Dignity.


The novel The Remains of the Day is a novel about dignity. This word pops up now and then like a thread of pearls attracting details and decorations. By decorations I mean the words that underline and are the textual synonyms to the word dignity: “professionals”, “the embodiment”, “employer and employee”and “greatness ”. It feels like ‘dignity’ here is tightly connected to a professional sphere. Language itself as a high standard of speaking skills that Stevens practiced hard accompanied ‘dignity’. People take him for the Lord or a high rank of politician. On many occasions Stevens makes use of such phrases like “the ability to draw up a good staff plan is the cornerstone of any decent butler’s skills”. ” It reads like an introduction to butler’s daily routine. Those butlers who were really skillful were eulogized by their colleagues and upper class households, were talked about and after some blunder they were gossiped about, made a figure of fun by the latter and faced their downfall.

Stevens tells the story of Mr. Neighbours who was really the best butler and he was in the limelight for some short years. We can just imagine what sort of thoughts Stevens could have about Mr. Neighbours to predict his downfall. Stevens is in the know about tactic and strategies in talking to his colleagues and employers otherwise he would also face downfall and never work as a butler in such a prestigious household like Darlington Hall. The anecdote about a butler who had been taken to India by his employer and found a tiger under the dining table but performed the same high standards as he commanded in England demonstrates to us the dignified reaction that both Stevens’ father and Stevens himself were trying hard to achieve.

Details appear also as different stories about Stevens’ father. He shows his dignity to the company of the drunken guests to their verbal offence by opening the door of the car in such a manner that each one of them was instantly sober. Stevens is proud of his father and he loves him. At the day of father’s death he couldn’t keep from crying. And that is the only episode in the whole book when real feelings burst out of his eyes while he was serving at the significant reception. Nobody realized what tragedy happened in Stevens’ life. He himself said how proud his father would be if he knew that his son didn’t leave his work and therefore didn’t attract everyone’s attention to his personal matter. “…’dignity’ is something one can meaningfully strive for throughout one’s career.”- says Stevens. It was the long life striving for both father and the son.

Butlers do have dignity despite of their being displayed as a performing monkey for guests entertainment as it had become an established sport to put a butler random questions to check his intellect as it happened once to Stevens when Lord Darlington rang for him in the night for Mr. Spenser and Sir Leonard pleasure to mock on Stevens. Stevens understands the difference between him, a poor servant, and those rich and influential people, who were staying in Darlington hall. He didn’t let himself burst into his real feelings. He restrained his feelings. Lord Darlington came to apologize in front of his butler. And I wonder what ‘dignity’ here is for Stevens. Is it a sort of wisdom in restraining his emotions, avoiding temptation to show off? And after all he doesn’t judge anyone: neither Lord Darlington and his guests or Mr. Farraday who bought Darlington hall together with Stevens to exhibit latter to his acquaintances as “the remains of the day”, the traditional English butlers’ staff representative. Does it mean that he put up with humiliation? I don’t think so. Even his silence is a talkative sign of Stevens’ dignity. His privacy was a little room like a cell in a prison where nobody was allowed to step in and criticize him, even a woman whom he was attracted by. Mss. Kenton was the only love in Stevens’ life, but he sacrificed his private life to Lord Darlington’s household. As it was shown in the novel people had to leave the butler’s career if they decided to get married. Probably, Stevens wouldn’t have known where to go if he supposed to start family with Mss. Kenton. Their last date was lit with love, good memory and Stevens’ hope that everything could be still possible, a little hope for private life. It was Mrs. Benn’s decision to keep her dignity and remain with her husband, her daughter and grandchildren-to-be. She found the sense of her life and her dignity in marriage.

Lord Darlington whom Stevens admired and devoted his life to died out of shame to be called a Nazi’s collaborator and pain of the unbearable loss when his God son was killed in Belgium during the World War II. Even Lords can pass away without being dignified. The narrator made an attempt to overview with integrity his life, thoughts, his way of behavior with the only purpose to estimate if there is something he had missed in his life and if he made the right choice to restrain his feelings. All in all it is about dignity that he preserved until his old age. The title of the novel in itself is the quintessence of the whole story: dignity is the only human value that remains at the end of everyone’s life. But why do I feel sorry for Stevens? Is it because his dignity appeared to be his curse and a prison?