Parade's End

“Perhaps the future of the world then was to women?”

Christopher says this to himself while riding with Valentine Wannop. Her intellectualism greatly impresses him. He briefly considers a world run by women, which he concludes could not possibly be worse than a world run by men—a world from which he feels increasingly disconnected. The quote underlines a minor theme threaded throughout the novel: the growing movement not only for women’s suffrage and human rights in general.

“She asked herself the eternal question—and she knew it to be the eternal question—whether no man and woman can ever leave it at the beautiful inclination.”

Valentine ponders the nature of physical love. Christopher has returned for a short time from France. The First World War is grinding on, and he is about to be sent back to the front lines. The question hanging in the air is whether Valentine will officially become Christopher’s mistress or not. As a part of her ruminations, Valentine addresses the possibility of a man and woman being drawn together without the need for a physical relationship. It is an interesting question that is left for the reader to muse over. For the characters, it is difficult for any of them to want to be with a member of the opposite sex without involving physical intimacy.

“There were, Mrs. Macmaster said, censorious tongues, and even if these were confuted afterwards it is difficult, if not impossible, to outrun scandal.”

In one of Valentine’s memories, Edith Ethel speaks about her relationship with Macmaster. Specifically, she reveals that they were sleeping together before she was widowed. However, the quote applies to many of the characters in the novel. The passage is interesting from an historical and literary standpoint in reference to social mores in Edwardian Britain.

“Don’t you see how symbolical it was—the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying There will be no more parades?”

In this quote, Christopher tells McKechnie an anecdote about a Kitchener battalion. The symbolism of anecdote highlights one of the myriad meanings for the section’s title, No More Parades. In this regard, no more parades mean the end of the old ways of soldiering. The pomp and glamour of a military parade is gone. All that is left is the fear of modern warfare and death on a grand scale.

“The world was foundering.”

At the end of a long day, Christopher is in his tent. As he tries to relax for sleep, he learns that the Draft is back. Christopher makes the above comment to himself as a complaint about nothing going right. However, the comment goes much deeper and underscores the overall sentiment that existed for many during the First World War.

“There was such a thing as playing it too low down; there are dishonors to which death is preferrable.”

Sylvia focuses on ruining her husband’s social position, turning former friends and family against him, and getting in the way of his overall happiness as best she can. However, there is a line she will not cross, and that line comes in the very last part of the overall novel when she discovers that Valentine is pregnant. Thus, this quote foreshadows that important future event when Sylvia will end her war against Christopher.

“You! You! Isn’t it ignoble. That you should be at the beck and call of these ignoramuses. You!”

Sylvia is angry with Christopher again for ignoring her for things she finds trivial—in this case, military matters. However, her words address a curious aspect of Christopher’s character that could be argued is a weakness. Christopher has been portrayed as a very talented and intelligent individual. He has said of himself on numerous occasions that he is superior to other characters, including Colonel Levin, Macmaster, and General Campion. However, he rarely uses his talents and intelligence to place himself in a position of authority or superiority. At most, he allows his family name and social position to act as a de facto superior position. In essence, Christopher lacks ambition and gumption, and this aspect of Christopher’s character infuriates Sylvia.

“‘But success or failure,’ Tietjens said, ‘have nothing to do with the credit of a story. And a consideration of the virtues of humanity does not omit the other side. If we lose, they win. If success is necessary to your idea of virtue—virtus—they then provide the success instead of ourselves. But the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head…’”

Colonel Levin, in a circuitous way, tries to ascertain what happened between Christopher, Perowne, O’Hara, and Sylvia that night at the hotel, when Christopher threw Perowne from Sylvia’s room and possibly punched O’Hara. The quote is placed between the two men discussing the difficult position the British forces are in on the front, and Levin takes the quote to be directed to that end. However, the quote speaks more to Christopher’s personal morality than to the military situation. It describes his moral position throughout that novel: that no matter what is thrown at him, he will maintain his force of character.

“It’s the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with your own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in harmony with Heaven.”

During General Campion’s character interrogation of Christopher after the night in the hotel involving Perowne and O’Hara, the General asks Christopher what constitutes an Anglican saint. The above quote is Christopher’s reply, and it is important because Christopher is often described by others as saintly or even Christ-like, and from this passage readers are given a definition of Anglican saintliness—as opposed to Catholic saintliness, for example—from the potential saint himself.

“Wasn’t it a possibility that there was to be no more Respect? None for constituted Authority and consecrated Experience?”

It is Armistice Day, and the pent-up emotions that Valentine has been feeling for years comes out in joy and anger. Since her appearance in the novel, Valentine has fought for social change, particularly for women. The end of the war for her must also signal an end to the old ways, and many people shared this sentiment following the war. People felt that the old systems of politics, government, and social mores had led them to disaster and caused the deaths of millions. Therefore, it was necessary that those elements undergo change. Women’s suffrage, for example, had been sought for decades up to the First World War. In Britain and the United States women were given the right to vote in 1918 and 1920 respectively.

“Was it really true that if a male and female of the same species were alone in the room together and the male didn’t…then it was an insult?”

Valentine is thinking about her last night with Christopher before the war, when she was supposed to become his mistress. She is contemplating the basest aspects of sexual relations on a biological level. Parade’s End poses universal questions such as this—ones with no answer that are subject to debate and scrutiny from different perspectives and eras.

“Tietjens flattered himself that he cared nothing about kudos. He was still Tietjens of Groby; no man could give him anything, no man could take anything from him.”

Christopher thinks to himself while the Colonel of the Glamorganshires, the previous CO, is questioning him to ascertain whether Christopher should take over command or not. Christopher contemplates the nature of being second-in-command—something he has been his whole life, in one way or another. He convinces himself, for the moment, that he has never cared for accolade or kudos, and that no one could ever affect his character. When analyzed, these words illustrate the contradictions inherent in Christopher’s picture of himself. He admits to feeling proud of being in the social elite of the land-owning country gentleman class, even though he attempts to distance himself as much as possible from his family, not forgiving his father or brother. However, he is a Tietjens of Groby, and the money belongs to him—even if he will not take it.

“Gentlemen don’t earn money. Gentlemen as a matter of fact, don’t do anything. They exist. Perfuming the air like Madonna lilies. Money comes into them as air through petals and foliage. Thus the world is made better and brighter. And, of course, thus political life can be kept clean!…So you can’t make money.”

Christopher is in the trenches, contemplating aspects of his gentlemanly life prior to the war. Even though he worked for the Department of Statistics, the pay he received was trivial since he came from the great house of Tietjens of Groby. During the war, he adopts a more socialist and frugal desire to live. He has never been accepting of the gentlemanly lifestyle as stated above, and when he cuts all ties with it, he looks back on it sardonically.

“And at that moment, in the most crucial point of the line of the Army, of the Expeditionary Force, the Allied Forces, the Empire, the Universe, the Solar System, the had three hundred and sixty-six men commanded by the last surviving Tory. To face wave on wave of the Enemy.”

Christopher is in command of his unit after taking over from the Colonel, who is drunk and ill. The weight of the world, which he has felt since the novel began, comes to a head in the trenches while awaiting a German attack. This scene shows Christopher coming to the zenith of his personal crises. He feels almost like one of the 300 Spartans, going to battle with a certainty of death. That death does not come awakens him to the possibilities of life.

“He thought he suddenly understood. For the Lincolnshire sergeant-major the word Peace meant that a man could stand up on a hill. For him it meant someone to talk to.”

With the newfound possibilities for his life comes the most important realization: He loves Valentine Wannop and wants to be with her. The sergeant wanted to be able to get out of the trenches. Christopher realizes that the ability to talk to Valentine for the rest of his life is what he wants most; it is the definition of his personal freedom.

“That was what a young woman was for. You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her.”

While this quote reinforces the previous one, it also pinpoints one of the greatest problems between Christopher and Sylvia. Sylvia is a woman predominantly focused on the physical aspects of love. She is physically very beautiful and likes the idea of being with a new man every week. However, Christopher does not think along those lines. His attraction to Valentine is less physical and more intellectual, which is why Christopher says these sentences to himself.

“Men might stand up on hills, but the mental torture could not be expelled.”

Valentine remarks about the end of the war. She can still sense the lingering negative effects of the war on Christopher. Up to that point, Valentine only thought of the physical sufferings that troops underwent. Her sentiments echo those of most people in that era. The psychological effects of modern warfare only came to be better understood after the First World War.

“Quality was stuck up ‘n wore shiny clothes ‘n had motor-cars ‘n statues ‘n palms ‘n ball-rooms ‘n conservatories.”

Parade’s End is predominantly told from the perspective of people from the higher classes in English society. The voices of the working classes are conspicuously absent. Until the last book in the tetralogy, their perspective is ignored fully except for a few comments from Valentine about the things poor women must endure and a few chance meetings between the main characters and less fortunate individuals like Gunning. This sentence is found in the one section where the narrator assumes the working class’s perspective.

“The war ought to have given tenant farmers the complete powers of local tyrants; it should have done the same for gentlemen’s bailiffs.”

The narrator speaks again from the point of view of the working classes, and the quote speaks to the sentiments of change that many felt following the end of the war. There was hope that there would be a lot more change in British society. Change occurred, but it was not necessarily as radical as some had hoped. Christopher may have chosen a more socialist-oriented lifestyle, foregoing the privileges of the upper class, but few others did the same.

“He wanted to be out of the world. That was it. He wanted to be out of a disgustingly inefficient and venial world just as he, Mark, also wanted to be out of a world that he found almost more fusionless and dishonest than Christopher found it.”

Mark takes an extreme view of the end of the war. To him, the old world and the old values completely and irrevocably died. For Mark, who always looked on much of society with disparaging eyes, it was too much to endure. Death was preferrable to continuing to live in postwar Britain.

“Everyone who served in the Army at the front knew how little it took to keep life going—and satisfactory.”

Christopher, like his brother Mark, always shunned the traditional life of the English country gentleman. However, before the war, Christopher still maintained a relatively affluent lifestyle. His experiences in the trenches taught him just how little material a person needed to keep life going. The war taught him the meaning of frugality.

“Beauty and truth have a way of appearing to be akin; and it is true that no man knows what another man is doing when he is out of sight.”

Sylvia contemplates aspects of her latest sortie against the Tietjenses, particularly against Mark. She told Lord Fittleworth that Mark is living a promiscuous life of polygamy near his property, which Fittleworth finds detestable. She knows that Lord Fittleworth and Mark know one another, and that the lie is a long shot, but the quote above expresses the key to her talents at spreading rumor: her beauty and the fact that a person cannot know everything about the people closest to them.

“What was she given beauty—the dangerous remains of beauty!—for if not to impress it on the unimpressible!”

Sylvia wants to confront Valentine and Mark, but Lord Fittleworth stands in her way. The above quote is the type of justification she provides herself for her desires and actions. It is also an important tenet of the game she plays against Christopher and Mark. There are few men whom she cannot seduce and beguile, but Christopher and Mark are two of them. The two brothers are her archnemeses.