Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall is a 1928 novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh. His first published novel and a work of social satire, it is based partially on his schooling at Lancing College, his undergraduate years at Hertford College at Oxford, and his time as an instructor at Arnold House in Wales. The book employs black humor that is very characteristic of its author, satirizing various experiences and conventions that were common in 1920’s British society. The title satirically references the famous novel The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, lampooning the seriousness and inflated self-consciousness of British culture. It is also a wider commentary on human helplessness to choose the conditions they must live under.

Decline and Fall begins in the midst of the university life of a hapless student named Paul Pennyfeather. He gets entangled in the antics of the Bollinger Club, and is unable to avoid the consequences of his clumsy misdemeanors. After accruing enough disciplinary violations, he is “sent down,” suspended, bringing his university career to a stop.

Pennyfeather’s guardian cancels his allowance, and kicks him out of his lodging, forcing him to take employment as an instructor at the Llanabba Castle School in North Wales. He integrates well into his environment, getting used to his routines and colleagues and students. The first stress comes when the headmaster, Dr. Fagan, makes him the leader of a school sporting event, but he manages it successfully.



Around this time, Pennyfeather encounters the Honorable Mrs. Margot Beste-Chetwynde, and quickly becomes infatuated with her. He accepts her request to tutor her son, Peter Beste-Chetwynde, over the holiday break. Because of his infatuation with Margot, Pennyfeather refuses Dr. Fagan’s offer of marriage on behalf of his eldest daughter. Soon, the disappearance and expected death of his fellow instructor Captain Grimes results in his departure from Llanabba Castle.

Pennyfeather then moves to King’s Thursday, Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde’s estate. In this absurd environment, the two fall deeply in love. Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde tries to convince him to stay indefinitely, offering him a role in looking after her businesses in South America. Soon, he proposes marriage, and they obtain the blessing of her son Peter to proceed with the wedding.

In the midst of wedding preparations, Captain Grimes reappears at the door of King’s Thursday seeking a job. Meanwhile, Pennyfeather grows even more enamored of Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde as he watches Margot run her business. Three days before the wedding, Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde asks him to travel to Marseilles to attend to some business matters. He travels there and negotiates with various bureaucracies to facilitate a money exchange, returning to London on the morning of the wedding. He proposes a toast to Fortune, “a much-maligned lady,” and is abruptly arrested by police from Scotland Yard.



The latter part of the book narrates Pennyfeather’s arrest, trial, conviction, and incarceration in a prison called Blackstone Gaol. He is visited by Peter, who conveys Margot’s distress at his situation. She says that she will do everything in her power to rescue him, except go to prison; even marrying the bureaucrat Maltravers, who said he would release Pennyfeather if she married him. Pennyfeather responds to Peter that he would prefer for her to wait for his normal release. He is refreshed in solitary confinement, away from the chaos of daily life, following routines without thought or struggle. He even requests an extension in solitary confinement. Shocked by this, the governor of the prison puts him in a makeshift rehabilitation program. The only main effect of his ill-conceived solution is the murder of Mr. Prendergast by an inmate.

Pennyfeather is transferred to a long-term prison, Egdon Heath, and meets Grimes again. He starts receiving strange luxurious gifts in the prison. He receives a letter from Margot after she visits, revealing that her confidence in his release is diminishing and that she feels alienated from society in the pursuit of freeing her lover. She also reveals that she is ending her business and marrying Maltravers.

Grimes abruptly escapes from prison, disappearing atop the Warden’s horse, with no clear fate just as is the case early in the novel. The inmates presume he is dead in the surrounding bog. Pennyfeather is released from Egdon Heath covertly, facilitated by a fake doctor’s note to receive an appendectomy in an area nursing home run by Dr. Fagan. He is forced to sign a will in a meeting with Dr. Fagan, Alastair Trumpington, and a drunk surgeon, who writes up a fake death certificate. Pennyfeather sails off to Corfu on Margot’s yacht.



In the novel’s conclusion, Pennyfeather meets a man named Otto Silenus during his trip and they have an abstract conversation about human nature. He decides to return to Oxford in disguise to study theology. Back in college, he is never discovered, though he adopts the exact same routine. On the final night of the novel, he returns to the Bollinger Club where the story began, meeting Peter Beste-Chetwynde, now a student, who overdoses on alcohol after telling Pennyfeather he should never have met his family.

Decline and Fall darkly satirizes modern society through its examination of the absurdity of social life in a specific moment in the history of Britain. Its circular plot and frequent theme of death and moral failure highlight the futility of free will in an extremely chaotic world. Its conclusion suggests, ironically, that the only solution to the ills of modern life is to forgo trying to understand and control one’s environment and to instead value its inherent comedy.