Brideshead Revisited vs Man and Wife

Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

1945

Evelyn Waugh's beloved masterpiece, with an introduction by Paula Byrne The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian Flyte at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognise his spiritual and social distance from them. 'Lush and evocative ... Expresses at once the profundity of change and the indomitable endurance of the human spirit' The Times

Man and Wife

Wilkie Collins, Norman Page, Harry A. Webber

1870

Man and Wife was Wilkie Collins' ninth published novel. It is the second of his novels (after No Name) in which social questions provide the main impetus of the plot. Collins increasingly used his novels to explore social abuses, which according to critics] tends to detract from their qualities as fiction. The social issue which drives the plot is the state of Scots marriage law; at the time the novel was written, any couple who were legally entitled to marry and who asserted that they were married before witnesses, or in writing, were regarded in Scotland as being married in law. The novel has a complex plot, common in Collins' work.[3] In a Prologue, a selfish and ambitious man casts off his wife in order to marry a wealthier and better-connected woman, by taking advantage of a loophole in the marriage laws of Ireland.The initial action takes place in the widowed Lady Lundie's house in Scotland. Geoffrey Delamayn has promised marriage to his lover Anne Silvester (governess to Lady Lundie's stepdaughter Blanche), who has incurred the enmity of her employer. The spendthrift Geoffrey is about to be disinherited and wishes to escape from his promise and marry a wealthy wife. Nevertheless, he is obliged to arrange a rendezvous with Anne, in the character of his wife, at an inn, and documents this in an exchange of notes with her. Subsequently, urgent matters force him to send his friend Arnold Brinkworth, Blanche's fiancé, to Anne in his place. To gain access to her, Arnold must ask for "his wife". Although nothing improper passes between them, they appear to the landlady and to Bishopriggs, a waiter, to be man and wife.Thus, both Geoffrey and Arnold might be deemed to be married to Anne, depending on the weight put on the spoken and written evidence. Most of the novel concerns Anne's, Geoffrey's and Arnold's attempts to clarify their marital status: