“It is true
of course, that I have a will of iron, but it can be switched off if the
circumstances seem to demand it.”
Overview
The story revolves around the
visit of Bertie Wooster and his butler, Jeeves to a rural neighbourhood, getting
involved in an interesting love triangle, a secretive trade deal, a problematic
matrimony and what not!
While for most novels, humour is
only a means of making the narrative more interesting, Joy in the Morning is
one of the few novels (and probably one of the best) which has humour at its
very core.
What makes the Novel Humorous?
Unlike movies wherein visuals and
audio are exploited to evolve humour, a written text enjoys limited creative
faculties, namely storyline, writing style and characters,
to convey the comedy. Wodehouse has exploited each of these creative
instruments to create a rib-tickling novel.
The storyline, is made up
of a delicately thought-out ‘concatenation of events.’ These events, however, seem
absurd and stupid, when seen in isolation (for example, a school boy burning a
house or a fiancé repeatedly changing her to-be husbands after her engagement).
Similarly, the characters
although hilarious, are unreal. Instead of building believable, deep
characters, the novel relies on the oft-used technique of slapstick comedy- overly
pronouncing a particular character trait of every character, so as to make
them seem stupid and hence, funny. However, in doing this, the
author has ended up making one-dimensional character with little depth.
That said, the witty narration
more than compensates for the slapstick characters and absurd storyline. Unusual
phrases, strange words and exotic literary quotes (and misquotes)
have been employed to describe events, so as to make the narrative amusing and
witty.
For example, consider this extract from the novel, which talks about the narrator’s visit to a bar-
“The appointment to which I had alluded was with the barman at the Bollinger. Seldom, if ever, had I felt in such sore need of a restorative. I headed for my destination like a hart streaking towards cooling streams, when heated in the chase, and was speedily in conference with the dispenser of life savers.”
The witty narrative, slapstick characters and farcical storyline- put together, make an amusing laugh riot!
History of the Novel and its Reflections in the Text
Most of the novel was written by
Wodehouse in France, during the Phoney war. However, he was interrupted by the
German occupation of France, in 1940, imprisoned for being a British national.
He left the unfinished manuscript of the novel with his wife.
 |
| PG Wodehouse (Source: Encyclopedia Britannica) |
He completed the unfinished
manuscript in Germany and finally published it in 1946. Wodehouse wondered
about how Joy in the Morning would be received, given its delayed
publication. In a letter from 1946, he wrote, “my stuff has been out of date
since 1914, and nobody has seemed to mind.”
In view of the circumstances
under which Joy in the Morning was written, Wodehouse’s biography calls
it a ‘brilliant example of Wodehouse's literary escapism.’
Nevertheless, it is interesting
to note how circumstances in which a novel has been written reflects in the
novel itself. For example, Wodehouse refers to a fire in a house as a
‘holocaust’ and talks appreciatively of Napolean.
“Well, everybody enjoys a good fire, of course, and for a while it was in a purely detached and appreciative spirit that I stood eyeing the holocaust”
“Well, there it is. That’s Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.”
Why read it?
If you are looking for a fun-to-read, refreshing and amusing 300 pages, this is the book for you. I suggest you to read Joy in the Morning to appreciate the use of superior forms of language to evolve humour and succinctly describe emotions and realisations.
“There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.”
Very well written Abhimanyu. I have never read a PGW maybe I will pick one -now
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