Brideshead Revisited

“Here my last love died. There was nothing remarkable in the manner of its death.”

Charles’s assessment in the Prologue that his hope for life in the army has died correlates with the loss of the world of the aristocracy in which most of the novel takes place. Though Charles is not himself a member of this world, its decline represents, to him and to the novel, a pleasant image of British life that has now evaporated.

“She was stripped of all enchantment now and I knew her for an uncongenial stranger to whom I had bound myself indissolubly in a moment of folly.”

In this line, Charles treats his decision to join the army like a marriage, one that he now regrets. This foreshadows the novel’s prevailing attitude about heterosexual marriage, which it views as more related to confinement than to any sort of familial happiness.

“I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey—which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend.”

Sebastian’s expectation that Charles might pretend to have tasted a wine he’s never had suggests that Sebastian assumes Charles will attempt to claim knowledge of the upper classes that he actually lacks. His presumption also suggests that certain experiences are the “property” of the upper classes. Sebastian implies that he disdains any attempted social climbing or affected social superiority, even as he unconsciously reifies the class system.