The Paradox of Prestige: Unravelling Personal Snobbery in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945) is undoubtedly his best and most famous fictional text. Ever since its publication, the novel has been studied and addressed copiously and from different perspectives. It has, for instance, been frequently studied on religious grounds with clear reference to Evelyn Waugh’s Catholicism. In this regard, some studies have investigated the influence of St. Augustine on the novel while some others have explicitly addressed the Catholic faith in the text. Besides, some studies have critically read Waugh’s novel with connection to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Other studies have analyzed the topics of class and gender in the novel as its chief characters demonstrate a class gap apparently belonging to lower and upper classes. Further studies have touched upon the concept of moral and religious decadence as reflected in the novel, whereas more studies treated the topic of manliness and masculinity as depicted in the novel. Yet, no study—to the researcher’s best knowledge—has critically examined the issues of the paradox of prestige and personal snobbery in the novel in a single effort. In view of that, the current research study aims to address and analyze the paradox of prestige and unravel the personal snobbery in Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. The paper at hand also aims to address and study the various aspects of the social and religious life and their backgrounds such as class, etiquette and mannerism, gender and sex and others to find out how they affect and influence characters in their overall attitude, thinking and way of life. Keywords: Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, Paradox of Prestige, Unravel, Personal Snobbery