The Latent Book Club reviews the moving 1989 Booker Prize-Winning novel about a butler’s introspective quest for personal meaning, after a lifetime dedicated to dignity in service.
The Booker Prize is in the news a lot lately, having announced their longlist for 2023. And although the Booker has not been unaffected by controversy, it has seen some stellar works win the prize over the years. Our favourites include: Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre, which won in 2003; 2002’s winner Life of Pi, by Yann Martel; and 1999’s winner Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee - one of our all time favourite books. Further back, The Old Devils, by another Latent Book Club darling, Kingsley Amis, was the 1986 winner. But it was 1989 that saw The Remains of The Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro win the Booker, and with it, a place in our hearts.
The Remains of The Day as an audiobook is ably read by Dominic West, the actor of The Wire, and more recently Netflix’ The Crown fame. West is the perfect choice to give voice to Mr Stevens, the novel’s narrator, embodying both the air of refinement necessary for the character, and acting proficiency required to pull it off.
Stevens is, at the commencement of the novel, reflecting back on his lifetime of service to his previous employer, Lord Darlington. As we open, the year is 1956, Darlington is deceased, and his stately home, the fictional Darlington Hall, has been sold by his heirs to a new American owner. As was common at the time, and still occurs, (this was also a theme in Downton Abbey) inheritance taxes made handing the former estates of aristocrats on to their heirs prohibitively expensive. A rich American owner (‘the only people that can afford them’, as The Remains of The Day quips) enters the scene to take over the home, and its retinue of four staff, of which Stevens is the most senior.
Stevens has been at Darlington Hall since the twenties, and has seen his fair share of change in that time. He is a Butler, which means he is in charge of the staff of the home. At its height, he would have commanded first and second footmen, and an entire retinue of domestic staff including housekeepers, maids, gardeners, chauffeurs, stable-hands, cooks and cleaners. Stevens mentions that it took almost thirty staff to service the home at one point, although allows that modern conveniences like central heating and electric lighting have made that number redundant.
However, at the novel’s open Stevens is commissioned by its new owners to go and seek some more staff; enough to manage the house. He commences drawing up a new staff plan, of which he is proud, but is told to make do with only four people, a fate which he accepts, but concedes will be difficult. We sense almost straight away that the thought of running the house with so few makes him despondent, but he is determined to cope with this adversity in a dignified manner. And by using this innocuous device, Ishiguro cleverly primes us for the questions that Stevens grapples with throughout The Remains of The Day.
These questions - what is ‘dignity’? how should we conduct ourselves accordingly? - are something that both Stevens and the reader have to unpack and deal with throughout this sublime novel.
Stevens has been taught by his father, and has had reinforced to him by the acts of ‘great’ butlers, that the ultimate professional, and indeed personal aim for a butler (and in Steven’s mind this is extended to everyone) is a ‘dignity befitting his station’. This concept of a quiet dignity befitting – as Stevens would have it - one’s immutable lot in life poses challenges, evens for Stevens himself.
It should be noted that Steven’s version of ‘dignity’ is quiet; one that allows permits you to grapple with challenges in a dignified manner. This is contrasted with a more modern conception of ‘dignity’, viz. the level of inherent dignity one deserves by living in an ostensibly more egalitarian society, and being able to vindicate one’s natural (human/moral) rights to a certain extent. That Stevens sees class as rigid is one of the contradictions in his worldview, which he scarcely pauses to question. The great gentlemen he services, he believes, are entitled to more ‘dignity’ axiomatically. Stevens is entitled to some, befitting his rank as a butler, but less than others. The inference is that Stevens thinks there are others still who are entitled to less.
Steven’s conception of a rigidly formalised class structure does much to remove his own agency as a human. He has his path to follow, and he will do so. However, his spirit rails against this prescriptivism at a subconscious level throughout the novel (and we suspect Steven’s life), and this is where the cracks in his philosophy start to show. The comparison with Hamlet’s (ever questioning, but seldom deciding) chiding of Horatio is inevitable:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, Act I, Sc V
Stevens, like Hamlet, begins to question, but fails to act - until it is too late.
As the novel progresses, so does the debate regarding dignity, particularly as espoused by the elitist Hays Society, whose views (befitting his station) Stevens comes to question, albeit not quite on a conscious level. Ishiguro achieves this by pitting what Stevens thought this lofty goal was, against an often disturbingly harsh reality. By the end of the novel, both you, the reader, and Stevens have had their position moved. Was dignity the ultimate goal after all? And was Steven’s conception of it ever correct? Not really, must be the answer to both questions. And the way this novel tackles these questions is nothing short of masterful.
At the outset, Stevens is a startlingly naive narrator, although he does retain the capacity to ask questions. He is not quite the unreliable narrator made famous by titans like Nabokov, but he does cling dogmatically to views regarding his lot in life. This is a point repeatedly returned to by the novel, indeed, to a point that it starts to stretch the reader’s credulity, although it never quite crosses that line.
Three key scenes, amongst others, ram Steven’s dogmatic tendencies home: First, Stevens denies the clearly impending death of his father; and his reservedness prevents him from confronting his own emotions regarding it. We only find out how he is feeling through others – as he serves dinner, Lord Darlington asks him whether he is crying. Second: Stevens disavows any romantic interest in his housekeeper, Miss Kenton, even though it is clear they both share a strong mutual attraction, and despite many of his footmen and maids forming similar liaisons throughout the book. This is a point reinforced sublimely in the third act which I will not spoil. Finally, Stevens defends Lord Darlington to the hilt through the majority of the novel, even though it becomes increasingly clear Darlington was either a Nazi sympathiser or fascist himself. Although Darlington goes on to disavow these fanaticisms in later life, he dies in a degree of ignominy that Stevens fails to fully deal with.
The novel is centred around Steven’s reflections as he sets off on a ‘motoring trip’ to recruit his new members of staff, including, he hopes, Miss Kenton once more. As he makes the trip, he encounters both people and a country he has never seen, despite him and they being fully English. He is mistaken for an aristocrat himself as he does so. On the trip, Stevens writes his thoughts down in a type of journal – it is never quite clear who he is addressing – whether an audience (he sometimes addresses a potential reader directly, saying ‘you may think’) or himself. These half formulated thoughts become increasingly introspective as the journey continues. At the start Stevens’ scribblings are more travelogue, but by the end, they become almost entirely a collection of meditations.
That a journey provides the context for deep thought is a stable trope (take Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for instance), but that is not problematic. As we progress though, one can sense Steven’s psyche has become destabilised, and begun to shift. In one particularly notable scene, he is mistaken (again) for an aristocrat, but instead of correcting the people that come to see him, he utterly leans into this role, and modestly boasts of his connections. This is surprising for someone who is so entrenched in societal expectations. This is certainly not the Stevens we know from the beginning of the novel. We come to accept that this is part of his growth, and it is cleverly executed by Ishiguro.
Inevitably the climax of the novel is Steven’s meeting with Miss Kenton, which ends on a heartbreaking note. It leads to Steven’s final reflections as he sits poignantly on a pier: that his conception of life was not all he thought. He realises he may have even wasted his life, in his pursuit of dignity. That the novel has led to this point is, again, very intelligently done. It could not have got here without the steady, iterative narration that is its hallmark.
The tenor of the work is the direct heir of Austen. Everything is oblique. When Stevens speaks, as much can be gleaned from what is unsaid, as what is said. We are reliant on other characters to interpret Steven’s emotions for us, although we get hints of the melancholy from him. Strangely, this adds to the novel’s pathos - we feel even more strongly for Stevens as he denies his feelings. And we want to know what happens to him when the novel closes, as he identifies his mistakes - an epilogue would be satisfying.
The reader is left to wonder whether The Remains of The Day’s denial of emotion, and focus on service, which comes the expense of fundamental introspection on class and desire, could have been rendered by anyone other than Ishiguro. His unique blend of his Japanese and British heritage can only have assisted him in this regard. Ishiguro recorded an engaging interview on The Remains of The Day for The Guardian Books Podcast which touches on this very topic.
It is easy to see why The Remains of The Day won the Booker. Novels this compelling - not only for the story, but for the questions with which they grapple - are rare indeed. As we look forward to seeing what 2023 brings, dusting off the winners that have stood the test of time, like The Remains of The Day reminds us why the award remains in such high esteem.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(5/5)