Parade's End

Early on, the novel features the line, “Well, war is as inevitable as divorce…” (21). It is said that Parade’s End is a war novel without battle scenes and a romance without love scenes. That is because both serve as analogies for the other, rather than as separate entities. The relationship between Christopher and Sylvia can be described using military metaphors and similes. Sylvia, for most of the book, is on the offensive, while Christopher is on the defensive. The tide turns, however, in Christopher’s favor following the First World War. The two motifs run parallel to one another most of the book, before they intersect in Book 3, A Man Could Stand Up—, and finally diverge and parallel one another in the last book.

The novel opens in 1912, two years before the First World War erupted throughout Europe. In the first chapter, lines are drawn. Christopher almost acts like a neutral nation, whereas his friend Macmaster is fully allied with Christopher against Sylvia. However, Sylvia has a natural and powerful ally in Christopher’s godfather, General Campion, who worships Sylvia and even states, “[I]f there is anything wrong between them he’s to blame” (49). It is also no coincidence that Sylvia meets her mother and confessor, Father Consett, at a spa in Germany, the primary enemy for Great Britain in World War I. The language used to describe the evil woods and the paintings in the rooms focuses on fear and violence: “The walls of the large room were covered with pictures of animals in death agonies” (26). In conversation with Father Consett, Sylvia acquiesces to her fate of being a bored, chaste wife but makes her declarations of war: “I can torment that man” (41).

The next major event/battle occurs in No More Parades when Sylvia comes to France to see Christopher. She has already won several skirmishes and weakened Christopher’s position back home in England and even in the army. She spread rumors that ruined him socially and gave him a terrible reputation, and she has continued to undermine General Campion’s opinion of him, going so far as to accuse Christopher of being a socialist. Sylvia’s strategy is masterful. She uses her old lover, Major Perowne, the man with whom she initially ran away from Christopher just before she returned, to get her into France. Perowne understood that if he were to help her reach France, he would get to enjoy her feminine charms again. However, that is not the case. She pushes him to the point of despair once again with a loose invitation for him to come to her room later in the evening. Perowne is so enamored with her, she knows he will come begging for her later. General O’Hara’s involvement was not planned, but like any good strategist she takes advantage of the situation and flirts with him. Ultimately, the flirtation is more powerful than Perowne’s interruption. The entire evening, she attempts to get Christopher interested in her. It appears to work, or at least she can get him to come up with her to her room. That is when her battle plan and preparations come to fruition. She gets Christopher into so much trouble that General Campion transfers him to the front lines.

In A Man Could Stand Up—, the two motifs of love and war converge. The lines between the two blur. Christopher is fully engulfed in the necessities of combat, commanding troops and staying alive. When he is confronted by McKechnie about assuming command and about the Latin translation of his sonnet, Christopher’s thoughts turn to death as he laments Valentine will never know what happened to him. He is just on the cusp of his moral defeat, for Christopher states just before he remembers her, “he was crumpling up morally” (593). In this epiphany—that he still cares for Valentine after so much war—he finds a reason to fight and win. It marks the turning point.

In The Last Post, itself a symbol of the end of war, Christopher emerges from the trenches alive and ready to make a life for him and Valentine. Valentine, much like Christopher, was relatively passive in the first three books. Both allowed others to push them around. There were no offensives from either of them; at best, they \engaged in fighting withdrawal. However, the war affected her much as it did Christopher, and when Sylvia launches a surprise thrust by appearing at Christopher’s house claiming cancer, Valentine stands her ground and will not let Sylvia come between them. She emphatically tells Christopher that Sylvia is lying.

In the very last scene, the war between Sylvia and Christopher draws to a close. Sylvia even feels that the tide has turned in Christopher’s favor: “God had changed sides at the cutting down of Groby Great Tree” (805). Her rumors against Christopher no longer have the effect they once had either. People are beginning to see through her. Even General Campion, who is still enchanted by her physical beauty, alters his opinion of her. He knows that she lied about cancer, for example. Her attempts to undermine Mark’s reputation with a long-time friend/acquaintance, Lord Fittleworth, has no effect. She has even lost the name battle with her son. She prefers to call him Michael, a Satterthwaite name, but he prefers to call himself Mark, the name of his uncle, bringing him over to the Tietjens’s side. Ultimately, she realizes her final defeat and willfully surrenders when she learns Valentine is pregnant.

Parade’s End is indeed a war and romance novel. Love features prominently throughout, and the nature of love—what it is and what constitutes it—is always in question. As a backdrop, the book also uses the historical era and the horrors of the First World War to help illustrate the destructive nature of a bad marriage and the importance of having a reason to fight and survive.