Angus Wilson: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

Angus Wilson
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
a novel


I have often thought that the full title of this novel should be Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: A Psychoanalytic Case Study.  Angus Wilson had undergone therapy himself,  after suffering a "nervous breakdown,"  probably the result of the tension endemic to his work at the famous code-breaking institution Bletchley Park during WWII.

I will reveal a significant episode that occurs approximately half way through the novel.  The commentary would make little sense if I did not bring this up.


The novel is structured along the lines of a classic psychoanalytic case.  There are several components to be considered here. 

One is that the patient has unhappy  or dissatisfied with life for a significant period of time.

"Gerald Middleton was a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament.  Such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time.  .  . The prospect of speaking to his wife on the telephone and, even more, of the family Christmas party greatly heightened his depression."

Middleton has been separated from his wife for some time now.  Moreover, his children either do not like him or respect  him.  His wife, Inge, has convinced the children that he is to blame for the separation.

Middleton now is sixty years of age and has retired from his university position as a lecturer in history.  Early in his career he had published a book which promised a great future for him, but he never lived up to that brilliant beginning.   At present he still maintains membership in a professional society of historians and is regarded highly enough to be considered for the position of editor for the major publication planned to come out in a few years.  The present editor is retiring at the end of the year and  he, along with other members of the society, wants Middleton  to take on the position and the huge task of editing the work.

Middleton, so far,  had rejected the suggestion, feeling that he hadn't the energy to handle the workload, and used as an excuse his own project,  a definitive work on the life of Edward the Confessor which he had supposedly been working on for years, and had done very little on it for years.  Many believed he would never finish the work while some even doubted its existence.

In the first half of the novel, we follow Middleton in his encounters with friends, family, and colleagues and see the growing disgust with his life.

He sums up his life as follows:  "a family man who had had neither the courage to walk out of the marriage he hated, nor the resolution to sustain the role of father decently.  A ex-professor of medieval  history who had not even fulfilled the scholarly promise of studies whose general value he now doubted."

It is in this state of mind that Middleton travels down to his wife's residence to spend the Christmas holidays with her and his three grown children, two sons and a daughter, and their spouses.  The family squabbling and the disdain shown him only increases his unhappiness.

After the Christmas Day dinner, the family gathers in the drawing room, and Middleton settles down "in a deep armchair. . .hunched up as far as his great height would allow him, and remote.  He seemed even to have barricaded himself form the rest of the family with little tables on which were his brandy glass, his coffee cup, his ashtray."

One psychoanalytic technique is free association, the mental process by which one word or image may spontaneously suggest another without any apparent connection. Therapists, especially those of the Freudian flavor,  ask the patient to respond freely and without conscious thought to words uttered by the therapist, and those responses then become the basis for discussions in future sessions.

As the family discussion continues,  several phrases at random stir memories of past events which relate to significant events in his personal and professional life.  As he considers these events, he drifts off each time into sleep in which each of those memories becomes a dream in which he undergoes a complete recall of those memories.

Another standard treatment element in a psychoanalytic session is dream work.  The patient recalls for the therapist any dreams he or she has had since the session.  In psychoanalytic theory, dreams are the repressed memories of past traumatic events which are too painful for the patient to confront.

Up to this point, Middleton has progressed through the various steps of a classic case study: he has recognized that he is extremely unhappy and dissatisfied with his life, he has brought up memories of his past through free association, and he has fully relived those events through his dreams.

One step remains: the gaining of insight, without which there can be no change, no resolution, no escape from his present situation. At the end of his last dream. . .

"So that, he thought, was the whole of it.  Suspicions engendered by the words of a drunkard, and the actions of a hysterical woman.  He had never dared to confront Gilbert with his words again nor face Inge with his suspicions about Kay's hand.  And from these slender foundations it seemed he had woven a great web of depression and despair to convince himself that his chosen study of history was a lie and the family life he had made a deception. . . It seemed to him  suddenly as though he had come out of a dark narrow tunnel, where movement was cramped to a feeble crawl, into the broad daylight where he could once more walk or run if he chose."

The last lines of Part One show how much he has changed as a result of the insight that he has gained into the sources of his unhappiness.


"Inge's voice came to him. 'Now there is your father, who has slept all through our wonderful talk.'

'No, I hear you, my dear,' he said.

'We have been talking about truth.  But you are the one who can tell us.  The great scholar!'  Her voice was sarcastic.  He got up and,  walking over to her, he kissed her on the cheek.  It was an action only little less sarcastic than her words.

'You know all about the truth, don't you, Gerald? she asked.

'Yes, my dear, I do.' he answered, 'but I'm going off to bed..'

When he got upstairs to his room, he sat down and wrote to Sir Edgar, accepting the editorship of the History."


Now that he has faced the truth, now that he has gained insight, all that energy he had expended on repressing those memories, is now freed up.

Psychoanalytic case studies usually end at this point, with perhaps a brief summary of the resolution of the sessions. But, this is only the halfway point in the novel.  What can follow?   What follows is what doesn't get into a case study and is seldom if ever discussed.  The patient has gained insight into the sources of the present situation and needs to change past behaviors and re-establish relationships on a different footing.

Herein lies the problem: the patient has changed, but the family, friends, colleagues haven't.  While the present relationships may not be ideal, they are at least comfortable and predictable.  In addition, each of Middleton's three children has a subplot in which Middleton attempts to help them.
 
This, then,  is the theme of the second part of the novel: Gerald Middleton attempts to change the nature of his relationships with others. To change a relationship requires a change in both parties, and change, as we all know too well, is difficult, and frequently impossible.

One of the joys of this novel is Wilson's skill in characterization.  Many of the secondary characters are sketched out: each is unique, each speaks with a different voice, and each has a distinct relationship with one or more of the other characters.  If any cast of characters can be described as Dickensian, the cast in this novel is one.

Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is one of the few novels on my permanent must-be-reread list.