Evelyn Waugh and the Problems of Representing Conversion

Evelyn Waugh’s conversion to Catholicism in 1930 raised the question of how his writing would change. The satires he wrote before his conversion, Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies (1930), are hilarious but have no spiritual vision. Critics attacked his second novel after his conversion, A Handful of Dust (1934), for not being fitting for a Catholic writer to have made. Yet, Waugh makes a religious point in A Handful of Dust, exploring the wages of spiritual apathy without showing a path out. Later in Waugh’s career, he makes his finest attempt in the Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-1961) to show the possibility of transcendent activity in an immanent world. The world at war in the trilogy is even more broken than the interwar world of A Handful of Dust. Yet, Waugh shows the subtle instrumentalization of broken people and situations to transform spiritual apathy and boredom into change and conversion. The gracelessness of A Handful of Dust illumines the subtle grace in the Sword of Honour. I argue that the war trilogy is best read and understood not in isolation as Waugh’s magnum opus but in relationship with his other works. Advisor: Laura White