Week 8 - Evelyn Waugh 'Decline and Fall'

Decline and Fall was so wonderfully absurd and at the same time accurate in it's description of British society and education around 1930. It explores the societal conventions of the time surrounding education, marriage, values and even murder. 

The tale follows the good natured Paul Pennyfeather through his hilarious adventures where he moves through life unable to control his own path but is in the hands of his superiors. This lack of control gets him caught up in the shenanigans of the Bollinger club and then he finds himself in prison as a result. This is where he begins his decline and eventual fall into the depths. This is the start of his journey where he will meet a series of incredible characters and the most unbelievable situations along the way but somehow through it all he manages to retain his innocence. 

Margot Beste-Chetwynde is the society beauty who lights up Decline and Fall, but don’t be fooled she's not all that she seems to be. The money from her shady businesses gives her the money to buy King's Thursday and begin its transformation and rebuilding from its untouched, out of date state. Unfortunately Professor Otto Friedrich Silenus the German Architect transforms the beautiful county home into an art deco glass and concrete block, much to the anxiety and dismay of the Society for the protection of Ancient buildings. The local people wanted to leave the building in the past, in the age of servants and labour hard work. Socially the world was developing but the servants and inhabitants no longer wanted to live and work in dirty, hard conditions. They wanted lifts and running water, gas and electric. It might have been a historic building to the surrounding community but to its workers and people who lived in it this historic ideal wasn't appreciated.

This definitely felt to me like an example of society and the social space wanting to hold back the physical and economic development of a building even though nobody wanted to use or love it for what it was. Yet once it became a modern loved building it was rejected by society for being improved. So do you listen to society and keep it as a social space to be admired from a far or improve it for i to be loved by some....