In which Mr. Samgrass is exposed, Sebastian is given money at the hunt by Charles, Lady Marchmain says hurtful things to Charles, Rex gives Julia a Christmas present, Rex proposes and begins instruction in the Catholic Church, Bridey drops a bombshell, Rex and Charles have dinner in Paris, Rex and Julia are married, and Father Mowbray's intuition about Rex is proven true.
For Your Consideration:
"I don't understand it," she said. "I simply don't understand how anyone can be so callously wicked.....I don't understand how you can have been so nice in so many ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel. I don't understand how we all liked you so much. Did you hate us all the time? I don't understand how we deserved it."
  • 1. Book 2, Brideshead Deserted, contains some stunning bombs and revelations. All of a sudden our entire world is turned upside down. Which revelation in this short section do you think is ultimately the most important?
  • 2. "A door had shut, the low door in the wall I had sought and found in Oxford; open it now and I should find no enchanted garden." ---Has the door shut for all of the characters in these two short chapters? In which way is each character altered?
  • 3. "It was characteristic of an old, atavistic callousness that went with her delicacy that, even at this crisis, she did not think it unreasonable to put Sebastian in Rex's charge on the journey to Dr. Borethus..." "All through her life mummy had all the sympathy or everyone except those she loved." Many of the characters in this section have something new revealed about them that we may not have realized. What is revealed about Teresa Marchmain, Julia, Rex, and Bridey in this section which we may previously not have known and how does it affect the others?
  • 5. Why did Charles give Sebastian the money at the foxhunt, knowing how he was likely to spend it?
  • 6. "We have no secrets in this house." ---Lady Marchmain In this section almost everybody has a secret. How do their secrets affect themselves and everybody else?
  • 7. "It's interesting how books, good books, force us to look inside of ourselves. Books are like mirrors helping to shape our characters." ---Hats. ----This book, unless written about Martians on Planet Zero, could not be more unlike most of us and our lives or is it? What commonality can we find in this book with our own lives? Perhaps as youngsters, our first loves or enthusiasms, we look back on aghast? If we admit it? Perhaps we, too have made mistakes, in parenting? What is there in this story YOU can relate to, generally if you don't want to get personal? Universal themes?
  • 8. "Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor."
    "To feel yourself poor, while being rich— with the Special Grace of God she pulls it off, and wins heaven. The real poor have it all— all that matters—God's loving care and blessing. Not being envious of the poor becomes the cross someone like Lady M needs."---Daytripper
    ---What is your personal reaction to the concept of the rich envying the poor? What privileges of the poor? Are privileges dependent upon your social status? Which ones?
  • 9. "Why did Waugh ever pick a character like this to tell his story?"-----Daytripper ---Why do you think Charles is the narrator?
  • 10.
    "Me?" said Sebastian from the shadows beyond the lamp-light, beyond the warmth of the burning logs, beyond the family circle and the photographs spread out on the card-table.
    "Me?" Isolation has joined the large list of themes of the book, and is beginning to emerge more strongly, as the characters are portrayed both physically and mentally "outside." Sebastian is referred to as having been "lost" over Christmas. Which characters seem "inside," if any, and why? In what ways do each of the characters long to belong and in what ways are each "lost?"
  • 11.
    But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world."
    -----This statement echoes Sebastian's in the heading about burying a memory. How does this statement sum up Charles and what does it mean for his future?
    • For the Weekend:
    "It is time to speak of Julia."
    Let's talk about Julia and Rex.
  • 12.
    You know Father Mowbray hit on the truth about Rex at once, that it took me a year of marriage to see. He simply wasn't all there. He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in the laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a many pretending he was the whole.
    How do you see Rex? Do you find him half (not even that) a person? In what way? And note the theme again of the modern versus the past, note now that Julia now appreciates the past. How is this a turning point for her?
  • 13. "I wanted to be made an honest woman. I've been wanting it ever since—come to think of it."---- Julia -----What does this mean?
  • 14. "She lived apart in a little world, within a little world, the innermost of a system of concentric spheres, like the ivory balls laboriously carved in China…" ---What does this mean? --- Malryn

    Questions Week 1 Questions Week 2