HL Essay: In what ways is English identity represented in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day?

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day, opens with a prologue set in 1956. The novel is narrated by the ageing English butler, Stevens, who has served at Darlington Hall since 1918 and who, in a series of flashbacks, slowly reveals details of his life in the stately home throughout the years preceding World War 2. By 1956, Lord Darlington, exposed as a Nazi-sympathizer, is dead, and Darlington Hall, his ancestral estate, is owned by an American, Mr Farraday. This, in itself, is symbolic of the decline of British power, and the emergence of America as one of the world’s dominant superpowers. Significantly too, 1956 was the year of the Suez Crisis (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica), a series of events, never mentioned in the novel, that saw Britain humiliated and its influence in the Middle East decline. Stevens, as narrator and protagonist, embodies English identity, or at least a particular anachronistic version of this identity. A man of outdated beliefs, he does not recognize Britain’s diminished status in 1956, failing to keep pace with broader societal change. Seemingly, too, he is blind to the historical attitudes, values, and class structure of English life which have contributed to the nation’s waning influence and his own wasted life of domestic service. It is, then, through the lens that Steven’s offers and the characters with whom he interacts that Ishiguro surveys English identity in a time of change. His representation is a multi-dimensional one, both critical and affectionate, but also comical as he highlights the absurdity of English attitudes and characteristics.

Through a series of contradictory claims, readers learn that Stevens is a particularly unreliable narrator and, through rereading his narrative, they understand how Steven’s self-deception obscures the truth. A key trope in the novel is ‘blindness’, and this is most obvious in Stevens’ reluctance or inability to fully recognize reality. The underlying reason for Stevens’ self-deceit hinges on his unwillingness to concede that his life has been wasted in his devotion to the disgraced Lord Darlington. In fulfilling the role of a perfect butler to an antisemite, he also rejects the love of Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall. It is these life choices that are central to Steven’s ultimate regret and to the sense of pathos that pervades the novel. Additionally, it is Stevens’ blindness and his unreliable narration that Ishiguro, the writer, exploits to characterize less flattering aspects of English identity. In the Prologue, for example, Mr Farraday urges Stevens to take a short break away from Darlington Hall to “see” England, to which Stevens’ responds that “it has been my privilege to see the best of England over the years, sir, within these very walls” (p.4). Ironically, readers eventually learn, the opposite is true, and Stevens has in fact been witness to the naivety of Lord Darlington, the quintessential English aristocrat, in his dalliance with the Nazis. Naivety, therefore, comes to represent a particularly English trait, and the American, Mr Lewis, makes this clear during the 1923 conference when he tells delegates that Lord Darlington is “an amateur” at politics (p.102). Interestingly, Mr. Lewis precedes this charge by saying that Lord Darlington is “a classic English gentleman. Decent, honest, well-meaning” (ibid). Here, Mr. Lewis highlights an underpinning aspect of Englishness – that is, a sense of ‘fair play’ – which is precisely what the Nazis exploit. It is a view that Lord Darlington himself concedes. Motivated by misplaced altruism, and notions of the English ‘stiff upper-lip’, Lord Darlington wishes to reverse aspects of the Treaty of Versailles that bring poverty to the lives of Germans, including his friend, Herr Bremann. This is revealed in an exchange between Stevens and Lord Darlington in 1920 when he says, “it does us discredit to treat a defeated foe like this. A complete break with the traditions of this country” (p.71). Readers recognize that, like Stevens, Lord Darlington is blind, unable to see the treachery of Hitler and his Nazi party.

Stevens claims that English identity is like its landscape. In a lengthy description of the English countryside, he argues that while the English landscape is undramatic, it is exactly this quality, a “lack of obvious drama”, that contributes to the nation’s “greatness” (p.28). It is a typically priggish claim, but it is also an ironic one. Stevens has spent most of his life confined to Darlington Hall. His view of England, reserved and understated, is almost entirely second-hand and vicarious. At several points in the novel, Stevens mentions Mrs Jane Symon’s work, The Wonders of England, a title that shares Stevens’s own jingoistic arrogance. It is primarily from this encyclopedia, filled with line drawings rather than photographic representation, that Stevens derives his sense of England. When he argues that the book, originally written in the 1930s, “would still be up to date” (p.11), he is surely wrong or delusional. His view of England is of a glorious, imagined past that, if it ever existed, no longer does.

The undemonstrative English landscape stands as a metonym for English identity. For Stevens, this identity is embodied in qualities of restraint and ‘dignity’, qualities that, he claims, the greatest butlers possess. In fact, paralleling Lord Darlington’s own racist opinions, it is Stevens’ view that it is only the English who innately possess the essential characteristics for ‘butlering’. He says, “continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of emotional restraint” (p.43). For Stevens, therefore, it is this ‘quality’ of emotional suppression that is an essential characteristic of English identity and of great butlers. Stevens aspires to be and, in fact, superciliously regards himself as the ‘perfect butler’. As he says, “great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost” (pp.42-43). However, it is this ambition, which includes the suppression of desire and personal fulfillment, that underpins the novel’s comic and tragic qualities.

Stevens uses the extended metaphor of the ‘tiger under the table’ to illustrate the English quality of self-restraint. He demonstrates this in a series of anecdotes, two of which involve his father, William. This particularly English trait of composed dispassion is expressed in ways to suggest that it is an admirable quality. However, it is not only an attribute; in his final anecdote, Stevens reveals how his father briefly worked as a valet to a general whose incompetence led to the death of William’s son, Leonard (Stevens’ older brother) during the Second Boer War. For Stevens, his father’s dutiful service to the general exemplifies the characteristically English quality of stoicism, but readers are likely to imagine that Stevens’ father had clear grounds to express indignant anger. Moreover, the anecdote is an example of English class stratification, and the apparently ‘natural’ servility of the lower-classes in an ingrained class structure that prevents progressive change in English society. Stevens fails to question England’s class-based hierarchy, and instead seems to endorse it in his ambition to be the perfect butler. The consequence of this world-view for Stevens is immense, and is central to his sense of regret for a wasted life as he approaches old age. Readers may be frustrated by Stevens lack if self-insight and irritated by his pompous, archaic attitudes. However, they surely share his pain as he chooses to serve port during the 1923 conference rather than attend to his dying father in his own ‘tiger under the table’ moment.

While Stevens and Lord Darlington share a belief that what characterizes English identity are qualities such as even-handedness and reserve, it is this distinguishing trait that leads to Lord Darlington’s downfall, Stevens’ ultimate sense of regret, and it is also the source of much of the novel’s slapstick humour. English reserve may also be regarded as repression, and this is most acutely observed in the episodes where Steven’s euphemistically attempts to teach the soon-to-be-married Reginald Cardinal about sex. Since Stevens is unable to express himself directly, to great comic effect, they misunderstand one another, each believing that they are discussing quite different things.

It is repression that leads Stevens to reject Miss Kenton in favour of Lord Darlington, and the repression is made clear in Stevens’ outmoded speech where he frequently uses neutral and ambiguous words such as “quite” and “indeed”, never able to assert what he actually thinks or feels. This inner-suppression, typical of the English, is made apparent in the considerable differences of attitude and voice as a cast of Americans, French, and Germans appear in the novel. However, readers would be wrong to assume that Stevens and Lord Darlington are the singular representation of English identity. Instead, they are one version of it. Readers can be somewhat hopeful that English identity is heterogeneous and in the process of progressive change. During his journey, Stevens encounters a cross-section of English society, and not least the characters of Dr Carlisle and Harry Smith who hold more socially liberal outlooks, apparently determined to bring to an end class-based feudalism. 

Word count: 1494

Works Cited:

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Suez Crisis". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Feb. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/event/Suez-Crisis. Accessed 16 February 2023.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. 1989.