Discussion Topic
Analysis and Significance of P.G. Wodehouse's "The Custody of the Pumpkin"
Summary:
P.G. Wodehouse's "The Custody of the Pumpkin" humorously satirizes the British aristocracy through the character of Lord Emsworth, who is obsessed with winning a pumpkin contest. The story highlights the incompetence of the upper class, contrasting it with the competence of the lower class, particularly the gardener McAllister. Wodehouse employs hyperbole, irony, and role reversal to create comedy, portraying the aristocrats as out of touch with reality. The pumpkin symbolizes the trivial concerns of the idle rich, while the resolution underscores the reliance of the upper class on their servants.
Can you summarize 'The Custody of the Pumpkin' by P.G. Wodehouse?
"The Custody of the Pumpkin" by P. G. Wodehouse was originally published in 1924 in two places, the American magazine The Saturday Evening Post and the Strand Magazine in Britain. It was republished in Wodehouse's short story collection Blandings Castle and Elsewhere in 1934.
This story is part of a substantial group of short stories and novels by Wodehouse that are centered on Blandings Castle, the estate of the 9th Earl of Emsworth, and his extended family. The stories gently satirize the upper classes, portraying most of the men as weak-willed, impractical, and not very intelligent and the women as strong and smart, but often obsessed with appearances and social position. The lower classes, although self-interested and not well-educated, are the ones who are competent at practical matters and actually keep things running in the stories. The main characters in the "The Custody of the Pumpkin" are:
Lord Emsworth :...
Unlock
This Answer NowStart your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
an absent-minded and inarticulate peer, mainly concerned with winning prizes in agricultural shows.
Freddie Threepwood: Son of Lord Emsworth. Very similar to his father in being inarticulate and impractical. He does not have a job or any particular job skills and is very susceptible to pretty young women.
Angus McAllister: The head-gardener at Blandings.
Aggie Donaldson: Freddie's current love interest, a pretty American heiress who is a cousin to McAllister.
Mr. Donaldson: Aggie's father, a wealthy businessman.
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe: Lord Emsworth's neighbor and rival at local agricultural shows.
At the opening of the story, Lord Emsworth has acquired a telescope, and complains to his butler that it does not work. After the butler removes the black cap over the lens, Emsworth spies his son Freddie with a girl. He discovers the girl is visiting his head gardener, McAllister, and has a fight with McAllister, demanding that the girl (a gardener's relative and thus unsuitable wife for his son) leave. McAllister quits.
Emsworth realizes later in the evening that this will harm his possibility of winning first prize in the Shrewsbury Agricultural Show with his pumpkin, "The Hope of Blandings", his first pumpkin good enough to rival those of his arch-enemy, the current prize-holder, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe.
Emsworth goes to London to replace his gardener, and discovers that Freddie has married Aggie. He goes for a walk in Kensington gardens, absent-mindedly plucking some flowers he likes, and is nearly arrested. McAllister vouches for his character, saving him from jail. When Emsworth discovers that Mr. Donaldson is wealthy and intends to take Freddie off to America and set him to work, he gives the marriage his blessing. He re-hires McAllister at a higher salary and wins first prize in the show with his pumpkin.
"The Hope of Blandings"
What is the story "The Custody of the Pumpkin" by P.G. Wodehouse about?
“The Custody of the Pumpkin” is about a lord whose gardener quits, so he has no one to get his precious pumpkin ready for the fair.
In this silly story, Lord Emsworth finds his “particularly trying” younger son kissing a girl that turns out to be a cousin of his gardener. When he tells the gardener he does not approve of the relationship, he quits. Lord Emsworth is in a pickle because he now has no one to take care of The Hope of Blandings, his prize pumpkin. The pumpkin is very important to him.
However splendid the family record might appear at first sight, the fact remained that no Earl of Emsworth had ever won a first prize for pumpkins at the Shrewsbury Flower and Vegetable Show.
They have won for tulips and roses, but nothing quite so elegant as a pumpkin. The gardener's second in command is not up to the task, and even the pumpkin starts pining!
Fortunately, the girl's father turns out to be a nobleman and not a gardener, and Emsworth is able to get rid of the unnecessary second son. The gardener returns and the pumpkin takes first prize!
References
How does P. G. Wodehouse create humor in "The Custody of the Pumpkin"?
In his story “The Custody of the Pumpkin,” P. G. Wodehouse creates humor in a variety of ways. The story describes (among other things) Lord Emsworth’s frustration that his ne’er-do-well son, Frederick, has been flirting with the daughter of the estate’s gardener. Early in the story, the following passage, which is typical of the story’s humor, appears:
"Frederick!" bellowed his lordship.
The villain of the piece halted abruptly. Sunk in a roseate trance, he had not observed his father. But such was the sunniness of his mood that even this encounter could not damp him. He gamboled happily up.
"Hullo, guv'nor," said Freddie. He searched in his mind for a pleasant topic of conversation, always a matter of some little difficulty on these occasions.
"Lovely day, what?"
His lordship was not to be diverted into a discussion of the weather. He drew a step nearer, looking like the man who smothered the young princes in the Tower.
The humor of this passage depends on a number of factors, including the following:
- Use of the very forceful verb “bellowed,” especially when that verb is followed by the words “his lordship.” We don’t usually think of dignified English aristocrats as bellowing, and so this combination of words is funny partly because of the comic incongruity of the verb and the noun. The phrase would be far less amusing if it had been written “bellowed Emsworth” or even “bellowed the lord.” The words “his lordship” are especially cultivated and thus seem out of place when following “bellowed.”
- The description of Frederic as the “villain of the piece” is also amusing. Frederick is not evil or dangerous or malign. Thus Wodehouse uses comic exaggeration here and elsewhere.
- There is a comic contrast between the angry Emsworth and the love-smitten Freddie, who is still “[s]unk in a roseate trance.” As the phrase just quoted illustrates, the humor of the story dependence in part on comic overstatement. It would not be nearly so amusing if Wodehose had written that Freddie was “still thinking of his beloved.” The phrase “roseate trance” is a splendid example of ostentatious hyperbole.
- Use of comic verbs, as in “gamboled,” which implies a light-heartedness totally in contrast to the mood of Lord Emsworth.
- Use of comic slang, as when the son of an English aristocrat speaks to his father as if he were a cockney ("Hullo, guv'nor"). Such speech, designed to diminish his father’s anger, is only likely to increase it, thus providing an example of comic irony.
- Finally, one more aspect of the humor of this passage deserves attention: the use of a comic simile, when Emsworth is described as looking “like the man who smothered the young princes in the Tower.” This phrase is humorous for several reasons: it is exaggerated; it is vivid; it catches us by surprise; and it is highly inventive. (Imagine how different the effect would be if Wodehouse had merely written “like a man full of anger.”)
Wodehouse, then, uses a variety of standard techniques for achieving humor, most of which depend, in one way or another, on incongruity. The contrast between “Frederick” and “Freddie” is just one of many examples of the incongruous in this passage and in the story as a whole.
This is an awkward question to answer because there are a couple of errors in the question itself. The first is that this is not a short story, though seemingly well anthologized, but a chapter from Wodehouse's novel, Blandings Castle. The anthologized portion is actually "Chapter 1: The Custody of the Pumpkin" of Blandings Castle (1935). Though anthologized, its origins and context need to be understood and recognized in order to have a fair perspective on it and in order to analyze it correctly.
The second error is in the use of the word "mock." This is a strong word that is better associated with bullies or anarchists who attack and blindly criticize than with world renowned humorists who amuse while painting revealing pictures of human foibles.
mockverb
to tease or laugh at in a scornful or contemptuous manner (Oxford Dictionary)
scornnoun
the feeling that someone or something is worthless or despicable; contemptible (Oxford Dictionary)
contemptnoun
the feeling that a person or thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn (Oxford Dictionary)
These definitions indicate that there is real underlying hatred in something that mocks. As a comparison, contrast Wodehouse's chapter to Jonathan Swift's biting essaymocking Britain's policies in Ireland, "A Modest Proposal." You'll see that while the one by Swift mocks with scorn and contempt, the other by Wodehouse amusingly satirizes the foibles of the fading post-World War I British upper class by pointing out the incongruities between aristocratic country life and modern life.
Having said this, what are some details of how Wodehouse humorously satirizes the country life of the landed Lord after one world war has raged? To start with, (1) Wodehouse shows Lord Emsworth as completely dependent upon his domestic servants to get by: e.g., Beach must give him metaphorical sight by removing the cap from his telescope; McAllister, with the waggling red beard, must raise his pumpkin. Additionally, (2) Lord Emsworth has no understanding of nor control over his son, the Honorable Freddie: Freddie gets into debt and is banned from London; Freddie goes gallivanting in bright morning sunshine with a strange American girl with no aristocratic background (and marrying her); Freddie speaks in a slang that the "guv'nor" is hard pressed to make sense of:
Dear Guv'nor,
Awfully sorry and all that, but couldn't hold out any longer. I've popped up to London in the two-seater and Aggie and I were spliced this morning. ... Aggie's guv'nor ... [is] coming to see you. He wants to have a good long talk with you about the whole binge. Lush him up hospitably and all that, would you mind, because he's a sound egg .... Your affectionate son, Freddie
Another very important way that Wodehouse humorously satirizes the landed, country aristocracy, that might be characterized as "dislocated," is by (3) satirizing their values as epitomized by Lord Emsworth's preoccupations with winning gardening prizes. His family has won prizes for tulips, for roses, for spring onions, but they have not won prizes for pumpkins and Lord Emsworth has committed himself to doing just that. His values are not remotely connected to the post-war world, which Donaldson, the American millionaire, is, in contrast, connected to:
"... conditions have changed very much in America of late. We have been through a tough time ... But things are coming back. ... I am a firm believer in President Roosevelt and the New Deal. Under the New Deal, the American dog is beginning to eat more biscuits. ... I an Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits."
P.G. Wodehouse's hilarious satire, "The Custody of the Pumpkin" is the story of the honorable Earl of Blandings, Lord Emsworth: a man whose great rank and position in the highest class of society is juxtaposed to his lack of intelligence and common sense.
The qualities of ignorance and idleness are the keypoints upon which Wodehouse focuses in order to make the story a parody of the lives of the upper-class British society members. Lord Emsworth represents the idle upper-classes who live off their family names and fortunes, who attend Oxford or Cambridge merely to say that they have gone there, and who later in life become the epicenter of a shallow social circle of estate balls, hunting, or many other forms of mindless entertainment. Like his peers, Lord Emsworth is clearly a man with lots of money and very little ideas about what to do with it.
Parly due to his idle and unintelligent condition, Lord Emsworth employs endless hours into the tending of his beloved award-winning and massive pumpkin whom he named "The Hope of Blandings"; a lead competitor at the Shrewsbury plant show. Emsworth's equally worthless son, Freddie, has been around the house flirting with the daughter of Emsworth's top gardener, McAllister, thus infuriating the latter to the point of quitting his job at Blandings.
What happens fnext is pure mockery and satire towards the upper classes. Lord Emsworth wanders around Kensinton Gardens in a blur not knowing what to do about his contest, nor his son. Lucky for him, McAllister stumbles upon Lord Emsworth, who is nearly taken to jail for his wandering and for pulling flowers at the park. After the intervention of a Mister Donaldson, the story comes to a nice resolution: Donaldson offers to give Freddie a a job far away from his father, McAllister's daughter marries Freddie, and McAllister gets his job back with double pay. In the end, they end up winning the contest again.
The whole plot is designed to make Lord Emsworth and his son completely devoid of reason or imagination. Compared to the common folk, such as McAllister and Mr. Donaldson, the aristocrats stand out for their silliness in behavior and thought.
Also, notice how the upper-class men seem unable to do anything without the help of the common man. Lord Emsworth cannot raise his pumpkin without the intervention of his gardener, and Freddie does not seem to be able to make any useful form of employment until Mr. Donaldson shows up.
Therefore, the story presents the lifestyles of the rich in Post World War I England in all of its glamour and its stubborn adherence to old traditions; all this while the world outside the walls of Blandings are undergoing major social changes that, eventually, would affect the aristocrats, as a whole. McAllister and Donaldson represent that world outside the Blandings estate which can survive on their own, and is strong enough for change. Lord Emsworth and his son, contrastingly, represent the weakening upper classes who are slowly but surely deteriorating precisely for their lack of social survival mechanisms.
What is the summary of "The Custody of the Pumpkin" by P.G. Wodehouse?
An old gentleman fond of new gadgets, the ninth Earl of Emsworth has recently bought a telescope after reading an article on astronomy. Looking through his new telescope atop one of his turrets, Emsworth sites his son Freddie who appears extremely delighted. It is this jauntiness that concerns the Earl because usually Freddie is rather morose, especially when he is confined to Blandings Castle. Following his suspicions, the Earl looks again through his telescope and, to his surprise, he watches his son prancing; out of a small area of trees and brush near the end of a meadow, a pretty young woman emerges. Freddie looks quickly over his shoulder and, then, he envelops her in his arms. Lord Emsworth is appalled. For a long time, he has dreamed of a young woman from a good family with money would come along and remove Freddie from his responsibility, but now his hopes are crushed.
Furious, Lord Emsworth descends from the turret and makes his way across the green to head off his son. Adjusting his pince-nez, Lord Emsworth perceives the complacent young man approaching with a nosegay of little meadow flowers in his buttonhole.
"Frederick!" bellowed his lordship
"Hello, guv'nor!" replies his son, undaunted. "Lovely day, what?"
Ignoring this diversion, the father asks his son the identity of the girl and Freddie informs him that she is his fiancee, Aggie Donaldson, an American cousin of Angus McAllister, the head-gardener. Enraged, Lord Emsworth locates his gardener, and insists that the girl depart immediately or he will be fired. After making certain Scot noises in his throat, McAllister says with dignity, 'Y'r lomrdsheep will accept ma notis.'
At first proud of his show of authority, Lord Emsworth later rues his dismissal of his head gardener because he does not know who will care for the beautiful pumpkin. Like many families of name, the Emsworths had won competitions for roses, tulips, onions, but no Earl of Emsworth had ever won at the Shrewsbury Show a first prize for pumpkins. And this year, finally, it appeared that he may have a winner. But, now his head-gardener is gone. His second gardener, now promoted to head, is no McAllister, and Lord Emsworth is anxious about his pumpkin. He worries so much that he dreams that his plump, beautiful pumpkin shrivels. After such dreams Lord Emsworth determines that he must have McAllister back; so, he sends a telegram, ordering him to return. McAllister refuses.
Therefore, Lord Emsworth decides that he must seek a gardener in London. When he arrives, the old gentleman confirms in his mind his loathing for London; moreover, he is unable to find anyone whom he feels can be a competent gardener. In such a disgruntled state, Lord Emsworth happens upon Freddie; however, this meeting enrages the old man because Freddie's last visit to London cost his father dearly. Also, he worries that something terrible has happened to the pumpkin, such as cats having destroyed it. But, Freddie tells him that the cats have done nothing to his prize pumpkin, and because the young man is not at ease, he drops a letter into the hands of his father and departs. To Lord Emsworth's surprise, Freddie's note informs his father that he has married Miss Donaldson, the young woman of the meadow.
For an appreciable space of time he stood in the middle of the pavement, rooted to the spot. Passers-by bumped inlo him or grumblingly made detours to avoid a collision. Dogs sniffed at his ankles. SeedyJooking individuals ried to arrest his attention in order to speak of their financial affairs. Lord Emsworth heeded none of them. He remained where he was, gaping like a fish, until suddenly his faculties seemed to return to him.
Suddenly, Lord Emsworth feels the terrible need for flowers. He hires a cab to take him to Kensington Gardens. When he arrives, Lord Emsworth feels so much better; however, he unwittingly picks the flowers in which he so delights. Catching him in this act, the park-keeper immediately changes his mind about this man who he first thought was appreciative of the beauty of his gardens. Then a constable appears and asks the Lord Emsworth his name. When the gathering crowd hears, "'I - I - why, my dear fellow - I mean, officer - I am the Earl of Emsworth," they laugh. When he is asked to show his card, Lord Emsworth squirms because he has lost his cards along with his umbrella. But, just as he is about to despair, Lord Emsworth spots McAllister, who vouches for him and he is released by the constable because the garden-keeper recognizes in McAllister a quality head-gardener.
With McAllister is Mr. Donaldson, father of the bride. Cheerfully, he speaks to Freddie's father on his behalf, telling him that Freddie is "a fine fellow" and he hopes to put him to work in his dog biscuit business in America. He apologizes that he is only worth about nine or ten million dollars, but with Roosevelt as president, things should improve. Lord Emsworth blinks and asks, "You are talking of my son?"
"He must have your support."
"I suppose he'll have to have it, dash it!" said his lordship unhappily. "Can't have the boy starve." Mr Donaldson's hand swept round in a wiid, grand gesture.
He then asks Lord Emsworth to send some word to Freddie; the Earl offers his encouragement, and advises Donaldson to tell him not to hurry back from America and to work hard and make a name for himself.
Lord Emsworth goes to McAllister and begs him to return to his employ. When McAllister hesitates, Lord Emsworth pleads with him, offering to double his salary. "McAllister . . . Angus . . .' said Lord Emsworth in a low voice, "pumpkin needs you."
Now, Lord Emsworth stands with McAllister at the Agricultural Show at Shrewsbury and Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, of Marchingham Hall passes near them, offering his congratulations, looking something like Napoleon who brooded at Waterloo. He offers his congratulations to the Earl of Emsworth, who with McAllister look down at the largest packing cases ever seen in Shrewsbury town, cases that read "PUMPKINS FIRST PRIZE."
References
What is the significance of the pumpkin in "The Custody of the Pumpkin" and how does it justify the title?
The title of P.G. Wodehouse's short story "The Custody of the Pumpkin" is justified by the author by making the tending and care of an award-winning pumpkin the sole focus in the life of Lord Emsworth at that point.
A rare and massive specimen of its kind, the pumpkin is named by Lord Emsworth and his gardener Angus McAllister as "The Hope of the Blandings". This alone is comical considering that the Blandings constitutes a very rich and powerful estate for which really there is no need for "hope". Moreover, the obsession of Lord Emsworth for the pumpkin's well-being is part of the satirical traits that Wodehouse brings out about the aristocrats of his time.
The actual importance of the pumpkin is simply that it would make Lord Emsworth happy to win the competition. Considering that he has no other interests in life (with the one exception of his huge, prize-winning pig), winning the contest is, in his eyes, a huge feat.
How does P. G. Wodehouse create humor in "The Custody of the Pumpkin" through language, events, or irony?
Wodehouse uses a familiar trope in his work as he describes an opening event in this story: the servant as much smarter than his bumbling, somewhat idiotic employer. This role reversal and the unflappable calm of Beach, the butler, who treats his employer's idiocy with straight-faced seriousness, raises laughs:
"I can't see at all, dash it. It's all black."
The butler was an observant man.
"Perhaps if I were to remove the cap at the extremity of the instrument, m'lord, more satisfactory results might be obtained."
The dry skewering of Lord Emsworth's complete incompetency is comically emphasized in the line: "The butler was an observant man." After all, how observant does one have to be to notice that a telescope is still covered with a cap? The situational irony here is that the servant is smarter than the master: in a just world, this would be reversed.
Wodehouse also uses personification and hyperbole (exaggeration) to comic effect as he writes:
Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
We laugh at the assigning of human attributes to a creature like a codfish. It is absurd to envision such a fish as a doting, cheery parent and even more so to imagine it loving all of its exaggerated litter of upwards of three million offspring. The comparison—or contrast—of the codfish to the British aristocracy is so odd as to make us laugh.
Wodehouse relentlessly keeps piling up the absurdities using irony, events, and language until we can't help but continue to be amused.
We can actually see an excellent example of ironic figurative language being used to create comic effect in the very first paragraph. He opens the story by describing the morning sun shining on the setting and the characters; however, he describes the sunshine in such a way as to liken it to rainfall, as we see in the phrase, "The morning sunshine descended like an amber shower-bath on Blandings Castle," and using the word "like" to describe one thing by comparing it to another is of course a simile. But what's very interesting about the simile that makes it ironic, meaning contrary to what one would expect, is that sunshine is not typically likened to rainfall as they are actually exact opposites. He continues to create comic effect using this simile by describing every person and object that the sunshine lit up as if the sunshine was falling upon them, just like rainfall, just as if they were displeased by the "sunshine fall" in the same way that they would be displeased by becoming wet due to rainfall. We especially see this comic effect in the lines:
It fell on the baggy trousers-set of Angus MacAllister, head-gardener to the ninth Earl of Emsworth ... It fell on the white flannels of Hon ... It also fell on Lord Emsworth himself and on Beach, his faithful butler.
Hence, this description of all of the people that the sunshine has so unexpectedly fallen upon creates a comic effect because it is certainly an ironic description.
Further comic irony can be seen in Wodehouses description of the event concerning the telescope at the beginning of the story, particularly the moment the cow comes into play. We are told that Lord Emsworth purchased a telescope immediately after reading an article on astronomy, and, in the beginning of the story, he is giving the telescope a test run. However, what's very funny and ironic in the sense that it is different from what would be expected is that the first thing he looks at through the telescope is a cow. Lord Emsworth continues to look at the cow, while we would expect him to be looking at things more astronomically related, until he gets bored of the cow, or as the author more comically phrases it:
It was a fine cow, as cows go, but like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest. Surfeited after a while by the spectacle of it chewing cud and staring glassily at nothing, Lord Emsworth decided to swivel the apparatus ....
In this passage, the phrase "sustained dramatic interest" is certainly a
comic way to describe the cow as it contrasts
greatly with what cows are and do. Something that creates "sustained
dramatic interest" would likely be more active, like a wildcat roaming through
the estate's park, and just like the author describes, the cow is chewing cud
and "staring glassily at nothing." Hence the descriptive phrase of the cow
creates comedy by being a very true, ironic contrast with the cow. In addition,
even the descriptive phrase "staring glassily at nothing"
creates a comic effect by simply describing what's perfectly true about
cows.
Hence, we see that a great deal of comedy can be seen all throughout the story
in many different forms.
What is the significance of the title in P.G. Wodehouse's "The Custody of the Pumpkin"?
The title of the story is somewhat ironic. The first hint is that “custody” usually refers to children, not pumpkins. In the story, Lord Emsworth seems to care more about his prize-contending pumpkin than his own son, whom he has “little use for” (p. 44).
The “fluffy-minded” Earl of Elmsworth has trouble prioritizing (p. 43). He seems to care about his garden and his prize pumpkins, and he is more concerned about his gardener quitting than his son’s desire to marry the gardener’s cousin.
Reason, so violently expelled, came stealing timidly back to her throne, and a cold hand seemed suddenly placed upon his heart. (p. 49)
Uh oh! There’s no one to take care of the pumpkin. The pumpkin will definitely not win any prizes under the care of the “deputy head gardener” who is “not up to the job of preparing his precious pumpkin, "The Hope of Blandings", for the Shrewsbury Show” (enotes Wikipedia page). This is ironic because he is concerned about the pumpkin, not the son.
Page numbers refer to: http://www.unz.org/Pub/WagnallFunk-1927v10-00043
How does Wodehouse mock British social class in "The Custody of the Pumpkin"?
In his short story “The Custody of the Pumpkin,” P. G. Wodehouse mocks the system of social class in Britain almost immediately. Examples simply from the first few pages of the story include the following:
- Lord Emsworth can’t see anything but blackness when he looks into his newly-purchased telescope; it is his butler who notices that the telescope’s cap is still attached. The butler, although inferior in social status, is clearly the more observant – and perhaps also the more intelligent – of the two.
- Lord Emsworth, having ordered the butler to fetch his lordship’s hat, has the butler put the hat on his lordship’s head – as if he is too grand to do so himself, or perhaps too used to having others do even the most basic chores for him.
- Lord Emsworth’s attitude toward his younger son, Freddie, is compared unfavorably to the attitude of a codfish toward its numerous spawn – a comparison that inevitably makes Lord Emsworth seems an object of humor.
- Freddie, although from an aristocratic family, seems incapable of managing his money effectively; he gets into debt whenever he goes to London.
- Freddie in general is presented as shallow and fatuous. His life of leisure and privilege has given him little incentive to develop very much as a mature human being.
- Freddie’s way of speaking seems fashionably colloquial; he does not sound like a serious person, and this lack of seriousness is again probably attributable to the all-too-comfortable life he has led because of his lofty status in the system of British social classes.
- Lord Emsworth’s anger when he learns that his son has become engaged to a commoner suggests the extent to which money, rather than love, is most important to his view of marriage.
- Lord Emsworth’s gardener, though described as a man who seems both honest and intelligent, is Emsworth’s social inferior simply because Emsworth has more money and a longer pedigree:
Honesty Angus McAllister’s face had in full measure, and also intelligence . . .
Emsworth's son seems neither especially honest nor especially intelligent, but he outranks Angus McAllister in social class.
Does the pumpkin in "The Custody of the Pumpkin" by P.G. Wodehouse maintain its importance throughout the story? How so?
The use of an award-winning vegetable (although really a fruit), as the sole source of interest in the life of Lord Emworth is Roald Dahl's way to use sarcasm when exposing the worthless waste of time, money, and intelligence that the Earl engages in day after day. The pumpkin comes later in the story because Dahl has to juxtapose its worth to the net worth of the Blandings, the rank of the Earl, his position in society, and his intellectual acumen. Therefore, Dahl first presents the grandiosity of aristocratic life only to deflate it by making his main character, a patriarch by right, into a dull, myopic man who can only care about worthless things.
Although Freddie, Lord Emsworth's worthless son, causes him a lot of grief, by being as equally asinine as his father, the actual emotion in the Lord's life comes directly from the pumpkin. The devotion that he gives to the pumpkin, as well as to the pig that he also takes to competitions, gives a very good indirect characterization of the Earl of Blandings.
First, we realize that he is, overall, very shallow. He is terrible at prioritizing, and places importance on trivial things: his vegetables, the pig, his flowers, and his naps. As a social commentary, this is a direct satire of the upper, aristocratic classes in England who lived too oblivious of the world outside of their own. Literature of the Victorian/Edwardian periods are rife with characterizations quite similar to that of Lord Emsworth's; it is clear that the writers of the generation do want to send out a general message of how different social class makes its members.
As of whether the pumpkin retains its importance, the answer is that it does. In fact, it is not hard to correlate the pumpkin to the ultimate good news that come to Lord Emsworth at the end of the story: there may be a chance for his son end his idle life thanks to the intervention of powerful acquaintances that became involved in the story when Lord Emsworth lost his common sense and wandered the streets of London in search his gardener. Hence, the pumpkin is ultimately the agent of change in the story: it is the need to care for it that caused the crisis in the life of the Lord; the fact that such care was safeguarded brought with it good changes that may mean a lot to someone as limited in focus and ambition as Lord Emsworth.
How does P.G. Wodehouse use animal imagery to discuss character relationships in "The Custody of The Pumpkin"?
In addition to the comparison of Freddie to a rabbit, the reader of "The Custody of The Pumpkin" will find other instances where Wodehouse uses animal characteristics to describe his characters’ mannerisms or states of mind.
After seeing Freddie embracing Aggie, a furious Lord Emsworth descends to the terrace of Blandings Castle to wait for Freddie to return from the garden. Wodehouse writes, “Here he [Lord Emsworth] prowled like an elderly leopard waiting for feeding-time.” By comparing Lord Emsworth to a leopard, Wodehouse gives the reader the impression that his lordship is in a particularly ferocious state of mind, a far cry from his normally amiable disposition.
While pondering the prospect of supporting Freddie and Aggie, Lord Emsworth stands in the middle of a London street, “gaping like a fish.” The simile describes the severity of the shock induced by the thought of having his son married to a young woman from, he assumes, a family of modest means. The reader can easily picture the comic sight of the Earl struck dumb and immobile in the middle of a bustling street, a place where people are usually brisk and purposeful.
Shortly thereafter, Lord Emsworth is admiring a bed of flowers and, transfixed by its beauty, is said to be “Pointing like a setter” at the flowers that have arrested his attention. By likening Lord Emsworth to a bird dog, Wodehouse evokes the image of a setter when it becomes oblivious to all else upon catching the scent of a game bird. Here we have another comic image of Lord Emsworth losing his wits at a time he should be applying himself to worldly problems like Freddie's upcoming marriage.
During the ensuing confrontation with the constable and the gardener, passersby stop to watch and jeer at Lord Emsworth as he tries to prove that he is an earl and not just a scruffy flower thief. Wodehouse writes that the crowd “laughed like a hyena,” suggesting that the crowd took an atavistic delight in seeing someone as prominent as Emsworth vexed by a common gardener and an indifferent constable.
Wodehouse, P.G. “The Custody of the Pumpkin,” Blandings Castle. Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1935.
How does Wodehouse create colorfulness through character descriptions in "The Custody of the Pumpkin"?
One way Wodehouse is successful in creating colorful characters is that he chooses colorful situations, imagery and similes to associate them with when he describes them and what they do. The two principle characters introduced in such colorful ways in "The Custody of the Pumpkin" are the Hon. Freddie Threepwood Emsworth and Lord Emsworth, Freddie's father.
To initially describe Lord Emsworth, Wodehouse has Emsworth--in a colorful situation--bungle the operation of his astronomical telescope. Beach, his invaluable manservant and butler, rescues Emsworth by suggesting that if perhaps he might remove the cap covering the end of the telescope, Emsworth might see more than a black void. Emsworth agreeably requests that Beach to do so while requesting that Beach place the hat he has been holding upon his Lordship's head, an act Beach is kindly disposed to perform. This colorful situation adds a great deal of color to Emsworth's character.
'Perhaps if I were to remove the cap at the extremity of the instrument, ,'lord, more satisfactory results might be obtained.'
Later, Emsworth is compared in a simile to an "elderly prowling leopard," a colorful simile especially if you note that elderly leopards are probably missing a good number of teeth and are far less robust than youthful ones.
Freddie is associated with a good deal of colorful imagery. His initial introduction is amidst the imagery of a sunny summer garden swimming in "amber" color from the sun's golden light that falls on "rolling parks" and "gardens." This heavenly amber light falls also upon Freddie. The imagery gives a good deal of color (more than just amber) to Freddie's character.
The morning sunshine descended like an amber shower-bath on Blandings Castle, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied walls, its rolling parks, its gardens ... [and] the white flannels of the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's second son, hurrying across the water-meadows.
A later image has Freddie "sunken in a roseate trance" of love, following a "warm embrace," in a sunny mood in which he "gambolled up," rather like a "beaming sheep," to encounter his father who is a bit put out by the witnessed "warm embrace."
Wodehouse uses irony, tone, repetition, hyperbole, contrast, and benign
conflict in creating Lord Emsworth and Angus so that they are as interesting
and colorful as they are. irony often underpins the occupations of Lord
Emsworth. For instance, he may be described as being "in conference," which is
a serious occupation. The subject of the conference is then revealed as
something so greatly elevated as that of sweet peas. This strategy creates
irony. Irony of this sort, which is mixed with a playful narratorial tone,
lends color to the character involved.
The narrator's tone, which is richly filtered through the author's voice
(similar to the way Austen's narratorial tone is marked by her own voice), is
light and playful--almost lilting. This tone is developed through employing
literary techniques of assonance and repetition. Lord Emsworth's and Angus's
names are demonstrative of assonance. Lord Emsworth's proper title is Earl of
Emsworth; both parts begin with /e/, which produces assonance. Angus's name is
Angus McAllister; the /a/sounds produce assonance.
At times, when describing Angus, Emsworth, in indirect narratorial dialogue,
will employ repetition by repeatedly saying of Angus that he is "looking
Scotch." The narrator adds hyperbole through such ironic comments as describing
Emsworth as a "sensitive employer." Since we know that often Angus disturbs
Emsworth's tranquility over conferences involving weighty topics such as sweet
peas and pumpkins, we think of Emsworth more as a persnickety employer.
Hyperbole enters with any exaggeration or overstatement, for instance, when
Emsworth is described as the "castle's owner and overlord." Contrast adds to
colorful characterization, for example, the contrast of having a conference in
a potting shed. A significant technique in creating colorful characters is the
benign conflict between them: their conflict is over sweet peas, pumpkins and
gardening technique.