1054
PARTISAN REVIEW
happens, the events of every-day surface. A group of British servants
works in a castle in Eire during the war; they are glad enough to be
away from the bombs but their guilt ruffles the order to which they are
accustomed. Disturbances follow: the head butler dies and Raunce, a
soft scheming fellow, takes his place; the mistress leaves for England
to visit her soldier son and meanwhile the son's wife is found in bed
with a neighbor. To symbolize and justify their unease, the servants
fabricate excitement by convincing themselves they are in danger from
invading Nazis and secret IRA agents. There then follows a series of
mild confusions (a lost ring, mistaken identity, false suspicions) which
remind one, in their playful tone, of the uses to which misunderstanding
can be put in Shakespeare's comedies. But all this happens "once upon
a day," the mere events of the moment to be blown away once a pattern
of order is reestablished. As against the events of every-day existence
there is threaded through the novel the simple reality about which they
fluctuate, the reality being
Loving.
At the end, Raunce marries a maid
and lives with her happily after; the proper balance in life has been re–
established.
The book's comedy flows from a dual incongruity: the innocent
excitement in which the servants indulge is, after all, based on not very
innocent external history, and their adventure is placed in an artful
,
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HENRY
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Edited by LEON EDEL
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i
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OWEN. Wilfred. Poems ....._......... 1.50
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