A Study Of Modern Nostalgia In Evelyn Waugh's Novels

Evelyn Waugh is one of the most celebrated twentieth century English novelist.In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century,due to the ever-increasing competition from emerging powers like the United States,the impact of two World Wars and the spread of economic crisis,the former British empire was outshined and outdated,and its decline was both evident and irrevocable.As a sensitive novelist of this agonizing period,Waugh is known for both social critical themes and his biting and satirical writing style,which has attracted the attention of the critical field.Compared with the common ironic writing techniques and religious thematic research,nostalgia in his novels was somewhat neglected and thus deserves more critical attention.This dissertation is a concentrated study of Evelyn Waugh's nostalgic thematic concerns in four of his major novels,namely,Decline and Fall(1928),Vile Bodies(1930),A Handful of Dust(1934)and Brideshead Revisited(1945).These works reveal his intense anxiety and agony,which are also symptomatic of the mental state of the British people,his condemnation of the bad social atmosphere and his lamentation for the decline of the national culture.In the four selected novels,Waugh fully demonstrates the spicy irony of the social and spiritual dilemma of the time,and also implicates that the remembrance of good old days can help people escape from reality and obtain great spiritual consolation.The writing of nostalgia is not only the projection of Waugh's longing for a return to the past,but also an expression of his expectation for the future.These writings either express his desire for a revitalization of the prosperity of the old days,or offer a therapeutic remedy for the agony and melancholia for the loss of the past glory,or even point at a promising future by means of introspection and reflection on the spiritual decline and social misconduct.Waugh's writings about nostalgia are also closely related to the change of the British individual identity,social identity and national identity.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,this dissertation falls into three chapters.The first chapter probes into the relationship between nostalgia and the individual identity.It mainly analyzes the causes for nostalgia from the perspective of the characters'self-cognition,sorts out the forms and causes for the individuals'nostalgia,and excavates the influence of it.Nostalgia in Waugh' s works is derived from the spiritual crisis,which is characterized by self-exile and ends up with a more serious spiritual crisis.It is a vicious circle of personalized expression of social emotions.After the two World Wars and the economic crisis,the previous powerful British Empire showed a trend of a gradual decline,which resulted in multiple changes of personal identity,as well as the loss and disillusionment after the change.Waugh's four selected novels typically reflect the disappointment,disillusionment,degeneration and loss imposed on Londoners by the status quo after the social change,as well as their memories and nostalgic recall for the past.Through descripting nostalgia of the upper class,Waugh reproduces the loss and degeneration of their personal beliefs,morality and spirit.He expresses his helplessness to the collapse of the system of personal value in the West and his desire to get out of this dilemma.Firstly,Evelyn Waugh demonstrates that one obvious reason for the individual's nostalgia is the lack of faith in the context of social changes.He describes a large number of young people in England who,in the trauma of social upheaval,doubt and abandon their faith,lose their commitment to the English Gentleman and Public Schoolman,and prefer to live in a vast emptiness rather than change their status quo.The old-fashioned and outdated ideas of English Gentleman and Public Schoolman fail to conform to the development and change of the new era.The young upper-class people are increasingly twisted in the crevice between the old and the new and run into snags at every turn,which further aggravates their nostalgia for the past and spiritual satisfaction.For the characters in the selected novels,the significance of religion only exists in the past piety or the living habits formed since their childhood,which cannot bring them any guidance and dependence.When the great pain comes,the almost useless faith makes people feel more confused and have to endure the inner suffering.In this vicious circle,individuals are deeply nostalgic for the past,and full of helplessness and powerlessness during the process.They have gradually developed into a series of absurd behaviors,like excessive drinking,party-going,dating and sensationseeking as a response to the helpless reality.Secondly,the loss of true love also leads to individuals' nostalgia.Waugh laments the dissolution of the value that puts sincere feelings in the first place,criticizes the abnormal perceptions of love that money and social status are above everything else,as well as the loss of sincere emotions.In the above four novels,Waugh portrays several male characters in the patriarchal society who take money and social status as the criteria for the matchmaking.Although there are differences in the ways these characters dally with their partners' emotions,their goals and characteristics are very similar,that is,they all seize material interests and social status in the name of love.In addition,Waugh reveals that the feelings between the same sex are not only a manifestation of alternative resistance to authority,but also an externalized form of spiritual emptiness.For Evelyn Waugh,homosexuality is a projection of the absence of love and a compensation for the lack of love in heterosexuality.The lack of true love will inevitably bring nothingness to the spiritual world of individuals,which often leads individuals to the nostalgic reminiscences for the past times that were full of true love.Thirdly,the deterioration of the relationship between family members also deprives the individuals of familial harmony which was once so taken for granted.There is widespread absence of paternal love,indifference of maternal love and estrangement among siblings in Waugh's novels.The family plays a vital role in the growth of an individual.Waugh usually describes families afflicted with an unbearably estranged relationship and oppressively cold atmosphere.In the process of an individual's growth,the guidance and security brought by father,the care and love provided by mother,and the companionship and mutual help between siblings can greatly affect the formation of individuals' personality and character.The absence of these emotions is one of the causes for the individual alienation and also intensifies individuals' nostalgia for the harmonious family atmosphere in the past.In his novels,Waugh criticizes the callousness between parents and children,as well as siblings through the description of the indifferent relationship,and shows his longing for a happy family and his nostalgia for the intimate and harmonious family atmosphere.The second chapter examines nostalgia from the perspective of the social identity of British people of all ranks.Waugh's works are heavily loaded with nostalgia held by the British from all walks of life due to the social conflicts between the old and the new.Along with nostalgia,there is the pursuit of identity.However,the nostalgia and the pursuit of identity of all social strata have a unique characteristic,that is,all of them wish to change the unsatisfactory social reality and return to the past glory with the illusion that only the upper class is capable of bringing forth this miracle of revitalization.Waugh shows the different nostalgic reminiscences of the upper class,the middle class and the underclass in Britain by depicting the changes of social environment,psychological anxiety and struggle against social problems of their own social ranks.After the two World Wars,the glory of Britain diminished,and the aristocracy,which was so characteristic of Britain,was gradually declining.Under the influence of the economic crisis,the aristocracy suffered an irreversible decline,which,in turn,signifies the decline of the traditional social order to a certain extent.The development of industrialization shook the foundation of the aristocracy at the same time.The family estates of the old aristocrats fell into disrepair and their land was left untilled,which made the aristocrats exist in name only.The declining aristocrats are out of touch with society for a long time and could not survive by means of their poor social skills.Still,they are not willing to give up their dignity in difficult situations.Even if they have the ability,they still refuse to resort to their brains and physical strength for a new life.Some of the nobles moved into the city and were trapped in tiny apartments,living the same life as other classes.The distress caused by their external living environment and the loss of their inner pride and self-esteem made the nobles indulge in yearning for the rich life they once enjoyed in the past,social status admired by others and class privileges they once had.In contrast to the simple nostalgia of the upper class,the middle class has a misplaced ambivalence in that they have a desire to realize the dream of returning to the past,but places the task to realize this dream on others.In the midst of the Great Depression,the unemployment rate of the middle class,most of whom rely on their own skills to make a living,has increased dramatically,and their economic situation has taken a sharp downward turn.In a horizontal comparison,however,some middleclass people were content to find that they are not the only victims,and the upper class suffers the most from the decline.Meanwhile,they perceive that the social order has been broken and that the seemingly impenetrable boundaries between the upper and the underclass are likely to be transgressed.Some middle class tried to take the advantage of this class liquidity and make an upward move,but most of them failed and resigned.In such a process,the middle class gradually formed new understandings of themselves in the recall of the past and the changing social order.Quite unexpectedly,the nostalgia of the underclass is inclined to a simulation of the original social order and values represented by the previous aristocratic class.In the vortex of national crisis,the underclass,as the lowest members among the social strata,are also dissatisfied with their social status.They take various efforts to change the status quo,and by unscrupulous means,such as cheating,fighting,and even debasing themselves to court favor of the upper or even the middle class people.Some of them pretend to be a member of middle or upper class in order to get jobs and gain the respect of others;some fight against the upper classes in a simplistic and straight-forward way;some succumb to reality in order to change their living conditions,and put aside all dignity to please others to get the chance to survive.For the underclass,the simulation of the values of the upper class that no longer exist is a projection of a certain value.However,in the nostalgia of the underclass,their conjecture of the whole society is unrealistic,groundless and untenable.Therefore,with a sense of irony of modernism,characters of the underclass in the novels are nostalgic for everything that no longer exists,resulting in nothingness.The third chapter explores the relationship between nostalgia and the national identity.By depicting the changing fallen Englishness,the dilapidated country houses and the national feelings of returning home and motherland,Waugh expresses his nostalgia for the British traits that once attracted the attention of the world,and attempts to reconstruct the British values in terms of politics,economy and culture.After the two World Wars,Britain lost its domination hegemonic domination over the world.Its political and economic influence on the post-war world diminished at an unprecedented speed and scale.The overwhelming cost of war materials crippled British economy drastically.Alongside its political power and economic dominance,British culture,as the superstructure,has not been spared.In the process of opening up new sea routes and seek hegemonic colonization of the new world,the British cultural and aesthetic values and taste,characterized by the term "English Style" have been severely impeded.The landscape and the natural scenery play a key role in Evelyn Waugh's depiction of the cultural and aesthetic crises.The British,accustomed to the exquisite and beautiful pastoral scenery,were surprised by a series of exotic scenes such as mountains and cliffs.Beauty and the sublime collided with each other in the consciousness of the colonists.Such a different style of landscape spread to the United Kingdom by means of pictures and paintings,which shakes the foundation of traditional pastoral aesthetic beauty and becomes one of the reasons of nostalgia for the pastoral beautiful landscape characteristic of the British national cultural identity.As a typical representative of Englishness,the rural country house in England constitutes a unique landscape known to the world.Many plots in Waugh's novels are unfolded in the country houses,which witness the rise and fall of the family as well as the nation.Firstly,due to the decline of the political status of the upper class,the aristocracy lost its dominant position.Because of the economic decline and their financial crisis,they cannot afford the high maintenance costs of their rural country houses,but let those mansions gradually decline.The change of Englishness,which takes British aristocratic culture as its tradition,implies the decline of British traditional culture and partly symbolizes the decline of national status.Furthermore,the decline of the country house is symptomatic of the destabilization of the national identity.As an important cultural heritage of Britain,the rural country house was destroyed and expropriated in a large scale by the army in the war,causing irreversible cultural damage and partly symbolizing the decline of national power.Because of the war,the Empire where the Sun Never Set became the Empire of the Sunset.Finally,the advent and development of bourgeois industrialization and materialism changed the traditional economic and cultural composition of Britain.The pastoral rural economy was replaced by factories,a sure sign of modern capitalism.For the sake of urban development,rural houses were demolished,rebuilt,and replaced by cold reinforced concrete.Even though the reconstruction of the decayed country house was carried out with nostalgic reminiscences,the cultural value represented by the house has been destroyed and disappeared.The reconstruction of old buildings seems to be a reconstruction of traditional Englishness,but in fact it is a love's labor lost in that the exterior of the country house can be restored,but its previous aristocratic owners are forever gone.Waugh objects to this form of nostalgia,for he swiftly shows in his fictional works that the interior value of the country house could not be reconstructed and that the modern remedy is a total failure.In his nostalgia writings featuring national identity,Waugh foregrounds the feelings of those who go back home in multifarious ways,for example,to return to the country house or their motherland.The symbolic significance of the return in Waugh's nostalgia writings is that he has cherished a somewhat optimistic notion about the future of the countryside and the nation.In the novels,some of the owners of the country house left at a young age with the aim to get away from the house and religion.They have wandered abroad for many years,but at the last moment of their lives,they resolutely return home and convert to religion again.This return shows that nostalgia will not only give people a sense of root and belonging,but also possess a therapeutic effect.One recurrent and highly symbolic scene in his writings is that some owners return to their country houses at the end of the story to celebrate traditional holidays with their families.The reunion expresses Waugh's hope that through nostalgia,families and the nation can embrace the British traditions again and regain their relevancy.There are also some cases that the aristocratic owners fail to return home,which also shows that Waugh has recognized the cruel fact that the British Empire cannot go back to the glorious past.However,the country house,in lack of its noble lord,ushered in a new owner with a civilian identity.The new owner endows the old house with new vitality,which has great symbolic significance.The thriving lifestyle in the old house is both the inheritance of the old tradition and the continuation of its merit.This paradoxical plot design in his works perfectly illustrates Waugh's nostalgic reminiscences of English tradition of rural idyllic culture.Waugh expressed a conviction that in the reality of the new era,although there is nostalgia for the past,it is only for the prosperity of the country at a certain historical point in the past.While the present changes in social and cultural life need to be accepted and even faced with an affirmative nuance,the past should be cherished appropriately.Waugh believes that in the nostalgic retrospective thinking on tradition,people need to protect the fading old one and let it be inherited,however transformed may it be.In conclusion,nostalgia is not only an emotional outlet for people's dissatisfaction with the status quo,but also a refuge after their escape from it.Nostalgia relieves the psychological pain of disappointment and makes people find spiritual comfort in the beautified memories.Evelyn Waugh's nostalgia writings function as a bridge connecting the past and the present.Through description of characters' discontent with the current situation,as well as the memory and recollection of the past,Waugh sought a dynamic balance between the retrospective thinking of nostalgia and the historical flood of advance.This kind of balance may help confront the past calmly and accept the reality with a more positive stand and affirmative mood.Tradition should be adopted and inherited.It is wise to size up the situation,and to apply the positive mentality brought by nostalgia to the current practical problems.After all,with the impact of modernity,it is hard for Britain to recapture its former imperial glory.In the context of modernity,Waugh's nostalgia writings features a sense of nothingness on the levels of the individual,society,and nation.He argues that if people are too indulgent in nostalgia,nostalgia will be powerless to change people's present situation;but it at any rate has a therapeutic effect and can lessen people's fears of the future.