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Given the centrality of the ideal of the gentleman to (self-)definitions
of English identity, an examination of the way they inform each
other in twentieth-century literary practice
has until the publication of the study under review been
long overdue. The inextricable ties binding the concept of
Englishness to the ideal of aristocratic masculinity render the
object of the present enquiry an almost vestigial function. For
only in England did the character of ‘gentleman’ forge itself
into a national type, acquiring a mythical aura…in national and
‘hypernational’ terms. A modern development of Anglican
extraction, gentlemanliness has, for the larger part, formed the
province of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies. Premised
on the potency of this cultural category in evoking the English
difference, Christine Berberich embarks upon an explorative
analysis of its avatars as reflected in canonical works of the
twentieth century. Organised around the productive dialogue
between conceptions of the gentleman figure in gender studies
and its depictions in literature, the study engages Englishness
and gentlemanhood as literary tropes and as enduring cultural
myths. A preliminary section, “The Gentleman, Englishness and
Nostalgia: Approaches, Explanations, Definitions” is thus
devoted to an ample consideration of the attributes that convey
the national, class, gender specific identity of the notion. In
a meticulous survey of mentalities from chivalric to Victorian
times, Berberich offers a synthetic and telling account of
dominant views on the gentleman through the ages. Creating a
congenial background for the ensuing textual analyses, Chapter
2, “From Knight to Public-School Boy” brings to the fore a vast
array of variegated vistas, understandings and definitions of
the gentleman. A comprehensive perspective on the evolution of
the category is articulated here, Berberich providing a balanced
overview of the shifting absolute and relative criteria, moral
and personal codes, inner virtues and outward civilities
constitutive of the notion. As well as the sum of norms, clichés,
prejudices, and patterns of conformity involving lineage, wealth,
codes of honour, manners, upbringing and propriety, conduct,
etiquette and religion, the critic looks at the in-built traits
that make the ‘natural’ gentleman and the attributes granted by
external title. Berberich establishes thus a polarity between
gentlemanhood as an inborn or an acquired quality, external
title versus inner merit. As part of a panoply of hypostases
exemplifying gentlemanhood, moral responsibility, ‘duty before
personal interest’ (10), emerges as a timeless shared code,
transcending the norms of gentility and ancestry the gentlemanly
status originally imbued. Opportunely concluding Part I is a
review chapter observing the gentleman motif in literary history.
It carries a distinct interpretive weight as it combines aspects
of culture history and theory with a view to unpick ‘commenting’
and ‘defining’ characteristics of the gentleman. A sociological
framework for the discussion of the imbrications of power
discourse and class and gender consciousness is delineated here,
a medley of Foucaultian and Raymond Williamsian ideas being
brought to bear upon the changing makeup of the notion of the
gentleman in modern and contemporary age.
Covering the ground from the historical development of the
prototype of English gentleman to the category of
gentlemanliness, in Part II of the study, “Of Heroes, Survivors
and Dinosaurs: the Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature,”
Berberich thematises nostalgia and gentlemanliness as dramatised
in the writing of Siegfried Sassoon, Anthony Powell, Evelyn
Waugh, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Building on the explorations of the
gentleman as a cultural and literary ideal in the opening
sections of the book, the close readings conducted here
contribute an insightful vision of perceptions of
gentlemanliness and Englishness. Berberich crystallises a
panoramic rendition of the gentlemanly ideal from the ‘sporting’
and pastoral versions, as a ‘relic of chivalry’, ‘seriously
repressed by his own ideals’ (160), to the self-deluding
individual that fails to move with the times. Challenging the
viewing of the gentleman as an endangered or ‘extinct’ species,
the chapter illustrates the endurance and continuing relevance
of the notion in the twentieth century. A recurrent theme
running through the textual analyses is that of Englishness and
gentlemanliness as forms of yearning for the past, of cultivated
remembrance of bygone grandeur and convenient forgetfulness of
present ignobleness.
Adding to the main corpus of authors under scrutiny, the
references to John Fowles, Alan Hollinghurst, William Boyd, and
Peter Ackroyd, complexify the literary map of Englishness that
Berberich traces. Reiterating common misconceptions about
Englishness, the above study succeeds in reinforcing the
chameleon, versatile quality of Englishness. In lucid and astute
interpretations, Berberich foregrounds literary texts as
repository of both stereotypical ideas of Englishness and
commonalities inherent in the English character. Equally, the
book has the merit of marrying structure and content, rigor and
empathy, eloquence and systematicity. Its didactic and
methodical character recommends it as a suitable coursework
bibliography. Further developments of the theme may benefit from
an examination of a more markedly religious and
spiritual-allegorical dimension of gentlemanliness as embodied
in the works of Greene, Golding, Durrell, and perhaps in various
traditions of women writers.
ADRIANA NEAGU
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
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