XX explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Social Class and Inequality

  Sidney's affair with Gladys Helmsley is driven by his need to feel superior, exploiting class differences for his own gratification. The narrative contrasts his wealth and status with her lower-class background.

• Religion and Morality

  Rachel Quarles's devout religious faith is contrasted with Elinor's secular indifference, highlighting a generational and ideological divide. Sidney's self-justification of his affair through 'passion' also touches on moral hypocrisy.

• Family and Dysfunction

  The chapter exposes the dysfunctional dynamics within the Quarles family: Sidney's infidelity and failed ambitions, Rachel's unfulfilled hopes, and Elinor's emotional distance from her child.

Characters to notice

• Sidney Quarles

  Revealed as a hollow man, a 'façade' with no substance behind his impressive appearance and clever talk. His failed ambitions in politics and business are detailed, and his current affair with Gladys Helmsley is shown as a way to bolster his ego.

• Philip Quarles

  Observes his father's pretensions and hypocrisy with a knowing smile. He is present during the journey to London and notes his father's crossword puzzles, which Sidney tries to hide.

• Elinor Quarles

  Converses with Mrs. Quarles about her son, Little Phil, revealing her lack of natural maternal instinct and her secular worldview, which contrasts sharply with her mother-in-law's religious piety.

• Rachel Quarles

  Shown as a deeply religious and moral woman who struggles to understand Elinor's lack of reverence for 'holy things.' She is bewildered by Elinor's frankness and feels a barrier between them.

• Gladys Helmsley

  Sidney's mistress, a young woman of a lower class who is both impressed by Sidney's grandiosity and amused by his pretensions. She is the object of his 'passionate' but generic desire.

• John Bidlake

  Referenced in the opening simile comparing Sidney Quarles to a baroque church with a sham façade, providing a critical perspective on Sidney's character.

Key passages

• “Of Philip Quarles’s father old John Bidlake used to say that he was like one of those baroque Italian churches with sham façades. High, impressive, bristling with classical orders, broken pedimenta and statuary, the façade seems to belong to a great cathedral. But look more closely and you discover that it is only a screen. Behind the enormous and elaborate front there crouches a wretched little temple of brick and rubble and scabby plaster.”

  John Bidlake compared Sidney Quarles to an Italian baroque church with a false front: impressive and grand from the outside, but behind it lies a shabby, insignificant reality.

  This simile establishes the central theme of Sidney's hollow character, contrasting his outward appearance with his inner emptiness.

• “But one does not marry a set of virtues and talents; one marries an individual human being.”

  People don't marry a list of good qualities; they marry a real person, with all their flaws.

  This reflection explains why Rachel Quarles, despite her own virtues, married Sidney, who was charming and promising in his youth.

• “To feel himself unequivocally superior and genuinely admired was, for Sidney, a luxury almost as great as an embracement. His escapades were holidays not only from chastity, but also from that sense of inferiority which, at home, in Parliament, at the office, had always inveterately haunted him.”

  For Sidney, the feeling of being clearly superior and truly admired was nearly as satisfying as the physical act. His affairs were a break not just from being faithful, but also from the constant feeling of inadequacy he experienced in his professional and family life.

  This reveals the psychological motivation behind Sidney's infidelity: a need to escape his deep-seated inferiority complex.

• “To Rachel the reverence for holy things came naturally. It was Elinor’s lack of this reverence, her inability even to realize that holy things were holy, which made it impossible for Mrs. Quarles to love her daughter-in-law as much as she would have liked.”

  Rachel instinctively respected what she considered sacred. Elinor's failure to recognize or respect these sacred things prevented Rachel from fully loving her.

  This highlights the fundamental ideological conflict between Rachel's religious worldview and Elinor's secular one, creating an emotional barrier between them.