The Characters
Jeeves is the epitome of the tradition of brilliant servants to foolish masters which goes back to classical Latin and Greek literature. Jeeves displays the most perfect mind in fiction, superior even to that of Sherlock Holmes. As Bertie observes, “Jeeves knows. How, I couldn’t say, but he knows.” Jeeves is not simply superbly intelligent; for P. G. Wodehouse’s plots to work, the valet must have sources of information denied the other characters. He is always the only one to know what is truly happening. Unlike Holmes, Jeeves resorts to lying and bribery to achieve his ends. He is everything the perpetually naive Bertie is not.
Bertie is upset when he overhears Jeeves describe him as “an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent.... Mentally he is negligible quite negligible.” Bertie, however, is intelligent enough to rely on Jeeves’s judgment in most matters, considering his servant “a sort of guide, philosopher, and friend.” He possesses remarkable self-knowledge for such a ninny, agreeing with those who “look on me as rather an ass.’
Despite all this, Bertie is an admirable character. Much of his behavior derives from a strict code of conduct, and while this code is that of the privileged late Victorian schoolboy, it allows him to be modest, gracious, and magnanimous. He is unfailingly willing to devote his time and money to assist his friends. Whenever he is hesitant about helping Bingo out of a scrape, all his friend has to do is remind him that they were at school together for Bertie to spring into action. He has perhaps been described best by George Orwell as a “sluggish Don Quixote”; he does not look for windmills but never declines to tilt at them when honor demands.
If Jeeves is Sherlock Holmes and Bertie his Dr. Watson, faithfully recounting all of their escapades, Agatha is Professor Moriarty, always popping up to bring new difficulties into her nephew’s life. To Bertie, “she’s a sort of human vampire-bat.” Even worse, “She’s the kind of woman who comes and rags you before breakfast.” Aunt Agatha is not simply imposing in herself; she is constantly finding younger versions of herself, such as Honoria Glossop, to force upon Bertie: women who want to reform him, to improve his mind, to keep him from sleeping past noon and betting on horses.
All the other characters in The Inimitable Jeeves are the stock figures associated with this type of comedy. They are necessary primarily to create conflict and advance the plot and are rarely more than one-dimensional.
Characters Discussed
Bertram (Bertie) Wooster
Bertram (Bertie) Wooster, a gentleman, an already confirmed bachelor in his mid-twenties, the epitome of the idle—and vacant—rich. Although Jeeves describes Bertie as “By no means intelligent,” he also acknowledges Bertie to be “an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman.” Good-natured Bertie narrates the events of this series of linked stories in a tone that is sprightly though at times faintly defensive when his role as stooge for family and friends and as the object of Jeeves’s contempt becomes obvious even to him. Despite his deplorably bad taste in clothes (a source of frequent conflict with Jeeves) and his unabashed love of his idle, luxurious, and socially unredeeming life, Bertie comes across as an innocuous young man of unflagging goodwill.
Jeeves
Jeeves, Bertie’s valet, a few years older than Bertie and certainly wiser. Although superbly competent in his duties as a gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves is much more; his master also regards him, with gratitude and some awe, as “a bird of the ripest intellect” and “a sort of...
(This entire section contains 749 words.)
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guide, philosopher, and friend.” Jeeves often extricates Bertie, his friends, and members of his family from unpleasant personal messes; while discreetly dispensing advice and help, Jeeves himself always manages to benefit, financially and romantically. Although Jeeves’s overt manner toward his young master is one of dignified loyalty and self-effacing respect, his own superior intelligence, worldliness, and good taste are abundantly evident.
Agatha Gregson
Agatha Gregson, Bertie’s aunt. Described by her nephew as “pretty formidable,” she is a tall, commanding, gray-haired woman, sharp-nosed and gimlet-eyed. Bertie fears her and her unfailing ability to “snooter” him. On several occasions, she routs Bertie from his life of comfortable sloth and entangles him in unpleasant situations as part of her mission to have him make something useful of himself and fulfill family expectations. She harasses him both at home and abroad; it finally takes the full force of Jeeves’s ingenuity to placate her.
Richard “Bingo” Little
Richard “Bingo” Little, a slim, dapper young man-about-town, an old school friend of Bertie. As dim as Bertie, Bingo leads an equally idle life, distinguished only by his penchant for repeatedly falling desperately in love. The women that he desires are either of enough intelligence and breeding to regard his attentions with amused contempt or unsuitably lower class. Tumbling into one scrape after another, Bingo always manipulates Bertie (and, therefore, Jeeves) into extricating him, appealing to Bertie’s “old school tie” loyalty. An accomplished parasite, Bingo finally marries the popular novelist Rosie M. Banks, a woman much better, brighter, and wealthier than he deserves.
Mortimer “Old” Little
Mortimer “Old” Little, created Lord Bittlesham, the wealthy owner of Little’s Liniments. Now retired, his chief interest is food: its preparation and, particularly, its consumption in large quantities. Obese and troubled by gout, Old Little has an explosive temper, especially when he discerns a betrayal of his nephew Bingo’s duty to him. Bingo’s romantic encounter with radical socialism, especially in the person of the formidable, gold-toothed Charlotte Corday Rowbotham, leads Old Little to cut off Bingo’s allowance, giving rise to Bingo’s disastrous forays into gambling.
Rosie M. Banks
Rosie M. Banks, the author of popular novels extolling the triumph of love over class distinctions. While working as a waitress at a gentleman’s club as a means of researching the background for a new novel, she becomes the last in the long series of Bingo’s passionate attachments, the woman who finally brings Bingo to matrimony and also placates Old Little. Bertie had earlier assumed Rosie’s name and fame to restore Bingo to Old Little’s favor; regrettably, the arrival of the real Rosie leaves Old Little to presume thereafter that Bertie is completely mad.
Claude
Claude and
Eustace
Eustace, Bertie’s cousins, inseparable twins about twenty years old. Expelled from Oxford for unsuitable behavior, these wastrels become the scourge of Bertie’s life. They are so gleefully irresponsible, devoted to pleasure, and adept at sponging that they tax even Jeeves’s ingenuity in devising a plan that finally removes them from the Wooster family’s sphere and relegates them to the colonies.
Honoria Glossop
Honoria Glossop, the strapping, hearty, horsey daughter of Sir Roderick Glossop. She is briefly an object of Bingo’s affections and, for a short while, the horrified Bertie’s fiancée, thanks to Aunt Agatha’s plans for his future. Another of Jeeves’s masterful plots rescues Bertie from matrimony.
