The Characters
On one level, Jo Stoyte is simply another of the many satiric portraits of the self-made American businessman that appear frequently in British and American fiction of the 1920’s and 1930’s. He eagerly pursues money and relishes a lavish, tasteless display of the material things that money can buy, from the swimming pool on the terrace of his castle to the painting by Jan Vermeer in his elevator. He is grossly sensual in his desire for Virginia but is also gratified by her regarding him as a paternal benefactor. He sees no inconsistency in exploiting migrant workers by paying them the lowest wages possible, while at the same time sentimentally supporting a children’s hospital and donating large sums of money to Tarzana College for buildings that will bear his name. Yet Stoyte is not entirely a one-dimensional figure. His drive to achieve financial success stems from his experience of poverty as a child and his being ridiculed as a fat boy in school, and his love for Virginia, although limited in depth, is tender and genuine. In spite of the fact that Stoyte is a satiric figure, he invites some degree of compassion.
Virginia Maunciple and Peter Boone are less complex, although they, like Jo Stoyte, are treated with both satire and compassion. Virginia combines ingenuousness with sensuality, and though unintelligent, her sense of guilt over her affair with Obispo is intense. Peter is almost equally naive in his idealistic love of Virginia and in his devotion to the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War, and he is eager in his pursuit of such truth as he can comprehend.
Sigmund Obispo is almost a stock figure of a villainous scientist. He carries out the research that may prolong Stoyte’s life, but feels only contempt for Stoyte himself. His pleasure in repeatedly seducing Virginia is intensified by his awareness of Virginia’s reluctance.
Jeremy Pordage is characterized as a somewhat absurd example of an upper-class English scholar, but he functions in the novel primarily as a central consciousness in which all the other characters are reflected. He has the intellectual background, the human compassion, and the ironic detachment to comprehend the garish culture of Southern California, the absurd and pathetic quest of Jo Stoyte, and the arcane theories of William Propter.
In considering these characters it is important to remember that Huxley was writing a satire and a novel of ideas. He was not so much interested in creating vivid, “living” characters as he was in creating characters who would represent or express his philosophical perspectives. From this point of view, the most important character in the novel is one who takes almost no part in the main action, William Propter. Propter exists in the novel as Huxley’s mouthpiece. A former university professor who now lives simply on a farm near Stoyte’s castle, Propter has written a book which Pordage greatly admires for its scholarship. A boyhood acquaintance of Stoyte and the only person who did not tease Stoyte for being fat, he can interpret Stoyte’s character for Pordage. A person who provides decent shelter for the migrant workers while also trying to show them how they are in some measure responsible for their own plight, he exhibits the two virtues Huxley regards as important: understanding and compassion. As Peter’s mentor, he expresses in several long conversations the ideas which, for Huxley, were probably the main reason for writing this novel.
Characters Discussed
Jeremy Pordage
Jeremy Pordage, an Englishman hired to work for six months in California cataloging the Hauberk papers, twenty-seven crates of fragments of...
(This entire section contains 1148 words.)
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English history relating to the Hauberk family. He has blue eyes and a bald spot on the top of his head, and he wears spectacles; he looks the scholar and gentleman that he is. He is amazed by the vulgarity of California and of his employer, Jo Stoyte, a self-made millionaire. Pordage is a bachelor tied to an emotionally devouring mother. He is a civilized observer and, according to William Propter, a potential victim.
Jo Stoyte
Jo Stoyte, once the local fat boy called Jelly-Belly, now a California millionaire who lives in a castle. His numerous business holdings include farmland with orange groves on it and the Beverly Pantheon cemetery. He stands to make more millions buying land in the San Felipe Valley when he gets a tip that irrigation water is coming to the valley. A small, thickset man with a red face and a mass of snow-white hair, Stoyte is called Uncle Jo by the patients in his Home for Sick Children. He boasts that he had no education, and although he fills his castle with expensive European art works, he has a library with no books in it. At sixty years old, Stoyte has had a stroke and is terrified of death. Stoyte’s love for the curvaceous Ginny is a mixture of concupiscence and fatherly affection.
William Propter
William Propter, a large, broad-shouldered man with brown hair turning gray. He is a philosopher trying to make sense of the world. He is the author of Short Studies in the Counter Reformation, a book that Jeremy Pordage knows and respects. Propter talks to Jeremy and to Peter Boone about his ideas concerning reality and human behavior. A reformer, Propter puts his ideas into action, building cabins for the migrant workers working for Stoyte and using simple machines that will make him and the migrants self-sufficient. Propter knew Stoyte from his school days and befriended him then. Propter feels guilty that he might have contributed to Pete’s death, though he did not.
Virginia (Ginny) Maunciple
Virginia (Ginny) Maunciple, a twenty-two-year-old woman with auburn hair, wide-set eyes, and a small, impudent nose. Her most characteristic feature is her short upper lip, which gives her face a look of childlike innocence. Through much of the novel, as Stoyte’s mistress, she lives happily in the present with no long-range desires. She is fond of Stoyte and calls him Uncle Jo. She thinks herself virtuous because since she has been with him, she has not had sex with any other man, only with two female friends. A Catholic, Ginny has had Stoyte build a shrine to the Virgin Mary on the grounds of his estate. She also has a small shrine in her bedroom with a costumed Mary doll in it. When Ginny begins a degrading affair with Dr. Obispo, she is thrown into confusion and guilt. She acts as if she has been drugged by the sexual experience. She uses her new attentiveness to Pete to make Stoyte jealous, deflecting his attention from Obispo.
Sigmund Obispo
Sigmund Obispo, a dark-haired, dapper man with a handsome face who put Stoyte back on his feet after Stoyte suffered a stroke. Interested in research and not in patient care, Dr. Obispo has become Stoyte’s personal physician as a means of getting a laboratory funded. For Stoyte, Obispo is trying to discover the secret of longevity. Obispo has only contempt for religion and philosophy (and for most other human beings), and he puts his hope in science. He is a Don Juan who insults Ginny (and everyone else) with his sarcasm, wanting her sexually but on his unromantic terms. When he gets her and when Stoyte jealously tries to kill Obispo, the doctor gets the upper hand, controlling Stoyte, Ginny, and probably the millions of dollars.
Peter Boone
Peter Boone, Obispo’s assistant in the research laboratory, an athletic young giant of a man. He is enthusiastic about liberty and justice, but he has inadequate language with which to express his feelings. He fought in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, and he still feels loyalty and affection for the men with whom he fought. He is naïve, thinking that Ginny is pure and loving her. He thinks that he is unworthy of her. Idealistically, he tries to understand Propter’s philosophy, and he seems willing to change his life when he is convinced. He worries whether the work that Obispo is doing in the laboratory is good. When Ginny changes from treating him like a brother to seeming to show a romantic interest, he is confused. He loses his life in the rivalry between Stoyte and Obispo, trying to comfort Ginny.
Herbert Mulge
Herbert Mulge, the principal of Tarzana College. Contemptuous of the rich men he solicits, Mulge works tirelessly to obtain their money to expand the college. Mulge is a large, handsome man with a sonorous voice who uses pulpit eloquence to charm Stoyte into making contributions.
Mr. Hansen
Mr. Hansen, the agent for Jo Stoyte’s estates in the valley. He gives worse than average treatment to the migrant workers, making the young children work all day for two or three cents an hour and providing vermin-infested housing for the workers. Although he is a decent, kindly man in his private life, he is cruel in his service on the estates. Propter tries to make him understand the workers’ needs, but Hansen does not want to know about them.
Charlie Habakkuk
Charlie Habakkuk, the manager at the Beverly Pantheon. He tries to convince Stoyte to make improvements and extensions to the cemetery, especially by adding catacombs. When Stoyte refuses some of his suggestions, Habakkuk becomes angry, feeling that his ideas have made the cemetery popular while Stoyte reaps the profits. Charlie has made the cemetery successful by injecting sex appeal into death.
The Fifth Earl of the Hauberk family
The Fifth Earl of the Hauberk family, who held the title for more than half a century and was believed to die at the age of ninety under William IV. He was the author of a notebook that Jeremy Pordage reads and catalogs. The earl collected the pornography that is part of the Hauberk Collection. Jeremy and then Dr. Obispo discover that the earl ate fish guts to prolong his life. He fathered three illegitimate children at the age of eighty-one. He faked his death and with his housekeeper Kate went underground into the subterranean passages of his house. Dr. Obispo says that slowing the development rate of an animal is possible, but the older the anthropoid, the less intelligent it is. When the doctor finds the earl and Kate still alive under the Hauberk house, he finds two stupid anthropoids.
