“People who lived on the dark side…thanked God for their dark past, because it had deepened their soul, made a larger place for the love of God with which they were now on fire….”
—from Circling My Mother, by Mary Gordon

I read Brideshead Revisited for the first time recently and loved it. I also watched the 1980s miniseries, which perfectly incorporated Waugh’s pungent dialogue.

The story revolves around the narrator Charles Ryder’s relationship with the aristocratic, Catholic Marchmain family, especially his love interests: doomed, alcoholic Sebastian (in a “romantic friendship” common to British men of the period, as one character remarks) and later, Sebastian’s sister, Julia.

In the poorly-reviewed 2008 adaptation, the narrative has been changed to make the plot more of a pious-mother-ruins-children’s lives sort of thing.

It surprised me that I related so strongly to Brideshead‘s seemingly dated sensibility about both grace and the body. A few quotes:

“I know just the man for her in Vienna,” said Rex Mottram, Julia’s remarkably unappealing fiancé, of the terminally ill Lady Marchmain, “but Ma Marchmain won’t do anything about it. I suppose it’s something to do with her crack-brain religion, not taking care of the body.”

Brideshead, the oldest Marchmain brother: “I believe God prefers drunkards to a lot of respectable people.”

Cordelia, the youngest sister, on Sebastian: “One can have no idea what the suffering may be, to be as maimed as he is—no dignity, no power of will. No one is ever holy without suffering.”

The quotes were familiar, reflecting my parents’ sensibilities about the body and well-being. Were they alive today, Ma and Daddy would be centenarians, formed by a gritty, Catholic city where life was hard, people often died young or experienced early impairment. Ma lost all of her teeth at nineteen; her mother, Annie Ryan, had given her seven children tea, rather than milk, as children. Four of my father’s siblings died of tuberculosis.

My parents and their relatives started drinking and smoking early, at speakeasies. They considered only my uncle, Father Joe, to be an “alcoholic,” since he sobered up, held AA meetings at his church, and ministered to alcoholic priests.

The rest of them just drank.

They did not care about physical upkeep. They were uninterested in reform, in diet and exercise regimens. They were contemptuous of such things.

Hitler was a vegetarian, they pointed out.

Instead, they thought in terms of conversion, which came through the grace of God. The world might be venal (and the likelihood of their own conversions nebulous) but it was alive with the sacred and the possibility of openness to grace.

Today’s conversion narratives are often linked to public health, a profession in which I have spent much of my working life. The field, which emerged from the growth of scientific medicine and associated social reform, posits social good through the improved health of its members. Better health, we are frequently told, will lead to less stress, more optimism, closer relationships, enhanced self esteem. It will lead to contentment and not coincidentally, less of an economic drain on society’s coffers.

In the affluent West, we usually die of chronic disease, connected to the overeating, substance abuse and sedentary habits we are all aware of and about which we feel guilty, for there is a now a moral slant to proper diet and exercise. Chocolate is “sinful,” we say, or “I’ve been bad.”

Our conversion narratives center on this ethos. Reality shows such as “American’s Biggest Loser” depict happiness as adherence to right behavior and subsequent transformation. As the shows’ participants are frequently from one end of the class spectrum, their presentations are not all that different from morality tales of Victorian-era prostitutes, sorrowful and rescued by reformers.

Throughout their long lives, my parents, aunts and uncles continued their abysmal eating, drinking, and lack-of-exercise habits. At the end, my beloved Aunt Gabe could barely walk three steps and Aunt Harriet suffered the agonies of lung cancer. They had betrayed their bodies, became old before their time.

But today, in our obsession with only the physical, perhaps we betray our spirit—or at least spiritual hunger. This, I believe, calls us day after day—a gnawing which cannot be assuaged by controlling the body alone, as tempting a solution as that may be.