Demob Happy

Dignity and denial - the noble art of butlering

In a comment on my post reviewing ‘When we Were Orphans‘, John Self of Asylum pointed out that many of Ishiguro’s novels are about ‘blindness’. While that novel has not warmed on me, it was with ‘blindness’ in mind that I read ‘Remains of the Day’, also a fine film previously reviewed here. I was not disappointed - there are several threads in this novel that pertain to blindness: the butler-narrator Mr Stevens’ unquestioning faith in the political acumen of his employer Lord Darlington, despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary; Lord Darlington’s apparent blindness to being used as a pawn by the pre-war Nazi propaganda machine; and Stevens’ own blindness to the affections of Darlington Hall’s housekeeper Miss Kenton. In some cases Stevens’ and Lord Darlington’s blindness could be viewed as naivety, a blind faith in the way things should be done, and in other instances as active denial, a stubborn refusal to concede to inconvenient truths. Denial and blindness, of course, are not mutually exclusive, and the author does a fine job of using his unreliable narrator to imply information that is not yet - and may not ever be - apparent to the narrator himself.

Having seen the film first it is virtually impossible not to read ‘The Remains of the Day’ and not imagine Anthony Hopkins inhabiting the role of narrator. But there is one disadvantage to this - where the film superbly internalises much of Mr Stevens’ perspective, or at least suggests them in less discursive ways, the book finds its protagonist playing a much more active role in his own ignorance or blindness. We are privy to pretensions and pride regarding the noble art of butlering and at times the novel is in danger of turning Stevens into a characateur, especially when it is revealed Stevens reads articles published in ‘A Quarterly for the Gentleman’s Gentleman’ by an exclusive and secretive ‘Hayes Society’ of butlers.

That Ishinguro succeeds in telling the entire story in such a particular voice - which, with its gentlemanly modesty and eloquent servility, is by turns funny and compelling - is in itself a fantastic achievement. There are several long treatises on the nature of ‘dignity’, a quality Stevens believes to be the key to the art of butlering. He frequently cites the Hayes Society’s assertion that “the most crucial criterion [of being a butler] is that the applicant be possessed of a dignity in keeping with his position”, and provides an example his own. In a particularly moving chapter he recounts the immense self-control he had to exert while waiting at table for an important political gathering despite having recently learned of his father’s death. The fact that Stevens seems at pains to prove his ‘dignity’ in these circumstances is tinged with pathos. ‘Dignity’ thus becomes a by-word throughout the novel with an honourable suppression of feeling, of placing profession over personal affairs, and of respecting the authority of superiors unquestioningly.

We also discover that Stevens’ notions of dignity are also bound together with a belief in British reserve and gentlemanly manners, blind - as is his employer Lord Darlington - to the fact that the world is changing. At one stage he claims,

“Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race are capable of.”

Some of these comments on the nature of British dignity stretch to his appreciation of the innate “greatness” of the British landscape, which he claims,

“possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess”.

Stevens’ conviction in the Britain’s greatness is tied into his idea of dignity, that a country, like its people, display a certain un-showy reserve, the aesthetic equivalent of a stiff upper-lip. Nothing wrong with that of course, though Stevens’ patriotism takes a slightly nastier turn later in the novel when Lord Darlington orders the sacking of two Jewish maids from the house, an order Stevens undertakes without question - again, “in keeping with his position” - despite the reservations of Miss Kenton. When challenged by her over the issue, he claims,

“There are many things you and I are simply not in a position to understand concerning, say, the nature of Jewry. Whereas his lordship, I might venture, is somewhat better placed to judge what is for the best.”‘

Later, Lord Darlington capitulates and Stevens naturally follows suit, and I assume Ishiguro is suggesting here that his narrator is more guilty of a blind following of orders than any deep-rooted prejudices of his own - although there is of course a very fine line between appeasement and culpability, a distinction handled with subtlety by the author. He informs Miss Kenton that it was a difficult and regrettable task for him to do, a fact that to which she responds in surprise,

‘”Do you realize, Mr Stevens, how much it would have meant to me if you had thought to share your feelings last year”‘

And it is his inability to share his feelings with Miss Kenton - or even to the reader and thus, in essence, himself - that provides the framework to the narrative: Stevens embarks on a road trip in order to meet her 20 years later under the pretext that he can convince her to rejoin him working at the disgraced Lord Darlington’s former residence, now owned by an American. We suspect some deeper motive to his trip, since he surmises that she has separated from her husband, but he dare not articulate this even to himself. Not only does he repeatedly deny himself his own feelings, Stevens never admits to any personal frivolity, at one point even lying to himself about the reasons for reading a romantic novel, refusing to allow the possibility that he might yearn for affection, even to the reader. In a passage made doubly famous by a beautifully rendered scene in the film, Miss Kenton has to prise the novel out of his hands to discover its contents, creating a charged moment between them that he seems unequipped to interpret:

‘I am afraid it is not easy to describe clearly what I mean here. All I can say is that everything around us suddenly became very still; it was my impression that Miss Kenton’s manner also underwent a sudden change; there was a strange seriousness in her expression, and it struck me she seemed almost frightened’

Despite Stevens’ blindness and denial, we never stop empathising with him. For all his subservience and pomposity he is after all a man who has dedicated his life to honourable principles, however misguided, and we can’t help but suffer his missed opportunities with him.