Yeah,
I’m writing about Parade’s End
again. It was inevitable, and I promise
you it won’t be the last time.
Christopher is but one of several tremendous characters that beg to be
explored, and I’m sure I’ll find more to gush over when I read the books or the
screenplay or see the miniseries again.
But
today is about Christopher. You wouldn’t
think a stiff, conservative toff who treats his wife like a chore and is
tempted to cheat on her would be sympathetic, but my goodness. Kudos to messrs. Ford, Stoppard, and
Cumberbatch for imbuing this character with so much feeling.
I’ve
already said how I’m taken by the way Christopher loves Sylvia despite
himself. He weathers the storm of her
slights and rages, burying the strength of his feelings for her, but you can
see them spilling out at every corner.
His expression when he receives a telegram from her after a long
separation cuts me; even before he opens the envelope, he finds his defenses
melting away. When she tries to provoke
him when other men, he keeps his distance so as not to make a scene, watching
in silence and trying not to lose any fragments of his heart.
For a
repressed, upper-class numbers man, he feels
incredibly. His love for Sylvia’s child,
who only might be his as well, outpours to a surprising extent. When Michael can’t sleep, he quietly sends
the nanny out and soothes the boy with a gentle description of his own
childhood. Likewise, his regard for
Valentine is monumental. After meeting her
just a few times, this awkward man slides into conversation with her so easily,
it’s as if they were lovers in another life.
And yet, from his careful manner with her, you’d think he’s afraid they’ll
both combust if their fingers are allowed to touch.
This is
the most intriguing thing about Christopher.
There are emotional characters and uptight characters, but it’s not
often that you see both traits at play in such contradiction between a single
one (Randall Brown from The Hour is
another terrific example.) It’s not just
that he feels so strongly – it’s that he lives in a society that doesn’t allow
him to do so. Unlike Sylvia, who tears
at these confines and displays her feelings freely, Christopher can’t step from
the box in which he’s been raised. He
can’t let himself go against what’s expected of him, though his feelings are as
acute as hers. Some people would say
Christopher has a martyr complex, and that’s definitely true to an extent, but
it always comes across so genuine to me – I think he quite literally doesn’t
know how to be anything else.
This
quality comes to a head during Christopher’s service in World War I. After his first stint in France, he’s simply
unreachable to Sylvia. He finally opens
himself for a moment one restless night, describing the sounds of the different
bombs with an unsettling manner that’s somehow frantic and numb at the same
time. Later, in the midst of an air raid
with no recourse and the sky falling around him, his act of desperation is to
compose a sonnet with end rhymes provided by a fellow soldier. All that panic and fear, all the wishing and
longing and regretting, all the wondering if he’ll withstand the night, and he
sublimates it into poetry. Is it any
wonder I like him?
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