's politics and his sources.

That night's dinner is friendlier. Afterward, Diana puts Breasley to bed early, and Anne explains that Breasley wants Diana to marry him. The two women take David upstairs to look at Diana's artwork, which he is impressed by. After Anne leaves, Diana tells David more about herself. They then decide to take a walk in the garden, where David kisses Diana and she responds with passion. He hangs back, and she senses that sexual intercourse would be a mistake. "She had broken away; and he had let her, fatal indecision." He then tries to persuade her to come to bed with him, but she goes to her room and locks the door. He believes that he has both come alive and been prevented from living, that he has both lost his principles and feared to act against them.

The next day Diana absents herself from the house until David has left. He spends the drive back to Paris thinking about her with regret, feeling that he has been in a dream. At the airport, he meets his wife, who is flying in from England for a holiday. When she asks him how things went, he answers, "I survived."

Mantissa

Part I begins with an attempt by Miles Green to regain consciousness, as a pair of eyes above him gradually takes the form of his wife, Claire--or so she tells him, for Miles seems to be suffering from amnesia. His wife leaves, and the female attendant explains that he has been under sedation, but when Miles asks how long he has been in the hospital, she answers, "Just a few pages." Her name is Dr. A. Delfie, and she introduces her West Indian assistant as Nurse Cory. They explain that he must learn to relax, and as part of his treatment, they begin to massage his penis. Miles is shocked as they encourage him to fondle their bodies, more so as Dr. Delfie mounts his erection. She tells Miles to try to provide a climax from as deep as possible, in the interest of his baby, to keep going "to the very last syllable." After he finishes, Nurse Cory brings him a small sheaf of papers, cradled in her arms, which she refers to as "a lovely little story." He begins to wonder if his lost identity is that of "a mere novelist or something" when a crash interrupts and ends this first part of the book.

The cause of the crash becomes apparent in Part II. A woman appears who looks like a twin of Dr. Delphie but has spikes of hair and black eye-makeup, is dressed in boots and a black leather jacket, and holds an electric guitar. She slashes at the guitar strings and the nurses disappear. Then she turns to Miles and accuses him of antifeminist, bourgeois elitism, among other literary crimes, in what he has just written. He defends himself by saying that it could have been worse, that he at least did not represent her running through the olive groves in a transparent nightie-- though she would look terrific that way. She begins to run scales on her guitar and it changes to a lyre, as she changes into a traditional muse, dressed in a white tunic. She warns him that she will not, however, be a brainless female body at his perverted beck and call, and she gives him 10 sentences to provide a formal apology. As he does so he begins to play with her. She is not very interested--is still a bit queasy from her flight from Greece--and tells him that it is not easy to be the muse of love poetry, Erato, and find that you have been stuck with fiction as well.

Erato tells Miles to listen to a story for a change, and tells him about her sexual awakening in ancient Greece, when a satyr discovered her rubbing herself with olive oil. She tells Miles that he must not repeat her story, that she's told it to only one other person, a French poet who blabbed. As she tells her erotic story, Miles undresses her and mounts her. Erato continues to talk and tells Miles that her point is, that he should not be a modern satyr, who invents women who are implausible wish-fulfilIments of his diseased mind. In fact, she reminds him, any witness to what they are doing would think it ridiculous, so he should get off her. Erato then lectures him on how she has no freedom to be herself as long as she depends on him to create her as a character, even to kill her off. At that point, Erato gradually changes into an independent-minded, serious woman who speaks intelligently, even intellectually about the sympathy she feels for Miles as a male, a victim of "the overwhelming stress the prevailing capitalist hegemony puts on sexuality." They discuss fictional possibilities for her, which quickly degenerate into soft-core romance scenarios with crude symbolism and exotic trappings. Miles turns and accuses her of exceeding the bounds of artistic decency, and starts lecturing her on how out of fashion her ideas about novels are. He tells her that she should not expect to be able to think and to be a universal girlfriend at the same time. After having delivered several intellectual parting shots and turning to leave, Miles cannot find a door in the wall. Erato tells him that he cannot walk out of his own brain. Miles now accuses her of dictating to him, and whines that he, as author, feels as "written" as she does as a character. She shows him that there is a door, after all, but when he opens it, he sees only a reflection of himself and the room behind him. When he turns around, Erato knocks him out with an uppercut to the jaw.

Part III begins with Miles on the floor and Erato retransformed into Dr. Delphie. An elderly staff nurse enters and accuses Delphie of letting the ward turn to ruin, if not to a striptease show, and departs. Delphie turns to Miles and kicks him in the ribs. When he sits up, she tells him that it was a dirty trick by him to make the elderly nurse look like her sister, Clio, the muse of history. Delphie reminds him that she is an archetype and that he has been lucky that she appears to him; indeed, she says that she is never going to do so again, and disappears. Her now disembodied voice explains that literature is a manifestation of mental illness, that he has merely been acting out a primal scene trauma. She advises him to become a ditchdigger. He attempts to make her jealous by telling her that he preferred the black nurse. She tells him that he has never been any good as a writer or lover. Suddenly, a clock on the wall cuckoos, Dr. Delphie reappears, they make up and make love, not noticing that the walls of the room have become transparent and that people are watching them.

As Part IV begins, they wake up and begin to discuss how it was--both the sex and their previous dialogues. Miles and Erato discuss how they found each other, were perfect for each other in their desire for endlessly revisable textuality. Miles unwisely remarks that he especially liked her as Nurse Cory, and Erato replies that she has singled him out for her affection because he's such an incompetent writer that she can be sure he will never succeed in telling about her. He retorts that he has lots of readers, and that she does not know what it is like to be a writer. She confesses that she did once write an epic satire revealing how immature men are, called The Odyssey. He confesses that he wants Nurse Cory. Erato admits that she is not perfect, indeed gets a lot of facts wrong, but her business is to inspire people. Miles complains that they do too much talking.

As they lie together, Miles reflects that he should not complain about his situation, but that Erato does not appreciate his importance and is becoming "just one more brainwashed, average twentieth-century female." As he begins to imagine a compliant, sexy Japanese woman, he finds that Erato has turned him into a satyr. He threatens to write everything down, but she just smiles. When he tries to jump on her, Erato disappears, and he knocks himself out on the wall above the bed. He returns to the form of Miles Green, and Nurse Cory covers him up. The book ends with the cry of "Cuckoo" from the clock above the oblivious patient.

JOHN FOWLES. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN

The first chapter describes Lyme Regis and its Cobb, a harbor quay on which three characters are standing: Charles Smithson, Ernestina Freeman, and Sarah Woodruff. The describing narrator has a distinctive voice, all-knowing yet intimate, with a wide-ranging vocabulary and evidently vast knowledge of political and geographical history. In one sentence the narrator sounds like a Victorian, as he remarks that the male character recently "had severely reduced his dundrearies, which the arbiters of the best English male fashion had declared a shade vulgar--that is, risible to the foreigner--a year or two previously." In the next sentence he sounds modern, as he describes how "the colors of the young lady's clothes would strike us today as distinctly strident." The narrator's double vision and double voice make him as important as the characters in this novel.

Charles is a middle-aged bachelor and amateur paleontologist; Ernestina is his fiancée, who has brought him to spend a few days with her aunt. Out of a chivalric concern for Sarah, Charles advises her to return from the end of the Cobb to a safer position, but she merely stares at him. As he reflects on this curious meeting, the narrator begins to comment on Charles's outlook on life and on the attitudes that were typical of the age in 1867, with occasional comparisons with 1967.

Ernestina is revealed to be a pretty but conventional young woman. Sarah is an outcast who is reputed to be pining for the French lieutenant who has jilted her. Charles is earnest but intelligent enough to be aware of Ernestina's limitations. When he is looking for fossils along the wooded Undercliff, Charles discovers Sarah sleeping, and must apologize when she awakes and sees him observing her. As he returns to Lyme, he inquires about her at a nearby farm, whose owner tells him that the "French Loot'n'nt's Hoer" often walks that way. Sarah's employer, having separately become aware of that fact, forbids her to walk there any more. Sarah spends that night contemplating suicide, and Chapter 12 ends with two questions: "Who is Sarah? Out of what shadows does she come?"

Chapter 13 begins "I do not know," and the narrator proceeds to discuss the difficulty of writing a story when characters behave independently rather than do his bidding. Charles, he complains, did not return to Lyme as the narrator had intended but willfully went down to the Dairy to ask about Sarah. But, the narrator concedes, times have changed, and the traditional novel is out of fashion, according to some. Novels may seem more real if the characters do not behave like marionettes and narrators do not behave like God. So the narrator, in effect, promises to give his characters the free will that people would want a deity to grant them. Likewise, the narrator will candidly admit to the artifice of the narration and will thereby treat his readers as intelligent, independent beings who deserve more than the manipulative illusions of reality provided in a traditional novel.

Subsequent chapters contain representations of domestic life--a quiet evening with Charles and Ernestina, a morning with Charles and his valet, a concert at the Assembly Rooms. During this last, Charles reflects on where his life seems to be leading and on the fact that, as he puts it, he has become "a little obsessed with Sarah…or at any rate with the enigma she presented." He returns to the Undercliff, again finds Sarah there, and is shocked to be told by her that she is not pining for her French lieutenant, that he is married. The next time Charles encounters her in the Undercliff she offers Charles some fossils she has found and tells him that she thinks she may be going mad; she asks him to meet her there once more, when she has more time, so that she can tell him the truth about her situation and obtain his advice.

Charles decides to seek advice himself and visits Dr. Grogan, an elderly bachelor and an admirer of Darwin, whose theories they discuss. When the conversation turns to Sarah, Grogan expresses the belief that she wants to be a victim. Sarah seems to bear out his view when she explains to Charles that she indeed became infatuated with the French lieutenant when he was recovering from an injury in the house, where Sarah was governess, and that she followed him when he left to return to France. She tells Charles that she quickly realized that he had regarded her only as an amusement, but that she "gave" herself to him nonetheless, doubly dishonoring herself by choice as well as by circumstances. She seems to be proud of her status as outcast, for it differentiates her from a society she considers unjust. Charles accepts her story--even finds it fascinating.

When Charles returns to his room at the inn, he finds a telegram from his bachelor uncle Robert, summoning him home to the family estate he is in line to inherit. To Charles's surprise, Robert has decided to marry Bella Tomkins, a young widow, whose sons--if she has any--would displace Charles as heir. On Charles's return to Lyme Regis, Ernestina mentions that Sarah was seen returning from their last meeting in the Undercliff, where she had been forbidden to walk, and has been dismissed by Mrs. Poulteney. At his hotel, Charles finds a message from Sarah, urging him to meet her one more time. Charles has Dr. Grogan call off the search for Sarah, who, it was thought, might have killed herself Grogan again warns Charles against Sarah, this time by offering him a document to read about a case of bizarre behavior by a young woman in France who manages to get one of her father's officers unjustly convicted of attempting to rape her. Charles decides to meet Sarah again, despite the possibility that she may be deranged and trying to destroy him.

When he finds her, she confesses that she deliberately allowed herself to be seen and, hence, dismissed. Charles is unable to resist kissing her but is bewildered. His feelings turn to dismay when they are stumbled on by Sam and Mary, his valet and Ernestina's aunt's servant, who have come to the Undercliff for their own privacy. Embarrassed, he swears them to secrecy.

Now even more of two minds about his marriage, Charles decides to go to London to discuss his altered financial prospects with Ernestina's father, a prosperous merchant there. Mr. Freeman is more concerned for the happiness of his daughter, who evidently loves Charles dearly, so the engagement stands; but Charles is increasingly uncomfortable with, even trapped by, his situation. He goes to his club and drinks too much. He visits a brothel with two of his friends, but finds the entertainment repellant, and leaves. He picks up a Cockney streetwalker and returns to her flat with her; when she tells him her name is, coincidentally, Sarah, Charles becomes ill and, subsequently, returns to his room. The next morning Charles receives a letter from Grogan, and a note from Sarah with the name of a hotel in Exeter.

Because the train station nearest to Lyme Regis is in Exeter, Charles must pass through that town on his way back from London. Having steamed open the note from Sarah, Sam is confident that they will spend the night in Exeter, so that Charles can visit Sarah, but they proceed to Lyme, where Charles and Ernestina are reunited. The narrator recounts that they go on to marry, have seven children, and live well into the twentieth century. In the next chapter, the narrator explains that this traditional ending is just one possibility, a hypothetical future for his characters. Charles recognized his freedom of choice and "actually" did decide to put up at Exeter for the night, precisely as Sam had expected.

As the story resumes and continues to unfold, Charles visits Sarah at her hotel. He must see her in her room because she has supposedly injured her ankle, though she has purchased the bandage before the "accident" occurred. Charles is overcome by passion and takes her to bed, only to discover that she is a virgin, despite what she had told him about the French lieutenant. She confesses that she has deceived him, says that she cannot explain why and, furthermore, cannot marry him. Stunned by the whole experience, Charles visits a nearby church and meditates on the human condition. He decides that Sarah has been trying to "unblind" him with her stratagems, so that he would recognize that he is free to choose. He writes a letter to Sarah, telling her how much she means to him, and then returns to Lyme to call off his engagement.

Sam does not deliver the letter. Ernestina is distraught when Charles tells her that he is unworthy to be her husband, more so when she realizes that the true reason is another woman. Sam correctly surmises that his master's star will wane as the marriage is called off, so determined to protect his prospect of marriage to Mary, he leaves his position as Charles's valet in hope that Ernestina's aunt and her father will help him.

When Charles returns to Exeter, he finds Sarah gone to London, having left no forwarding address. As he follows her, by train, a bearded figure sits opposite Charles and watches him as he dozes. The character is the narrator himself, who professes not to know where Sarah is or what she wants; indeed, he is wondering what exactly to do with Charles. He compares writing a novel to fixing a fight in favor of one boxer or another; to seem less dishonest, he decides to show the "fight" as if "fixed" both ways, with different "victors," or endings. Because the last ending will seem privileged by its final position, he flips a coin to determine which ending to give first.

The narrative resumes the description of Charles's search for Sarah. He checks agencies for governesses, patrols areas frequented by prostitutes, and advertises--all without success. He visits the United States and advertises there. Two years after she disappeared, Charles gets a cable from his solicitor saying that Sarah has been found. Charles hopes that Sarah has decided to answer the ad, but the narrator explains that Mary has seen Sarah enter a house in Chelsea, and that it is Sam who responded to the ad, now that he is a thriving employee of Mr. Freeman as well as a happy father and husband, but still slightly guilt-ridden over his having intercepted the letter at Lyme.

When Charles arrives at Sarah's house, he finds her surprised to see him and not apologetic about having left him in ignorance of her whereabouts. She gradually is revealed to be living in the house of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and several other artists and models of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Charles is shocked, partly by the rather notoriously unconventional company she is keeping and partly by her lack of repentance for having deceived him and left him in uncertainty. He accuses her of implanting a dagger in his breast and then twisting it. She decides not to let Charles leave without revealing that she has had a child by him, named Lalage. Chapter 60 ends with the three of them evidently on the threshold of some kind of future together.

Chapter 61 begins with the bearded narrator in front of Sarah's house with a watch, which he sets back fifteen minutes and drives off. The narrative resumes with the same piece of dialogue from Chapter 60, about twisting the knife. In this version of the conversation, Charles sees that she cannot marry without betraying herself, and that he cannot accept her on more independent terms. He leaves without realizing that the child he notices on the way out is his. The narrator ends the novel by noting that Charles has at least begun to have some faith in himself, despite his not feeling that he understands Sarah, and that the reader should not imagine that the last ending is any less plausible than the one before it.