Poor, Bored Brenda
Tony’s wife Brenda is almost a caricature of the idle rich who prove the rule that when you don’t have to work very hard for anything, not much of anything seems very interesting. Her manner when kissing Tony provides a metaphor that efficiently delineates her entire personality:
“She turned her lips away and rubbed against his cheek like a cat. It was a way she had.”
Simple, Oblivious Tony
Metaphorical language is also engaged to describe Tony. In this case, through dialogue rather than narrative description.
Brenda said to Allan, “Tony’s as happy as a sandboy, isn’t he?”
“Full of beans.”
These two idiomatic phrase both describe a sense of happiness and contentment that belies an understanding of the true nature of what is going on. Thus, Brenda and Allan are describing a man who may be happy, but whose happiness is the result of a blissful sort of ignorance.
"She looks like a monkey."
The “she” is Lady Cockpurse. The attribution is metaphorical in more than mere physical appearance. Although enjoying the benefits that come with being of the aristocratic class, the Lady is simian in manners and resembles of a lower member of the primate class in intellect.
A Cat Woman Man
The monkey lady manages to convince Brenda that her husband Tony should have an affair and much deliberation the woman with whom Tony should have an affair is decided upon: Jenny Abdul Akbar. A better choice seems highly unlikely as both Jenny and Brenda seem to share a particularly feline sense of femininity to which Tony seems drawn. Jenny’s flirtatious manner with Tony—whom she has decided to call Teddy—reveals all:
“I like just to curl up like a cat in front of the fire, and if you’re nice to me I’ll purr, and if you’re cruel I shall pretend not to notice—just like a cat... Shall I purr, Teddy?”
Hetton Abbey
The ancestral estate at the center of the narrative is a metaphor for its owner much like another ancestral manor home made famous on TV in the 21st century. Unlike Downtown Abbey, however, Hetton Abbey’s metaphorical significance as a symbol of outdated anachronism in a modern world is also abetted by being architecturally out of sync. It is an amalgam of various different periods and styles that are not only individual outdated, but as a collective entity are absent any singular identity, much like its owner whose very name indicates an end has come: Tony Last.
