International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 2 Issue 3 Sep 2012 70-78 TJPRC Pvt.

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SYLVIA CALVERT IN ANGUS WILSONS LATE CALL -- AN EPITOME OF DIVINE IDIOCY

KAMLESH THAKUR

ABSTRACT
There is a distinct tradition of the divine idiot in several literatures. The idiot motif is based on the assumption that madmen, lunatics and outcasts are somehow holy or blessed, or possess a knowledge that normal people do not have. They are seemingly ridiculous in action and outward appearance but can behave better at the intuitive level, better than the so-called wise people. A great many contemporary novels, in spite of their individual differences, extend this tradition. Nearly all divine idiot figures are oppositional figures, figures opposing more by their being there than by any conscious or articulated stance, the prevailing life-style, pattern of behaviour, and moral-ethical scheme. They are oppositional by virtue of being altogether different from the accepted image of man. Not every idiot is idealized, but more often than not, their presence offers a satirical light on the un-idiotic figures around them. It is possible to see in the divine idiot the authors discontent with the way things are, with the way people live. This disconnect can generate a divine idiot via several routes, primitivistic, as in Of Mice and Men, romantic-religious, as in Wordsworth and The Idiot, satirical, as in Kurt Vonneguts SlaughterhouseFive, spiritual-cum-ironical-cum-comic, as in R.K. Narayans The Vendor of Sweets, and literary, as in Angus Wilsons interpretation of Dostoevskys The Idiot. These routes can be roughly called literary and moral. Writers coming after Dostoevsky find it difficult to ignore the literary route opened by The Idiot. In this paper, an attempt has been made to discern strains of divine idiocy in Sylvia Calvert and establish her superiority as a divine idiot. Sylvia Calvert in Late Call has spent all her life working for others be it as a nanny to her many siblings in childhood or as a manageress in hotel industry, ever performing her duties with alacrity. But despite her sincerity, she has always been used by others. She had a burdened childhood and poverty never let her do or think what she wanted. If ever she dared to trespass the limits to be herself she got such disapproval of her actions in the form of severe beating that her personality got permanently warped. She is compulsorily retired from her job on account of the silly behaviour of her husband who is given to drinking and borrowing money from the boarders. Despite this unceremonious exit, she comes to stay with her son Harold at The Sycamores with a keen desire to start life afresh. Because of the machine-like routine and the pervasiveness of the ideology of Harolds late wife Beth, she once again starts craving for her own space. As she has never been appreciated by anyone, she vicariously starts living the life of reel characters and finding solace in their gibberish. Once she is out of the bounds of the contrivances of the New Towns, her proximity to nature and intuitive power which is the touchstone of simple people makes her see those things that her educated son disseminating knowledge as an

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educationist could never understand. Her arduous journey ends in a triumph that the worldly-wise could never hope to achieve. Her apparently idiotic moves turn out to be inspired and, in effect, they help her shed the psychic burdens that have long dwarfed her personality.

KEYWORDS: divine idiocy, intuition, divine grace, luck, rationalism, humanism, Calvinism, worldlywise.

INTRODUCTION
Angus Wilsons Late Call (1964) has a seemingly most unheroic old woman for its heroine. Outwardly she is entirely different from other idiotic figures found in several literatures. It is so because Angus Wilson has provided a variation on the divine idiot, the variation in this case highlighting her status as an elect without her knowing it. And, of course, the variation itself is breath-taking. For one thing, the divine idiot is a woman. For another, she is married and a mother. She does not look especial in any sense; if anything, she looks less than ordinary. It is only gradually that her essential uniqueness is revealed to herself as well as to others; so that she surprises both herself and others. It is in this uniqueness that her character conforms to the essentials of the divine idiot. Sylvia is a hybrid character. She suggests quite a new concept of divine idiot. To be more precise, in her case, divine idiocy co-exists with a humanist concept of the individual. According to Riddell, the key to the understanding of Wilsons protagonists lies in, the underlying assumptions of his liberal philosophy and humanist approach to life.1 Angus Wilson is a liberal humanist who has no faith in any divine agency. His intellectual commitment to humanism, however, is compromised by a deep but subconscious Calvinist streak in his personality. As if the chasm created by these two were not enough, his great attachment to Dostoevsky and his The Idiot further complicates Sylvias characterization.2 The triple strain Calvinism, humanism, Dostoevsky does not subsume Sylvias individuality; rather, it provides her with additional dimensions. However, Angus Wilsons problem is peculiar. As a humanist he must explain her divine idiocy psychologically and socially. His commitment to Calvinism and his desire to interpret Prince Myshkin lead him to introduce metaphysical and non-rational dimensions. As a humanist, Wilson shows interest in the growth and development of Sylvias character; as a user of the archetype he uses the fall motif from The Idiot and certain qualities such as meekness, humility, compassion, capacity to relate with others and intuitive wisdom which are common to both Sylvia and Prince Myshkin; his Calvinism gets revealed in the way Sylvia is blessed with grace.

Edwin Riddell, The Humanist Character in Angus Wilson English, XXI, 1972, 46.

Angus Wilson continually returns to Prince Myshkin in his fiction. While allusions to Myshkin are there in his very first novel, it is in his As If by Magic (1973) we find a most extended invocation of Myshkin in the characterization of Hamo Langmuir, the hero.

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SYLVIA CALVERTTHE DIVINE IDIOT

Who is Silvia, what is she?this line from The Two Gentlemen of Verona3 is quoted, with a minor adjustment in the spelling of the name, by Sylvias grandchildren to present her, as it were, to Carshall New Town society. However, the Shakespearean strain is half ironical, for Sylvia is neither young nor in quest of a lover. She is unlike Prince Myshkin4 too, for she is neither smart nor from the upper class. There is nothing ladylike about her. Unlike Prince Myshkin she does not suffer from any obvious handicap, although her old age and fatness do prove to be a bit of social disability in the new setting. But, as Margaret Drabble says Sylvias size is a theme for sympathy rather than laughter.5 Time, as the title Late Call suggests, is against Sylvia. Her active life as hotel manageress of Palmeria Court comes to an abrupt, embarrassing end when she is unceremoniously retired on account of complaints of misdemeanour against Arthur by the female residents of the hotel. Shocking revelations about Arthur having borrowed money, from the very people who had first humoured him and then complained against him, further compound her misery. But the irony is that she pays off Arthurs debts and bears humiliation silently without making him feel ashamed for his irresponsible acts and thus adding another detail to her life which has been an endless saga of sufferings and humiliations. The readers come to know, though referentially, that Sylvia started working very early as manager of sea-side hotels has a husband who is an invalid as well as a sponger, lost her daughter Iris in a lorry accident and a son, Len, in World War II. Despite being dependent upon his wife, Arthur treats her as dirt and dominates her in every sphere of life. On top of it, Sylvia is, has always been, disabled and inhibited by a childhood trauma which she no longer consciously remembers, but the scars etched permanently in her being hold her back from reaching out to people to such an extent that she dreads to touch others. Her psychic burdens have been a stumbling-block in letting her enjoy that inner bliss which has always eluded her. She leaves the city with the hope of fully assimilating into the nitty-gritty of the countryside and nurturing an emotional connect with her son, Harold and his children. Unfortunately, not only time but the new environment into which she, together with her irresponsible husband, finds herself also appears to be against her. Accustomed to a hectic life of caring for guests and burying herself completely in their needs and concerns, Sylvia now, without occupation, feels threatened by problems of adjustment in the progressive atmosphere of Carshall. Her spontaneity and naturalness are of no use in Harolds fully automated house which is run with machine-like accuracy. She cannot be an indulgent granny as the inmates have their duties neatly worked out in regard to

Angus Wilson underlines Sylvias virtues by inter-textually relating her to her namesake (though differently spelt), Silvia in Shakespeares play The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
4

Prince Myshkin is the invalid in Dostoevskys The Idiot.

Margaret Drabble, No Idle Rentier:Angus Wilson and the Nourished Literary Imagination, 1980:rpt in Jay L. Halio, ed., Critical Essays on Angus Wilson (Boston, Mass.:G.K.Hall, 1985),p.188.

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cooking, shopping, washing, etc. Harold, a self-opinionated person completely cut off from inner life, is a devotee of efficiency and considers human beings relatively clumsy. Instead of touching upon the chords of maternal affection, he tries to substitute Sylvia for Beth, his late wife, who has been his other self methodical, systematic, committed to order. In Harolds house, where the terms of discourse are alien to her, where sophistication, instrumental rationality and organization are such that she just cannot cope, and where she and her husband are constantly making some blunder or the other, she has enough reason to feel small. She cannot handle gadgets and is besieged in this unhomely house by the dials of timing devices. She behaves like Sissy Jupe in Hard Times6 in the face of her headmaster-sons authoritative course in kitchen management and use of spin dryer. She cannot live by roster. Simple as she is, she feels so uneasy and oppressed in the new setting that she virtually turns into a moron. She is forced despite her wishes into a life of indolence, to use Arthur Edelsteins words, forced for the first time into communion with herself. But there is nothing to commune with. Her life is one enormous vacancy, a blurred infinity of unlived years.7 In the automated, temperature-controlled, gardenless world of The Sycamores where rose bushes are considered a nuisance and various machines in the kitchen look like monsters, Sylvias capacity to express herself in acts of kindness and love is superannuated. Her hurt pushes her into the fictional world consisting of figures of oppressed womanhood such as Wardress Webb, Mary Queen of Scots and the elderly victim of Sydney Fox. Though Sylvia has the sense to know that life and novels are not the same thing yet her compassion and pity have to go to soap characters or remote strangers like Miss Priest because it is not allowed to flow towards those around even though they need it. It has been suggested by some critics that Sylvia is a victim of cheap fiction and telly serials.8 It is true that fiction affects her deeply but she is wise enough not to muddle life and fiction together. If anything, books and telly serials help her survive her lonely ordeal in Carshall New Town. Mrs. Harkers I dont know. I really do not know is both solacing and sustaining to her. At least, there is a fictive character whose predicament is similar to her own. Fiction thus is an external prop which helps Sylvia cope with the more-theatrical-than-theatre kind of family scenes in Harolds house. Since Sylvia has little access to life in Harolds home, she falls back upon fiction as a desperate alternative. Otherwise, Sylvias Books and
6

Sissy Jupe, the strolling jugglers child, spending her childhood among the acrobats and equestrians of Slearys circus is considered the dullest girl in the class by Mr Mchoakumchild. On being asked by the teacher as to what the first principle of Political Economy is, she replies in a simple vein: To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me. Sissy symbolizes everything in human nature that transcends the soul-crushing hideousness and mere instrumentalism of Coketown: she is vitality, generosity, goodness. See Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p.95. Arthur Edelstein, Angus Wilson: The Territory Behind, in Charles Shapiro, ed., Contemporary British Novelists (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1971), p.146.
8 7

See Ibid. : and Peter Faulkner, Angus Wilson: Mimic and Moralist (London: Secker and Warburg, 1980),p.143.

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life were not the same9

is a very intelligent statement, and it is surely Wilsons tribute to her divine

idiocy that she should grasp so very effortlessly what it takes her well-read heroines such a lot of time, effort and humiliation to grasp. Alienation is not the only problem that cripples Sylvia. She has been dragging along an unconscious psychic hump from her childhood which had been the result of impoverished home and the ghastly Calvinistic atmosphere to which she was exposed as a child. Being the eldest child, Sylvia had been an easy target for her parents to let out their anger and frustration. This victimization that started in childhood at the hands of those for whose love she always craved paralysed her for life. Her mother repeatedly told her that she is just nothing (p.30) and that God had created her only for doing work. Mrs Tuffield did not approve of a middle-class paying-guests interest in her daughter. Mrs Longmore and her daughter Myra had stayed at the Tuffields in the summer of 1911. Mrs Longmore had some superficial liberal-individualistic notions and wanted Sylvia to feel that she, like everyone else, was special. Sylvias mother dismisses the notion: Special! There is nothing special about her. Nor about none of us maam. God put er here to work for others. Thats what she is to do. Special! (p.30) Mrs Longmores humanism and individualism were only skin-deep; they were just an elegant posture. She had shown vistas of a new world to Sylvia, but once she realized that a lower-class rustic thing had gone out with her daughter and been quite free with the latter, her class snobbery was roused. Not only did she tell on Sylvia, she probably decided never to mix again with the filth. Her behaviour brings to light the hostilities underlying the pre-Great War class system, of the clash between halfbaked progressive ideas and childhood innocence, and of the gulf between the citys idyllic vision of rural life and the real thing.10 Her betrayal by Mrs Longmore and the dark Calvinist beating which her own parents gave Sylvia combined to create in her a trauma that has lasted a lifetime. All her life she has suffered from a sense of nothingness as if she were depraved: and ever since that summer day she has felt uneasy at human touch, for Mrs Longmore had crushed her soul giving her the impression that she had defiled her daughter as if by mere touch. All her life since then, she has clung to this notion that she is nothing: She and Arthur had never been clever, never been anything really, although Arthur talked so big sometimes (pp.73-74). Sylvias journey towards wholeness is not at all smooth. An Easter sermon gives her some rough clues, and Sylvia receives the late but seemingly divine call. It is relayed, as it were, through an awkward, anomalous-looking Calvinist priest who by some human mismanagement is sent as a substitute to deliver the Easter sermon in the supra-rationalist town of do-gooders:
9

Angus Wilson, Late Call (1964; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p.50. All subsequent references are to this edition and are enclosed within parenthesis.
10

Averil Gardner, Angus Wilson (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985), p.88.

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Is there nothing we can do to help us to Gods Grace? Indeed there is. The Lord forbid that Ishould preach to you folks any strait-jacketed Calvinistic doctrine. Theres a great deal you can do. You can be toward. You can go out to meet Gods Grace. Go out to mind who you are. Go out, not into the busy clamour of getting and spending, nor even into the soothing clamour of good works. No, go out into the dreadful silence, into the dark nothingness. Maybe ye are no but a wisp of straw, but if you go out to face the fire, out through the desert and the night, then indeed may the Lord send the light of his face to shine upon you then indeed may you be visited by that Grace which will save your soul alive. And now to God the Father...(p.186) His Calvinist sermon naturally scandalizes the congregation, but then to Sylvia it is very helpful.The priests words, which she takes literally inspire her to get away from the town, from the epitome of reason, organization, and progress and into the wild countryside. For quite a while, she struggles to get out of the town, for all roads here lead her back to the town centre. Even when she discovers the way out, she is sustained only by her intuition. Initially she feels very frustrated even in the countryside, for there is no sign of the miracle she has been expecting: She had sought it so long that she half expected some miraculous change in her feelings to come about from the discovery, to walk straight into some enchanted land of good or evil... (p.199). Indeed, instead of a miracle, she encounters an anti-miracle, for she happens upon an old humpy womanher double whose global wanderings as a refugee and deep-seated paranoia make two things clear to Sylvia: first, one could traverse the universe and still not be healthy, and second, one could end up like this humpy bitter woman if one surrendered to self-pity and paranoia. Just as she is being taught negative lessons by the clever ones like Harold and Sally, she is shown in the old woman a possibility for herself that is none too pleasant at all. She becomes apprehensive for her own life. For some time, she stops going out altogether for her encounter with the old humpy woman has filled her with dread. Clearly, there is no easy, smooth escape possible for Sylvia. Her intuition, however, leads her once again into the woods. One day, it suddenly turns stormy. The outer storm arouses in Sylvia the memories of that stormy night of 1911 when she was punished and denounced for her jaunt in the woods with Mrs Longmores daughter. This afternoon, she is terrified by the lightning but saves a child called Mandy just in time before it strikes an old tree down: In a minute the child yielded and now in turn she pulled the fat stranger back into the open field. There, herself shivering with the cold drenching rain and with shock, Sylvia held the small trembling girl to her until they seemed to merge into one sodden mass. And then, whatever it was struck too late, as a jagged blinding flash zigzagged across the field and the rotten oak went down in a moments flame and a long plume of funeral smoke. (p.223) Sylvia, thus, takes initiative, wrestles with thunder and lightning, sinks into mud with Mandy and in fact merges into this child. By embracing the hysterical child, to use Arthur Edelsteins words,

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Sylvia unknowingly transcends that repressive fear, that sense of the body as sin, which was generated so long ago by her encounter with Mrs Longmore.11 This act of saving the child leads to Sylvias emotional reliving of her childhood. Instead of Myra Longmore, now it is Mandy Egan. Myra was a fake humanists pretentious daughter, Mandy and her Canadian parents are genuine through and through. Not only does Mandy feel good for Sylvia having touched her, her parents also appreciate her. Sylvia is rewarded with rich displays of affection; Mandy, the little girl, climbs into bed with her: Mrs Egan, the mother, kisses her full on the lips. She is treated like a heroine and pampered like a child by the grateful parents. The Egans are the first ones to respect and cherish her for what she really is. Sylvia is healed at their countryside farm. Thus, in a scene that is the Calvinist priests metaphor come true, the Calvinist trauma cancels itself out and Sylvia finds that whatever oppressive burden she has been carrying along has fallen away. Sylvia is now reunited with the natural, graceful, especial child within her, and, even if her acts and positions might strike the others as idiotic, they are good and holy. In any case, the mythic, ritualistic scene of Sylvias transformation involves her becoming a child once again. Once the contact with the repressed/lost child is established, she is ready to help both herself and others. Her knocking on the gate of rationality has been a waste of time. If she is saved, she is saved by an intuition that inevitably leads her beyond rationality and makes her receive divine grace.12 The novel has so far shown her as a divine idiot manqu, but in this scene in the woods she is resurrected. From now onwards she can realize her divine idiocy both in her relations with herself and in her relations with others. Valerie A. Shaw calls this scene a Self-Recognition Scene.13 At the end of this scene, she acquires a personality, a force, a kind of non-theological grace, and liberates herself sufficiently to establish constructive relationship, to have an impact on others.14 As a result of her healing experience with the Egans, she recovers her initiative, the quality that long ago in the summer of 1911 had come to the fore. She is not naturally passive but has been passive for a long time, her liberation from the past makes a new future possible and now her energies can be released into the business of living in Carshall. She refuses to make concessions to Harolds notions of culture and propriety. At the birthday party arranged by Harold at a Chinese restaurant, she does not allow Harold to arrange the seating arrangement and sits next to her husband Arthur. When Harold and Mark speak ill of Geoff Bartley and Muriel Bartley after the latter have left the party, she snubs them authoritatively: oh,
11

Edelstein 149.

See M. Scott Peck; The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (1983; rpt .London: Arrow Books, 1990), p.280.
13

12

Valerie A. Shaw, The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and Late Call: Angus Wilsons Traditionalism, 1970; rpt.in Jay L. Halio, ed., Critical Essays on Angus Wilson, p. 112.

James Gindin, Angus Wilson and the Novel of Compassion, rpt. from his book Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1971) in Jay L. Halio, ed.,Critical Essays on Angus Wilson, p. 162

14

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shut up all of you. They came to my birthday party and I think theyre very nice people(p.257). Harold turns against the Bartleys on account of their well-meaning advice to him not to alienate himself from the Development Board on the issue of Goodchild Meadow. Sylvias response clearly underscores the journey she has traversed on the road to transformation and her vision now is sacred as opposed to secular or worldly. She has now the grit to rebel against Harolds self-centred myopia and tells him bluntly that he has never tried to establish a meaningful relationship with his wonderful family: Sylvia stamped her foot violently on the floor, Oh, shut up, Harold! I, I, I. You dont deserve to have such good children....They spoil you! (p.284) When Arthur and Harold fall ill, she surprises everyone with her agility and tenderness. She does succeed in bringing solace to Harold in his discomfiture when the reality of his son Ray, being a homo-sexual, is brought to his notice all too crudely. At the end, Mark,

Harolds elder son, has left home; Ray has settled into rag business with his homo-sexual friend, Geoffrey. In London; Judy is on her trips to France; Harold is taken up with a new project with Sally Bulmer; and Arthur is dead. Sylvia now decides to leave Harolds house and begin a new life on her own, apparently determined to expand the area of her operation. She decides to settle down somewhere near the town centre and changes her stance from I dont know to I think I am (p.303). She will now function as an independent individual. However, Wilson tempers this happy ending of the novel with some necessary realism. Sylvia at the end is so utterly alive that there is no question of the text not vibrating with the authors breezy compassion for her. Yet, as Arthur Edelstein rightly points out, in her case, while it is not too late to learn how to live, it is in fact too late to live.15 How far will the new Sylvia go is anybodys guess! Still, it would not be too much to say that her transformation will fructify in the lives of the people at Carshall who have everything, houses, goodies, but lack that without which everything is inadequate, namely grace. And what she will offer is the essence of Calvinism sweetened and spiced with humanism, with the hell-fire and brimstone left out. At the end, Sylvia, the divine idiot looks like the prophetess of a new age.

CONCLUSIONS
Finally, it can be said that Angus Wilsons Late Call utilizes the divine idiot for a family situation marked by temperamental as well as generation gaps. Sylvia Calvert proves to be wiser than her over-rational, clever headmaster son, but still the book is careful in not denying Harold his own good points. Perhaps to be a Harold is not sufficient but to be a Sylvia is not sufficient, either. In terms of priority, to be a Sylvia is certainly more important than to be a Harold. Her simplicity, modesty, intuition and largeness of heart contribute to an inscape which can be described as illumined by grace. In her own clumsy, fumbling, ignorant ways, she yet finds the right answers to her complex, existential questions. To be a divine idiot is, thus, to possess grace. It is lack of grace which leaves Harold a dried out, embittered person, in spite of the fact that he is always right in every minute detail. His acts are good; so are his intentions and concerns. But all his several virtues cannot make up for the crucial flaw which lack

15

Edelstein 145.

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of grace denotes in him. However, it has to be remembered that the kind of grace Sylvia comes to possess is capable of redeeming her but cannot have wider, social applications. The book does not discount the importance of reason and intelligence; rather, it projects a comprehensive vision in which grace and intelligence both have to operate complementarily.

REFERENCES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Wilson, Angus. Late Call. 1964; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968. Bhave, Vinoba, Stithprajya Darshan. Varanasi: Shiv Press, 1981. Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. 1854; rpt.Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. Dostoevsky,Fyodor. The Idiot. Trans. Julius Katzer. Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1971. Edelstein, Arthur. Angus Wilson: The Territory Behind. In Charles Shapiro, ed. Contemporary British Novelists. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1971:144-64. 6. 7. 8. 9. Gardner, Averil. Angus Wilson. Boston: Twayne Publishers.1985. Halio, Jay L., ed. Critical Essays on Angus Wilson. 1970; rpt. Boston:G.K.Hall, 1985. Narayan, R.K. The Vendor of Sweets. 1967; rpt. Mysore: Indian Thought Publications, 1993. Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love Traditional Values and Spritual Growth. 1983; rpt. London: Arrow Books, 1990. 10. Riddel, Edwin. The Humanist Character in Angus Wilson. English.XXI, 1972:45-53. 11. Shakespeare, William. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In Sybil Thorndike (Foreward). The Complete Works of Shakespeare. London: Murrays Sales &Service Co., 1977:31-52. 12. Steinback, John. Of Mice and Men. 1937; rpt.London: Pan Books, 1974. 13. Tracy, Honor. O Brave New Hell. Review of Late Call, New Republic. 6 Feb. 1965, 23. 14. Wilson, Angus. As If By Magic. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973.