Graduate Work

Britain’s Other
By Scott Hays

The Causal Effects of British Politics and 1930s Fascism On the Lingering Colonial Mentality in Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’
Scott Hays

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989), post-war British politics and 1930s fascism collide with such force in Darlington Hall, that the novel’s protagonist Mr. Stevens, the perfect English butler, loses all sense of his individuality and winds up a lonely old man who struggles not only with doubts about his own faith in the man he served, but with doubts about his own life’s purpose in having served humanity in some small way. In the end, Stevens’ values are so inextricably bound up in the ideology of the man in whose house he served, and in whose politics he never questioned, readers come to realize that the roots of his problems are vitally connected with a “lingering colonial mentality.”

Mr. Stevens would never presume to see himself as anything other than as a great butler; great by virtue of his ability to inhabit his role to the utmost. He wears his professionalism “as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone.” Yet this “pantomime role” his plays during Lord Darlington’s days, in the upper-class British life before the Second World War, speaks volumes about the “hierarchical relationships” within the house, and about the “race and class assumptions” of the English aristocracy during the twenties and thirties.
For openers, Lord Darlington’s prominent yet unofficial position between the wars allows him the opportunity to effect changes in the treatment of Germany after the Versailles Treaty. Although he may be motivated less by ideology and more by his personal friendship with Herr Karl-Heinz Bremann, an enemy combatant who later shoots himself in a train between Hamburg and Berlin, Lord Darlington’s reputation becomes characterized as a German apologist when he later sets up important international conferences, one in particular between the German ambassador and the British Prime Minister with the hopes of brokering a peace treaty.

Unsurprisingly, there to witness the “hierarchical relationships” and “race and class assumptions” within the household is the butler Mr. Stevens, who never questions Lord Darlington’s code of decency: “I can declare that he was a truly good man at heart, a gentleman through and through, and one I am today proud to have given my best years of service to.” Yet Stevens’ own code of decency as a butler seems based on some secretive society that issues pronouncements on what it means to be a gentleman’s gentleman, a manservant. A prerequisite for membership to this society, the Hayes Society, is that “an applicant be attached to a ‘distinguished’ household.’” In addition, it is further made clear that the Society does not regard the houses of businessmen or the newly rich as distinguished, thus demonstrating the inextricably close relationship between servant and master. Mr. Stevens sees himself as both observer and participant of history, which raises serious questions of belonging. If Darlington fails in his endeavors, so too fails Mr. Stevens. “It is in this loss of the ‘other’ by whom one could know oneself, that the servant's loss of self lies.” Consider two specific moments in Mr. Stevens’ life as butler when he suppresses his own feelings of loss at his father’s death, and when he loses Miss Kenton to another man (in both cases, because he’s too busy attending his duties as butler).

Then there’s the “race” incident where Lord Darlington wants two housemaids fired, simply because they’re Jewish. “It’s for the good of this house, Stevens. In the interests of the guest we have staying here. . . It’s regrettable, Stevens, but we have not choice. There’s the safety and well-being of my guests to consider. . . it’s in all our best interests.” Stevens is not unperturbed at the prospect of telling Miss Kenton that he is about to dismiss two of her housemaids. But he troubles little with his Lordship’s decision to fire the two housemaids, simply because they’re Jewish. “My every instinct opposed the idea of their dismissal. Nevertheless, my duty in this instance was quite clear, and as I saw it, there was nothing to be gained at all in irresponsibly displaying such personal doubts.”

But perhaps the most flagrant illustration of the lingering colonial mentality in Ishiguro’s novel The The Remains of the Day, occurs when three gentlemen arrive at Darlington Hall for dinner. Mr. Stevens gets called to the drawing room where all the gentlemen stop talking and look at him. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Spencer, has several questions for Mr. Stevens about the debt situation in America and its impact on the present low levels of trade, about the currency problem in Europe, and about the arms agreement between the French and the Bolsheviks. In each and every instance, Mr. Stevens replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but I am unable to be of assistance in this matter.” The gentlemen laugh covertly at Mr. Stevens’ expense. Mr. Spencer even takes it one step further when he says, within earshot of Mr. Stevens, “And yet we still persist with the notion that this nation’s decisions be left in the hands of our good man here and to the few million others like him.” Here, it would seem, Lord Darlington’s so-called “code of decency” is much like the outside world from where Mr. Stevens hides. Here, too, Darlington Hall reflects its “traditional role as the site of the informal exchange of ideas between elite groups, but tellingly the class which inhabits it is critically deficient in an ability to control the agenda of international politics.”

Following the Second World War, Darlington Hall becomes a former shadow of itself. The diminished condition of the estate, for which Stevens must now draw up a staff plan reflecting the more casual and democratic life of the new American owner, is taken to be emblematic of the nation as a whole. Outside the Hall, a much different England comes into existence, an England where the “few million” like Mr. Stephens feel comfortably speaking openly about their rights. As Stevens naively reflects on his own life in service, questions arise in his mind about the value of Darlington's code of service to noble ideals. To what extent can he be blamed as a naive idealist, or someone who simply failed to hold fast to his own beliefs?

In the end, Mr. Stevens drives through various countryside that at first seem untouched by post-war change. Along the way, he learns of his incapacity to speak naturally to others, a sense of lost connections with his countrymen and a restricted notion of “Englishness” fixed by Darlington Hall. “How can one possibly be held to blame in any sense because, say, the passage of time has shown that Lord Darlington’s efforts were misguided, even foolish? Throughout the years I served him, it was he and he alone who weighed up evidence and judged it best to proceed in the way he did, while I simply confined myself quite properly, to affairs within my own professional realm. And as far as I an concerned, I carried out my duties to the best of my abilities, indeed to a standard which many may consider ‘first rat’. It is hardly my fault if his lordship’s life and work have turned out today to look, at best, a sad waste – and it is quite illogical that I should feel any regret or shame on my own account.” It’s this self-knowledge which Stevens eventually comes to as he sits crying on the pier at the remains of his own days, reflecting also on a renewed code of service now encompassing the possibility of spontaneous banter with his American employer; an employer outside the circles of British politics and 1930s fascism.

WORKS CITED
Ash, John . “Stick It Up Howard's End,” GQ Magazine, 1994.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. New York: Knopf, Inc., 1989.

O'Brien, Susie. “Serving a New World Order: Postcolonial Politics in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day”; MFS Modern Fiction Studies - Volume 42, Number 4, Winter 1996, pgs. 787-806.

Su, John J. “Refiguring National Character: The Remains of the British Estate Novel”; MFS Modern Fiction Studies - Volume 48, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 552-580.

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