Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Many of Chips’s most detailed memories are of strolling in the Lake District with Katherine during those first happy weeks when they are planning their future together. She is relieved and excited to learn that his profession is teaching, rather than a more mercantile trade, and assures him that she will be delighted to live among the boys with him at Brookfield. She sees his job as the all-important one of setting children on the right path in life, but he counters that he only does his “best.” In another “gem-clear” memory, Chips humbles himself further, telling her frankly of his “mediocre degree,” his disciplinary failures, and his fears that he would never win the love of a young, ambitious woman like herself. At this, she laughs in disbelief. On the eve of their wedding, just before they part for the night, she commemorates their last goodbye with “mock gravity,” addressing him formally as his students do: “Goodbye, Mr. Chips…” (20).

Chips’s marriage to Katherine is a great success, and in old age, he still has trouble believing that such happiness could really have been his. She quickly “conquers” Brookfield, where everyone takes to her, even the wives of the other masters, who may be jealous of her.