Favorite Characters: Christopher Tietjens (Parade’s End)

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?