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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: August Book Group - The Code of the Woosters
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
Og: quote:
Wodehouse seems to turn a few classic comedic elements on their heads, or at least tweak them. In Moliere and Shakespeare, the Deus ex Machina character is usually a noble person, sometimes even a King. In Wodehouse, it is someone in service.
...actually, the 'clever servant (slave) who outwits/saves the bacon of his/her master' has a long and noble pedigree, going all the way back to Greek and Roman comedy. Possibly further, but I don't know much about ancient Chinese and Indian literature.
But yes; Wodehouse does it very well. I agree with Sarasa about the short stories though; when he does a full-length book it feels like there isn't quite enough elastic in the plot.
[ 24. August 2016, 19:51: Message edited by: Jane R ]
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Marama
Shipmate
# 330
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Posted
Interesting observations, Jane.
I have always thought of Jeeves as being not much older than Bertie - he does fall in love occasionally, and appears capable (if reluctant) of running, climbing drainpipes ad other physical exploits. Is that an artefact of the TV series? Obviously Fry and Laurie are about the same age, and I vaguely remember the Ian Carmichael Bertie, and I think his Jeeves was of similar age. I ask because Tukai commented that he had originally thought (after just reading the books) of Jeeves as a father figure, and considerably older. What do others think?
Posts: 910 | From: Canberra | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marama:
I ask because Tukai commented that he had originally thought (after just reading the books) of Jeeves as a father figure, and considerably older. What do others think?
There is a Jeeves story where he says that a very attractive young woman is his niece. This is suggestive, but it doesn't prove anything because sometimes uncles are very close in age to their nieces.
Moo
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Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
Yes, I think that's one of the things the Fry and Laurie series got right; Jeeves is a bit older than Bertie, but I wouldn't have thought he was that much older - ten years, at most. I've always thought of Bertie as early twenties (he doesn't seem to be old enough to have served in the First World War) which would put Jeeves in his early thirties.
Mind you, reality never seems to impinge on Wodehouse's world... unlike Dorothy Sayers, where just about every man over a certain age had been affected by his experiences in the war.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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betjemaniac
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# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
I've always thought of Bertie as early twenties (he doesn't seem to be old enough to have served in the First World War) which would put Jeeves in his early thirties.
Mind you, reality never seems to impinge on Wodehouse's world...
well, apart from the Blackshorts. And I'm sure one of the later books has Bertie off on a course to learn how to do things for himself because of the "Servant Problem" and there's a Ban the Bomb march, but that's rather the exception.
The issue of anachronism is an interesting one with Wodehouse. IIRC he went to the States during WW1 and that was really when he mentally disconnected from contemporary British life. Jeeves, of course, is named after a cricketer (Percy Jeeves) killed in the Great War.
Wodehouse is on record somewhere as saying that when he writes about Bertie and his friends he's really dealing with the "Knuts" of early Edwardian England. It's just that for his readership he has to paint in cars etc so it's not historical fiction. Which it is, really.
Remember the first Jeeves story came out in 1915 (Wodehouse's career was extraordinarily long), so it was Looking-backwards pre-Great-war escapist fiction even then.
A good way of looking at it might be to see Wodehouse's fiction as largely taking place in a 1920s version of Edwardian England where the Great War hadn't happened.
Anyway, I haven't read the book in question for about 15 years so apologies for gatecrashing and I shall retire from the thread!
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Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I don't think Bertie ever mentions his parents, which is part of the reason that Jeeves works as a parent figure. Wodehouse apparently didn't really know his parents, who lived in Hong Kong and left him in the care of aunts and nannies. I understand that this was common practice at the time, and it plays out again and again in his stories, where the figure who needs to be convinced to allow someone to marry is a rich aunt or uncle.
(Incidentally, while wondering if the common styles of Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler were widely acknowledged, I discovered something quite interesting. Both authors were essentially raised by aunts, and barely knew their parents. Both attended the same school, Dulwich College, and although ten years apart, likely studied under some of the same teachers. And both were academically suited to go on to Oxford or Cambridge, but lacked the finances, and had to go into professional life without the benefit of a university education.)
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
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Sarasa
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# 12271
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Posted
Og, King of Bashan said:
quote:
Incidentally, while wondering if the common styles of Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler were widely acknowledged, I discovered something quite interesting. Both authors were essentially raised by aunts, and barely knew their parents. Both attended the same school, Dulwich College, and although ten years apart, likely studied under some of the same teachers
I too wondered if the teachers at Dulwich college might have had something to do with the wonderful prose style of each author.
I've always thought of Bertie being about 27 or 28 and Jeeves about 40. Enough of an age gap to make then not quite the same generation, but Jeeves still young enough to shin up drainpipies etc.
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'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.
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moonlitdoor
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# 11707
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Posted
Has anyone read Richard Usborne's book 'Wodehouse at work to the end' ? He puts forward an idea quite contrary to that of Jeeves being a father figure. His idea is that the father figures are people like Aunt Agatha and Sir Roderick Glossop, who want Bertie to grow up, whereas Jeeves has more the role of a nanny who enables him to remain an adolescent.
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We've evolved to being strange monkeys, but in the next life he'll help us be something more worthwhile - Gwai
Posts: 2210 | From: london | Registered: Aug 2006
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georgiaboy
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# 11294
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Posted
The mention of Sayers reminds me of an exchange from one of the Wimsey novels (or possibly short stories):
Bunter: I endeavour to give satisfaction.
Lord Peter: Then don't talk like Jeeves, it annoys me.
Just a 'touch and go,' but a delightful one.
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You can't retire from a calling.
Posts: 1675 | From: saint meinrad, IN | Registered: Apr 2006
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
In Moliere and Shakespeare, the Deus ex Machina character is usually a noble person, sometimes even a King. In Wodehouse, it is someone in service.
Jeeves isn't a deus ex machina. A deus ex machina is someone introduced at the last minute to resolve the plot. It's got no connection with where the plot has been going up until that point.
The reader knows from the beginning of a Jeeves and Wooster story that Jeeves is going to resolve the plot - that's where the plot has been going since the first lines of chapter one. He's no more a deus ex machina than Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Sarasa: quote:
I too wondered if the teachers at Dulwich college might have had something to do with the wonderful prose style of each author.
Something I read said that it was a particular classics' master who had a major effect on their writing. The third famous writer to come from Dulwich was Dennis Wheatley, who doesn't quite reach the level of the other two.
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
betjemaniac, on Wodehouse's relations with reality: quote:
...well, apart from the Blackshorts. And I'm sure one of the later books has Bertie off on a course to learn how to do things for himself because of the "Servant Problem" and there's a Ban the Bomb march, but that's rather the exception.
And now I come to think of it, 'The Clicking of Cuthbert' has a reference to the Russian civil war and namechecks for Trotsky and Lenin.
But you're right; allusions to contemporary events are the exception rather than the rule, and all the stories seem to be taking place in an artificially prolonged Edwardian afternoon...
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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venbede
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# 16669
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Posted
The line that made me laugh most reading the book again was Aunt Dahlia explaining why there was a danger Uncle Tom would swap Anatole for the cow creamer as he has already swapped a butler:
“Tom traded him to the Bessington-Copes for an oviform chocolate pot on three scroll feet.”
It is the extra unnecessary detail that I find delicious – oviform, three scroll feet. It reminds me of the village concert in The Mating Season introduced by the vicar. He doesn’t just look stuffed. “He looked as though he’d been stuffed in a hurry by an incompetent taxidermist”.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
They do have this feudal attitude towards their servants, don't they. Supposing Anatole didn't want to be traded for a chocolate pot (however many feet it had)?
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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venbede
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# 16669
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Posted
I'm sure it's meant to be a grotesque joke, exaggerating Uncle Tom's obsessive collecting.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Well, I got that (and there are other stories about servants being head-hunted by other households, leading to Diplomatic Incidents) but it's too close to how some of the ruling classes really think about the rest of us to be entirely amusing.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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