The Jolly Corner

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1908

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Character Analysis

Spencer Brydon

Spencer Brydon is the protagonist of the story. He is an expatriate who has come back to the US to handle his properties. From the very opening of the story, Brydon characterizes himself as an outsider: He is introduced explaining that he usually avoids questions because he is positive his thoughts are relevant only to him. It emerges that Brydon was also estranged from his relatives and is now the only surviving member of his family, further underscoring his isolation. Likewise, he professes discomfort both with the urbanized and mercenary turn of modern American culture and with the time he spent in Europe, which he characterizes as directionless and self-indulgent. In speaking of that period of his life, he references “the freedom of a wanderer, overlaid by pleasure, by infidelity, by passages of life that were strange and dim” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 4).

This inability to be at home anywhere stems in part from The Fear of Missed Opportunity. Brydon is reluctant to take definite action for fear of closing off some other path, but his very inaction has by this point shaped the course of his life. Consequently, he obsesses over alternate possibilities, which causes the main conflict of the story: his rendezvous with his alter ego. Though initially interested in how his life would have turned out if he had stayed in America—he seems to hope to somehow reconcile the two versions of himself or at least to justify his chosen course—he is deeply unsettled by the experience and quick to dismiss his alter ego as a monster. This can be interpreted in multiple ways, ranging from acceptance of his choices to repression of an integral part of himself, as it is not clear that Brydon’s American self is actually very different from his European one. For example, if Brydon is struck by his double’s cruelty or selfishness, these are traits that are also latent in Brydon—e.g., in the way he takes Alice Staverton’s companionship for granted.

This renders the story’s ending even more ambiguous. Although Brydon recognizes his attachment to Alice and expresses his gratitude toward her, his refusal to acknowledge his darker side implies that he may take advantage of her care and comfort. Ultimately, Brydon is a study in The Discontinuity of Identity, remaining a stranger to himself despite his halfhearted attempts at self-discovery.

Alice Staverton

Alice Staverton is Brydon’s only meaningful relationship in the entire story. She was a companion from his younger years with whom he has reconnected since returning to the US. According to Brydon, she has not changed at all in their decades apart, which he finds comforting. Although she makes use of public transportation, she too prefers the “older” days of New York, with its defined social order and structure.

Alice is an ambiguous figure, in part because the reader only encounters her through Brydon’s perspective. By and large, she conforms to the almost saintly role expected of 19th-century women. Her love for Brydon is obvious and apparently unconditional; she has not married despite his long absence, and at one point she asks him, “How should I not have liked you?” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 23). She is also patient and encouraging, touring the jolly corner with him and listening to his anxieties about the other directions his life might have taken. This culminates in her role as a savior to Brydon after his ordeal with his alter ego. She rushes to find him when her intuition tells her something is amiss, and he wakes to her cradling him in her lap.

Nevertheless, it is unclear whether the couple will live happily ever after. For one, there are hints that Alice does in fact resent Brydon’s abandonment of her—e.g., her remark that Brydon can “afford” to preserve the jolly corner, which even he recognizes as sarcasm but assures himself contains no “bitterness.” Moreover, her attitude toward Brydon’s alter ego is ambivalent and shifting. She implies but never outright says that she prefers Brydon as he is, and she finally accedes to his insistence that the alter ego has nothing in common with him. Her willingness to indulge Brydon coupled with the ambiguity of her feelings for him render the ending open to multiple interpretations.