Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.     

     “THE PYRAMID” by William Golding (First published in 1967)

The Pyramid, William Golding’s 6^th novel, is a single novel written in the first person. Some have suggested that it is really three novellas, because it deals with three separate times in the narrator’s life and each could be read meaningfully on its own. But, read more carefully, you will understand that it is one coherent novel, even if it goes from the narrator’s adolescence to his middle-age. William Golding’s earlier novels dealt overtly with the problem of evil, or how we human-beings came to be very flawed and capable of murder, rape, dishonesty, jealousy, greed and all the other immoralities [or sins if you prefer]. His earlier novels were very much fables or allegories. The Pyramid is not written in that style. It is set in a small English rural town and its characters are not in any way allegoric. It is realistic. One reviewer disliked the novel because its setting – a small English rural town – was too quaint, the cosy sort of place where an Agatha Christie murder-mystery could take place. In fact, among other things, the novel drew on Golding’s memories of the rural town where he grew up, and it was by no means cosy. The same reviewer claimed that the novel was too old- fashioned for a novel published in 1967. But how can you narrate a novel ranging from the 1920’s to the 1950’s without mentioning and examining mores that are no longer with us? And again if you read carefully, Golding is also signalling how flawed we still can be.

FIRST SECTION: In the late 1920’s, in a rural town called Stilbourne, Oliver is aged 18. His parents are middle-class. His father is a pharmacist, who deals with pills and medicines. He is a quiet and thoughtful man but Oliver’s mother is very censorious. She often belittles uncouth people… meaning lower-classes. Oliver is preparing to go to Oxford where he will study chemistry and physics. As a hobby, he enjoys playing the piano. When he was younger he was taught violin by the eccentric Miss Dawlish before switching to piano. Miss Dawlish was wealthy and sees herself as upper-middle-class. But he has other things in mind. He thinks of love and, like any male teenager, he thinks of sex. He admires and dreams about a young woman called Imogen, but she is in her early twenties and is about to get married. As he lies in bed Oliver thinks about Imogen. For this reader at any rate, Oliver’s sexual frustration is one of the best depictions of male adolescence I have yet come upon. Across the road lives Robert Ewan, the same age as Oliver. Robert’s father has more local prestige than Oliver’s father because Robert’s father is a doctor of medicine. Robert has adopted the airs of the upper crust and acts as if he is Oliver’s superior. While Oliver is preparing to go to Oxford, Robert is about to join the R.A.F. at Cranwell.

Crisis comes when the local beauty Evie Babbacombe knocks on Oliver’s door one rainy night. She asks him to help Robert get a stolen car out of a bog in the woods. Oliver helps, but his frustration grows. Here is Robert with a beautiful girlfriend while Oliver has none. Robert goes off to Cranwell. Oliver often walks in the woods. Then news comes that  Robert has been badly hurt in a crash. He will be crippled for life. And Evie now starts walking in the woods. Oliver begins to walk with her. Then he cuddles her. Then he longs to swyve her. [ I only use this medieval term because I really mean f…]. She goes along with his petting and kissing and pawing in other walks. Finally, in the woods, she says “Get on with it” and he does. But then it dawns on him. She has also swyved with the absent, permanently damaged, Robert; and Oliver believes that Evie’s father has been spying on them, setting up Evie to catch another respectable middle-class adolescent boy to marry. And Evie makes it clear she is pregnant. “Thought you’d got something for nothing, didn’t you?” she says later to Oliver. Later still, Oliver sees Evie walking and talking with Doctor Ewan. Then she leaves town. Did she have an abortion (illegal in the 1920’s)? Or did she have a miscarriage and a still-born baby? [The name Golding gave to the novel’s town Stilbourne might possibly be a clue, but I could be wrong.] Or could Evie have never been pregnant at all? It is never made clear. But whatever the truth was, Oliver, as he grows up, understands that he had in effect raped Evie when he forced her to give in and open her legs. And he is more aware that there are different social classes, with Evie’s family being working class. The only prestige her father has is being the town crier dressed up in a costume which is widely regarded as a joke. The part of town where her family lives is almost a slum, even if Evie is cheerful, good-looking and gets on well with people.

Only some years later, when Oliver is studying at Oxford, he bumps into Evie in London. She is apparently as cheerful as usual and has had many men in her life; but when he talks about the “old times” she says “It all began when you raped me… Never stood a chance… I didn’t want you – I was only fifteen.” Oliver finally understands that he had forced her to swyve with him, and that he had in effect raped her, regardless if she was pregnant or not. Who said that small rural towns are cosy and sweet? Evil was here. Snobbery, contempt and lust were here. It has some of the things that Golding wrote about in his first five allegorical novels, concerned with how or why human beings became so flawed.

 

                                                              Goldiing in his prime

THE SECOND SECTION has often been passed over as a mere farce, and in many ways it is, but there is much more to it than only that. Coming home from university during an academic break, Oliver reluctantly agrees to perform in the local amateur “opera” company who are putting on a sugary Ruritanian Ivor Novello-ish operetta. He is annoyed by the fact that Imogen, the young woman for whom he had pined, has been given the leading female singing role. Her husband also has a leading role. Oliver now says to himself that he knows Evie was a better singer than Imogen ever was, and he is more aware that this amateur company is made up of twee, pretentious middle-class people who think of themselves as cultured and would therefore not welcome working-class singers into their caste. Of course, such thoughts could really only be Oliver’s adolescent sour-grapes when he so often sees Imogen with another man.  That apart, there is much real bitchery and back-stabbing among the actors and singers… but then aren’t most actors narcissistic? (And if you know Golding’s Pincher Martin, you will know that the main villain was once an actor.)  This is where the farce in the novel kicks in. Clothing not fitting, people not properly rehearsed, things falling etc. But there is one thing that is not funny. The director who has been called in to direct the operetta is Dr. Evelyn De Tracy. He is very prissy. He calls all the male actors “dear boy” and he flatters Oliver for his performance. Any male adolescent now would quickly understand that Evelyn De Tracy is probably “gay” or homosexual. But remember, in the 1920’s many male adolescents would never have learned about such people. Evelyn De Tracy invites Oliver to a drink during parts of the operetta in which Oliver is not on stage. He speaks vaguely to Oliver of how there are openings for a better place for Oliver. Oliver listens politely, not really understanding what De Tracy is saying. Then De Tracy tries to amuse Oliver by showing him some photos of men escorting men wearing women’s clothes. Oliver identifies one of the men dressed as women was De Tracy and he simply laughs. He clearly has never heard the term “drag”. At once De Tracy snatches the photos back, and very soon he makes himself scarce. Remember, in the 1920s, homosexuals could often be targeted by blackmailers… and innocent though Oliver was, even by talking about De Tracy’s funny photos, he could destroy De Tracy’s whole career.

THE THIRD SECTION is in some ways the saddest. In his 50’s Oliver returns to Stilbourne. He has done well at Oxford. He got through the Second World War working in a chemical plant. He has married and has children. He notices how many things have changed. Long gone are buggies and a smithy. In their place is a petrol station run by and owned by  Henry Williams, working-class, used to board at eccentric Miss Dawlish’s house, and in effect had become her servant. But Henry was an enterprising person, and gradually he knew how to make himself rich and he and his wife moved to another house. Miss Dawlish has long been dead. Henry has kept Miss Dawlish’s antique car – nicknamed “Bounce” – polished and shown outside his petrol station. Oliver goes to the church where there is a plaque for Miss Dawlish. He goes into a long flashback, remembering when he was a little boy and he used to go to her place for first violin and then piano lessons. She was a tyrant when teaching music, severely belittling him when he did something wrong. And when lessons were being taught, the little boy would often hear her verbally chastising her boarders. She acted as if she were a grande dame. Young Oliver hated her. … But later he learns the story of Miss Dawlish’s own childhood. Her father had tyrannised her, forcing her to play music and otherwise depriving her from having friends in the hope that she would become able to perform in public. He would run out into the street if he heard one of those new-fangled gramophones and he would smash it. So, on his own, old Miss Dawlish became more and more eccentric. In her old age, she wanted attention. She would deliberately drive her car into a ditch and then ring up the garage to come and help her. She would go for walks simply to show off her best coat to passers-by. Her mentality declined. Finally, she put on her best shoes and gloves and hat, and she walked off stark naked. She was sent off to a mental hospital and stayed there for some years. Knowing all this, the adult Oliver felts some pity for her… but then he decides he still hated her. No happy ending..

Now how could I say The Pyramid is one coherent novel, even if it is presented in three parts? In some sense it is a Bildungsroman, showing the growth of a young man from adolescence to maturity and in the process changing his attitudes as he grows. Remember that Golding was inspired by what he had learnt in the town where he originally lived. But Golding is also concerned with those primeval problems he examined, in a very different way, in his earlier novels. There is jealousy [Oliver is jealous of Robert as he has a girl-friend; and Oliver, in his mind, belittles Imogen because she is beyond his reach]. There is a lack of charity when Oliver’s mother and other people look down on the poorer working-classes. There is rape [whether or not Evie was pregnant, Oliver committed rape]. And there is hatred – even in manhood, Oliver still hates Miss Dawlish, even though he know how forces beyond her had made her what she is. The Pyramid stands up as one of Golding’s best novels.

Some random thoughts to finish with: Why are there two characters in this novel called Evie and Evelyn? I really don’t know but my guess is that both are meant to be seen as tempters, Evie with easy sex and Evelyn trying to tempt Oliver into his circle. Like Eve tempting Adam in Genesis….. And why did the first publishers of The Pyramid [Faber and Faber] had to have on the front cover an image of a naked old woman walking out? Okay, Miss Dawlish goes gaga and walks out naked, but that is an event in the very last pages. To me it seems a sort of titillation.