Jeeves Takes Charge

by P. G. Wodehouse

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Critical Overview

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By the time Carry On, Jeeves, the collection of stories containing ‘‘Jeeves Takes Charge,’’ was published in 1925, Wodehouse had already firmly established himself as one of England’s leading humorists. His books were usually well-received, and Carry On, Jeeves was no exception. An unidentified reviewer in the December 3, 1927 edition of the Saturday Review of Literature wrote:

We frankly admit our fondness for all the Wodehouse comics, and our especial delight in Bertie and the peerless Jeeves. The broad, rich, hilarious humor of the book places it, in our opinion, among the author’s best.

Most reviews of the book were similar. However, the New York Times was somewhat more reserved in its praise:

Mr. Wodehouse’s humor, diverting though it is at first, seems to be drawn too much to formula after one has read beyond a certain point. Many of the stories taken singly are nothing short of delightful. But one cannot avoid the feeling that an entire book of Wodehouse stories is an overabundance.

This was a fault that several critics found in Wodehouse’s fiction. No doubt a recognizable and somewhat repetitious formula earmarks the Jeeves and Wooster stories. For example, in ‘‘Jeeves Takes Charge,’’ Jeeves disapproves of a particular suit Bertie favors. Bertie is initially hesitant to part with the suit, but eventually he gives in to Jeeves. This situation is repeated, with slight variances, in almost all the Jeeves and Wooster stories. Another frequent plot device is the presence of pesky aunts and uncles. Thus, some critics found his writing tedious. Familiarity did not, however, breed contempt with the general public. Wodehouse’s books enjoyed tremendous popular success.

Early in his career, Wodehouse was not granted the same sort of critical attention reserved for more serious writers of fiction. In the 1958 edition of New World Writing, John W. Aldridge writes that he knows of ‘‘no critical discussion of [Wodehouse’s] work which attempts at all seriously to investigate the peculiar quality of his comic gifts or to account for the phenomenally high favor in which they have been held for all these years by the reading public.’’ Aldridge argues that Wodehouse is one of the finest comic writers of the twentieth century. Since Aldridge’s essay was published, there have been many scholarly articles and books written on Wodehouse’s work. An essay published in the autumn 1959 Arizona Quarterly by Lionel Stevenson traces Wodehouse’s antecedents in English literature from Ben Jonson to Oscar Wilde. In an introductory essay written for P. G. Wodehouse: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Checklist (1990), Anthony Quinton continues in the same vein. Quinton compares to relationship between Bertie and Jeeves to several other master/servant relationships in literature, such as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, and Phineas Fogg and Passepartout. Several biographies of Wodehouse have been published in the last three decades as well. Although Wodehouse wrote light comedy, a great deal of respect is held for his brilliant use of language and his well-crafted stories.

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