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“I was surprised to find how little there was about servants written by servants, given that a sizable proportion of people in this country were employed in service right up until the Second World War. It was amazing that so few of them had thought their lives worth recording. So most of the stuff in The Remains of the Day … was made up.” (Source) Kazuo Ishiguro made this statement to the Paris Review in 2008, remarking on the basis of his Booker Prize-winning novel that follows an aging butler from a great English estate on a road trip across the English countryside. Stevens, now in the employ of a genial American gentleman, is encouraged to take a drive across the countryside while his master is traveling, which he uses as an excuse to visit a former colleague, Miss Kenton, whom he hopes to persuade to return to her post at Darlington Hall.
The novel is filled with lush descriptions of the stately English countryside—tranquil ponds and rolling hills, etc.—which offer a subdued setting for Stevens’ reminiscences of his career at the estate that he’s leaving for the first time in decades. Stevens’ subtle narration comes in the form of diary entries of his journey, which alternate between ruminations on the landscape, and recollections of Stevens’ time at Darlington Hall. He frames his early entries around the question of “what makes a great butler?”, diving into larger topics of dignity and loyalty. Stevens initially learned his trade from his father, a deeply aloof man whose commitment to his professional duties prevented him from forming meaningful connections with anyone, even his son. Stevens’ deep respect for his father is colored by a disturbing lack of warmth, as he recalls the day his father died during an important gathering at Darlington Hall, and Stevens wouldn’t even spare a minute to visit him.
Stevens’ journey is also filled with reflections on the woman he is driving to visit, a former housekeeper who left Darlington Hall years before because of her engagement. Miss Kenton has written a letter that her marriage is in decline, and it is clear to the reader that Stevens sees an opportunity to reconnect with the woman he once loved, but he refuses to admit this even to himself. It also becomes clear that Miss Kenton did not leave Darlington solely because of her marriage, but out of a growing frustration at Stevens’ inability to express human emotions towards her or anyone, a result of his all-consuming commitment to his professional duty.
It is all the more frustrating, as it seems that Stevens had hitched his horse to a faulty carriage. The master that he respects so deeply, the one whom he derives his sense of dignity from, had met a great deal of disgrace before his death. Stevens was serving a Nazi sympathizer, a conduit for Hitler’s deception of the British public, a man let astray by his own ideals of justice and the importance of diplomacy. There is so much below the surface here, though Stevens cannot make the leap to condemn his disgraced master, Lord Darlington, he clearly begins the question the system to which he has so closely adhered to. Stevens’ perfectionist attitude towards his work is slowly revealed to be a waste, his reward will be loneliness.
The brilliance of this novel partially lies in Ishiguro’s ability to blur the lines between the individual and the universal. Stevens’ introspection is not only a meditation on his professional life, but a meditation on an English society in collapse. This novel holds in its pages the collapse of British social and cultural life following the second World War, packaged as the collapse of a man’s belief system. Salman Rushdie wrote in his review of the novel, “The time-hallowed bonds between master and servant, and the codes by which both live, are no longer dependable absolutes but rather sources of ruinous self-deceptions; even the happy yokels Stevens meets on his travels turn out to stand for the post-war values of democracy and individual and collective rights which have turned Stevens and his kind into tragicomic anachronisms.” (Source) This novel follows a man who has become a relic, a participant in a social world that has lost all favor in post-World War II Europe.
The reality is that Stevens’ England is an empire in decline, no longer the standard-bearer of culture for the globe. As Lord Darlington declines in favor, so do the colonial ideals of elitist leaders that he represents. And thus Stevens must grapple with his own decline, as his dignity is closely aligned with his master’s. He begins questioning the path paved for him by his own closely held values of dignity and greatness. Just as his father passed away alone, Stevens is unable to secure a future with Miss Kenton because of his commitment to these values. The Remains of the Day questions a colonial system that values loyalty and dignity over humanity, one whose class system has fostered untenable relationships. The novel’s final devastation is a deeply human quandary of free will, as Stevens concludes, “I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really, one has to ask oneself, what dignity is there in that?”. A cruel and unusual novel, one that will haunt the remains of your days.
Further Viewing: The 1993 Merchant/Ivory adaptation, for those more interested in a British romance picture.