Comedy as a Vehicle for Critique Anonymous College

Vile Bodies is an amusing text which considers the trivial concerns of the youth of upper class London society in the early 20th century. The novel is often absurd and the plethora of characters who weave in and out of the narrative can leave the reader disorientated. It is always challenging to decipher authorial intention but Aldington’s suggestion that Waugh is chiefly trying to amuse us is difficult to accept in the context of the novel. Comedy can serve as a vehicle for more serious critique and this essay will argue that this is the case in Vile Bodies.[1] Vile Bodies is carefully crafted in order to amuse the reader and parallels may be drawn between the novel and modern art, a form which Waugh expressed interest in during his youth. Allen suggests that the novel gives ‘a patchwork effect’ which establishes ‘an impersonal narrative which is self-perpetuating’.[2] This patchwork effect may be said to emulate the characteristics of cubism, a popular modern art movement which rejected the ‘Western single-viewpoint perspective’.[3] The intended impact of cubism may be said to be to strike rather than move the critic which supports Aldington’s suggestion that Waugh seeks aesthetic impact rather than to embed his work with...