37 pages • 1 hour read
Evelyn WaughThe Loved One
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1948A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Death American Style: Classism and Segregated Burials
Most people view death as the great equalizer: after all, the rich, famous, and powerful face the same mortal fate as everyone else. However, the characters in The Loved One have found a way to cash in on death—by maintaining the same class and racial divisions in death that exist among the living in 1940s Los Angeles.
When the mortuary hostess at Whispering Glades gives Dennis a tour of the cemetery, she explains that the park is divided into zones and that each section is named after a piece of art, adding that the zone pricing varies and that within each zone the prices differ according to a plot’s proximity to the piece of art. Cheap plots are available for only $50, but those poor souls must eternally rest “behind the crematory fuel dump” (38). For those who can afford it, the hostess goes on to explain that the park includes a Lovers’ Nest with Rodin’s statue The Kiss and a poet’s corner with a statue of Homer.
In addition to catering to wealthy, art-minded folks, the cemetery appeals to racists. When Dennis tells the hostess that Sir Francis was English, she replies, “English are purely Caucasian, Mr. Barlow. This is a restricted park. The Dreamer has made that rule for the sake of the Waiting Ones. In their time of trial they prefer to be with their own people” (40).
Dennis then learns that the funeral home offers caskets to meet the needs of a wide range of economic classes: “[…] when he approached the 2,000-dollar level—and these were not the costliest—he felt himself in the Egypt of the Pharaohs” (41). The hostess’s sales pitch apparently works on Dennis, as he ends up choosing “a massive chest of walnut with bronze enrichments and an interior of quilted satin” (41).
The corpses at the pet funeral home, Happier Hunting Ground, are likewise classified according to the monetary resources of the animals’ owners. Waugh depicts some of the absurd extravagances that the wealthy owners choose for their pets’ final repose, such as the woman who chooses for her Sealyham terrier the Grade A service, which includes releasing a dove over the crematorium, and the man who has his Alsatian (German Shepherd) placed in a flower-lined tomb while a minister reads a eulogy. However, Happier Hunting Ground’s owner, Mr. Schultz, concedes that most of his clients can’t afford such expensive reverence for their pets: “How many pay 500? Not two in a month. What do most of our clients say? ‘Burn him up cheap, Mr. Schultz, just so the city don’t have him and make me ashamed’” (54).
The Harsh Realities of the Hollywood Movie Industry
In the opening chapter, Waugh quickly introduces the brutal realities of the movie industry in 1940s Hollywood. Sir Francis, a washed-up script writer who now works in the publicity department, tells his friend Sir Ambrose that the studio is only making “healthy films this year to please the League of Decency” (7). He then describes his current publicity project—the outrageously unhealthy role of an actress named Juanita. Sir Francis explains that the studio has bleached and dyed her hair vermilion, forced her to work 10 hours a day, and pulled her teeth out so that she can play the part of an Irish girl.
After working at Megalopolitan movie studio for 25 years, Sir Francis discovers just how expendable he is when he arrives at work after a week’s break and finds another man occupying his office. At first, he thinks he accidentally opened the door to the wrong office. He then notices that it’s the right office, but the name tag on the door is now “Lorenzo Medici” (24). Medici informs him that he has spent the morning disposing of the personal belongings in the office: “Piles of stuff, just like someone had been living here—bottles of medicine, books, photographs, kids’ games. Seems it belonged to some old Britisher who’s just kicked off” (24). The last part of this commentary foreshadows Sir Francis’s suicide, which follows shortly after his firing. When Sir Francis tells Medici that he is, in fact, the Britisher who had occupied the office, Medici says, “Hope there wasn’t anything you valued in that junk. Maybe it’s still around somewhere” (25). Sir Francis decides to die by suicide after recalling the pitiful plight of another fired studio employee, “poor Leo who had fallen from great heights to die with his bill unpaid in the Garden of Allah Hotel” (27).
Later, a group of British expatriates sheds light on the scope of the Hollywood movie industry’s lack of job security. One of them notes that Sir Francis killed himself because his contract wasn’t renewed, a misfortune to which they could all relate:
They were words of ill-omen to all that assembled company, words never spoken without the furtive touching of wood or crossing of fingers; unholy words best left unsaid. To each of them was given a span of life between the signature of the contract and its expiration; beyond that lay the vast unknowable (28).
In addition, this group of expatriates discusses Dennis Barlow, whose contract likewise wasn’t renewed. However, unlike Sir Francis, the stoic Dennis accepted the setback and took a job at a pet mortuary, which the reputation-obsessed Sir Francis and the other expatriates frown upon. In fact, it appears that they view Sir Francis’s suicide as more dignified.
The British-American Cultural Rift
The cultural biases of both the British expatriates and the American characters in the novel affect their perceptions and opinions regarding their English-speaking allies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Sir Ambrose Abercrombie and Sir Francis Hinsley are archetypes of blue-blood British snobbery. Sir Ambrose expresses his opinion that Britons must maintain a dominant position in the land of their former colonies:
We limeys have a peculiar position to keep up […] They may laugh at us a bit—the way we talk and the way we dress; our monocles—they may think us cliquey and stand-offish, but, by God, they respect us. […] You never find an Englishman among the underdogs—except in England of course. That’s understood out here, thanks to the example we’ve set. There are jobs that an Englishman just doesn’t take (10).
Sir Francis agrees with Sir Ambrose’s emphasis on reputation and later castigates Dennis for accepting a job at a pet mortuary, which he describes as “violently macabre, so Elizabethan” (13). Sir Francis even manages to be condescending while complimenting Americans. He tells Dennis:
They are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don’t expect you to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It’s the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard (4).
In other words, Americans like to chatter, and nothing they say is worthy of listening to, in Sir Francis’s estimation. Dennis certainly doesn’t share Sir Francis and Sir Ambrose’s obsession with reputation, but when Aimée criticizes him for working at the Happier Hunting Ground, Dennis’s condescending opinion of Americans seeps through: “My dear, you as an American should be the last to despise a man for starting at the bottom of the ladder” (124).
Meanwhile, Aimée turns the tables on the Brits, complaining in her letter to the Guru Brahmin about Dennis’s British cynicism:
First he is British and therefore in many ways quite Un-American. I do not mean just his accent and the way he eats but he is cynical at things which should be Sacred. I do not think he has any religion. Neither have I because I was progressive at College and had an unhappy upbringing as far as religion went and other things too, but I am ethical (90).
The perception of the British as less religious than Americans emerges elsewhere in the novel too. Aimée refers to Dennis as “irreverent” (91) and criticizes his decision to become a nonsectarian minister. However, Aimée’s biggest anti-British slam occurs after Dennis suggests that the extra money she’ll receive from her promotion to embalmer will allow them to marry: “An American man would despise himself for living on his wife” (97).
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