Discussion thread for "The Heyday" by Bamber Gascoigne

[julesjones]

Back in July I reviewed "The Heyday" by Bamber Gascoigne, and you can find the review on LibraryThing as well as on my assorted blogs. However, I had to be careful about spoilers in the review, which prevented me from discussing it in as much depth as I'd like. Since at least one of my friends has now read it as well, I'm opening a comments thread for spoilerific discussion of the book. I hope to be back later today with my own more detailed thoughts, but comments are welcome now if anyone wants to start the ball rolling.

Comments

[julesjones]

Sorry it's taken so long to reply.

I think there are several things going on with Benjy's blindness to Meredith's sexuality. There's definitely an element of "one's servants just don't *do* that", which Benjy explicitly refers to (and one of the things I like about Benjy is that he recognises and acknowledges his hypocrisy in this). Another is simply the age difference; Meredith has always been an old man in all the time Benjy has known him, and there's the usual belief of the young that they invented sex. And since Meredith has a slight element of "father figure" for Benjy, that's probably even stronger than it would be for random old man in his social contacts.

One thing that strikes me is that because of the way Benjy's been brought up mostly by his grandmother and her servants, he probably does have rather old-fashioned notions by the standards of his own generation and class about the relationship between servants and family.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

More well thought-out analysis there, nevermind about the wait. Those are all perfectly understandable reasons for Benji's thought processes, especially when put together. I need to ponder this more...