Boekverslag Beryl Bainbridge

Geschreven door:	Cyndi (5 havo)
Datum ingestuurd:	11 februari 2004
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Titel:	Sweet William
Auteur:	Beryl Bainbridge
Jaar van uitgave:	1975
Aantal pagina's:	160

Auteur:	Beryl Bainbridge
Geslacht:	vrouw
Nationaliteit:	Engels
Geboren:	21 november 1932
Overleden:	02 juli 2010
Populaire titels:	1974The bottle factory outing (5) 1978Young adolf (1) 1975Sweet William (1) 1980Winter garden (1) 1972Harriet said (1) 1991The birthday boys (1) 1998Master Georgie (0) 1973The Dressmaker (0) 1989An awfully big adventure (0) 1996Every Man for Himself (0) ... meer

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Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge

The author was born in Liverpool, and worked there as an actress before becoming a writer. Her novels, which deal mostly with the life of working class people in the English povinces, are praised for their unsetimental approach to emotional problems, their economy of style and their black humour. Her more recent novels have won several prizes and are bringing her increasing recognition in Britain and esewhere: The Botte Factory Outing (1974), A Quiet Life (1976) and Injury Time (1977). Young adolf (1978) is an imaginative reconstruction of the young Hitler’s visit to Liverpool.

Genre. Sweet William is a novel of traditional realism. It tells a simple love story in an ironical way.

Plot and structure. The novel tells the story of the love affair between Ann Walton, a girl from the provinces living in London, and William McClusky, a playwright who moves in artistic, Bohemian circles. William completely takes over Ann’s life, making her give up her job, her fiancé, her friends, her apartment. In the end he goes away again, leaving her only with the baby.

Point of view. The story is told entirely from Ann’s point of view. The author strictly limits herself to what Ann knows and thinks, but the reader, who can view the situation more objectively, soon learns to see more clearly than Ann does. It gradually becomes clear that Ann is so much dominated by William that she is often incapable of thinking things out logically and seeing how shamelessly he exploits her for his own needs. For instance, Ann never seems to allow herself to realise that her landlady, Mrs Kershaw, is having an affair with Williamd and is planning to meet him in the North of England. In order to continue to get along with William, Ann has to teach herself self-deception, then acceptance of William’s deceit, and finally, resignation to the fact that she will lose him in the end.

Theme. The theme of the book is woman’s position in society, which is insecure in spite of emancipation. In some ways girls are worse off now than they were in the old days, when there were strictly defined rules of condunt.
The ‘permissive society’ that Ann finds in London, where girls are free to have whatever friends they like and to go to bed with anybody they like – even married men- turns out to be the advantage only of the men, who use the girls for their own purposes. Ann finds herself trapped by the situation, no longer protected by the old-fashioned morals in which a man would be expected to commit himself to a girl before taking over her life som completely. Ann wants to believe that she is being daring and unique in having an affair and illegitimate baby, but her friend Pamela tells her that everybody is doing the same thing. Nevertheless Pamela herself, for all her poise and experience, is caught in the same trap as Ann.
‘You talk about modern life and things being different now. You haven’t learnt anything at all. All this permissiveness has led you young girls into slavery’.

Characterisation. Ann Walton is an ordinary girl, not outstandingly intelligent and certainly not imaginative or artistic, but sensible enough until she meets William. She has never been in love before. Certainly not with her fiancé, Gerald, who leaves for America at the beginning of the book. She appreciates Gerald as an eligible young man who is offering her a respectable future, but she is not emotionally attached to him. She was never experienced any warm love from her parents either.
Her mother has always seemed to have a grudge against Ann, and is far too concerned with herself and her own social circle to pay any real attention to her daughter. Her greatest interest in Ann is as an extension of herself, whose accomplishments she can brag about to her friends.
Ann’s father is a military man who was away during her childhood and has never developed any emotional ties with her. Her parents’ marriage is cold and loveless. So it is hardly surprising that Ann, who has never experienced any warmth of affection, is swept off her feet by the sweet and loving William.
William is an artist, and an unpredictable and unreliable character. He is charming and captivating person, loving, warm and spontaneous. He has no inhibitions, but acts on impulse, doing whatever he wants to do. He is very generous with his time and love, but this very generosity makes it impossible for him to devote himself to one life or to one woman. He says that his life is divided into compartments. He demands all of Ann’s life, but gives her only a small piece of his.

Title. William is known by his friends in the theatrical world as ‘Sweet William’. The people who call him this seem to realise, unlike Ann, that William’s sweetness is only temporary and superficial. There is no stability in him.

Outline. Ann Walton says goodbye to her boy friend Gerald, who is leaving for the United States where he has a job as a university lecturer. They are engaged to be married, and he promises to send for her when he is settled. Returning to her apartment, Ann confronts her mother, who had come up to London specially to meet Gerald. Mrs Walton does not approve of the life that Ann is leading in London, especially the fact that she has been to bed with Gerald.

The next day Ann, who is on holiday from her job with the BBC, goes to a church service in which the children of Mrs Kershaw, her artistic landlady, take part. When she arrives there Ann is surprised to see a stranger, a shabbily dressed young man, beckon to her to sit beside him. During the service he whispers to her, fingers her clothes, and points out his children. Afterwards he takes her out for a cup of coffee, and she finds herself talking to him more freely than she has ever talked to anyone befor. He introduces himself as William McClusky, a playwright, and says he will have a televison set delivered to her apartment so that she can wathc him in an interview that evening.

Ann sees only the last part of the interview, but it affects her deeply. She feels ill without knowing why. When her cousin Pamela arrives the next day for a visit, Ann is so wrapped up in thoughts of William that she does not even hear Pamela confess that she is pregnant. When Pamela and Ann take the Kershaw children to the swimming pool, William joins them there and takes them all out for tea afterwards. While Pamela entertains the children, William and Ann are completely absorbed in each other; he drops a small silver ring in her teacup. Ann is surprised that Pamela seems to lose all her poise and self-confidence in the presence of William. When Ann asks about the mother of his children, William tells her that he is divorced.

Two days later William comes to Ann’s apartment to stay. They spend most of their time in bed, eating very little and letting the apartment messy. After a week, William suddenly announces that his wife wants to meet Ann. Ann is astonished to hear that het is not referring to his ex-wife Sheile, the mother of his children, but to Edna, to whom he is still married.

When Edna comes, Ann feels terrible and offers to give William up, but Edna tells her that it is impossible: Ann must let William live with her until his play comes on. Understanding her husband very well, Edna has got used to his need for an extra emotional outlet. She knows that it will only be temporary. Ann does not see that she is being used; she considers Edna foolish for giving her husband away.

William moves in with Ann and makes her write to the BBC and to Gerald, quitting her job and breaking her engagement. Pamela comes to stay with them after she has taken pills to bring on an abortion. William, as always, is loving and solicitous towards Pamela, making Ann feel jealous and at the same time ashamed of her jealousy. And she finds out that William has been lying to her: while he is out Edna phones to say that her dinner is being spoilt because William is late for the second night in a row. Ann is shocked to discover that he has been spending his nights at Edna’s instead of reading stories to his children, as he has made her believe, and that he has been eating good dinners while pretending to live on love and egg sandwiches with Ann.

When Ann discovers that she is pregnant, William is delighted and wants to buy an expensive pram right away, but he is very busy preparing for the production of his play, and spends a lot of time at the theatre and on the telephone. He buys a great many expensive clothes for himself; for Ann he buys a fur coat and boots that do not suit her very well.

Ann goes to Brighton to spend Christmas with her parents. Mrs Walton makes an effort to give her daughter a warm welcome, but her stinginess and self-centredness soon make themselves felt. Ann did not grow up in Brighton and does not feel at home there. When she goes for a walk on the beach she is drenched by a wave, and the fur coat and boots that William gave her are ruined. She suspects that they are only cheap imitations.

Going back to her London apartment a day earlier than expected, Ann chatches a glimpse of William on her bed with a woman. But William goes out and comes in again, pretending to be just arriving, and the only woman in the flat is Mrs Kershaw, who has come up, she says, to inspect a leak in the roof. Ann suspects Mrs Kershaw anyway, and declares that she hates the apartment now and wants to move. William takes her at her word and finds a new flat for her. Later on it turns out that he has his own reasons for wanting to move out, since he has been making love to Mrs Kershaw and quarrelling with her boy friend, Roddy.

William stays out all night when he should have been helping Ann pack up things to move, and when he finally gets home tells a doubtful story about being held up at a dentist’s office. Ann does not trust him any more, and she remembers that Pamela is a dentist’s assistant. William goes to Newcastle for the opening of his play, leaving Ann in the practically unfurnished new flat.

After the play has opened and got good reviews, William sends for Ann. By this time she is disgusted with his deceitfulness, and does not intend to go. But just then a letter arrives from Mrs Walton, and Ann is so appelled by her mother’s self-righteousness that she sends William a telegram and catches the train to Liverpool after all. But William boards the train before it gets to Liverpool, and, pulling the emergency brake, jumps off the train with Ann. After a happy night together he puts her on the train back to London, promising to follow the same day.


That night Edna visits Ann in the empty flat. Ann learns from her that Pamela has been in Liverpool with William for three days, and that William himself composed an emotional letter that Edna sent to Ann, asking her to give William up. When William arrives, Ann makes a scene, screaming hysterically.

Determining to break with William, Ann persuades Mrs Kershaw to let her have her old apartment back, and writes a friendly letter to Gerald. But when William comes back repentant a few months later, Ann once more finds it impossible to resist him. From this time on William comes for a few days occasionally and then leaves again, usually after a quarrel.

Gerald writes that he will mary Ann in spite of the baby shi is expecting, and will come to fetch her in June. But early in June Ann receives a puzzling telegram from him saying that he hopes she will be happy. Later it becomes clear that William has writtin to Gerald, telling him to leave Ann alone.

Near the end of her pregnancy Ann spends a day picknicking with William on Hampstead Heath. He makes her a promise to have the baby at home and to call him when it is time for it to be born. They have a wonderful time together, until William tries to bury a matchbox, which, he says, contains a lock of dark hair, whereas Ann is blond. She runs away from William, screaming in frustration.

When her labour begins, William suddenly turns up and makes all the arrangements. The baby is a boy and looks just lik Gerald. William is loving and attentive for a few hours, but finally leaves with his friend Chuck von Schreiber, saying he will be back in a moment.