A Handful of Dust

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1934

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Parts 6-7

Character Analysis

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Character Analysis

Brenda Last

Brenda Last is the antagonist of A Handful of Dust, even if she is not present for most of the plot. At the beginning of the novel, she is mired in boredom. Her life is dull and uninteresting, in part because she is married to a dull and uninteresting man. Amid this boredom, Brenda meets Beaver. By deciding to have an affair, she acts where Tony never would, taking control of her fate, even if it is ill-advised. Her choice of romantic partner is also telling, as Tony is a very different man with very different prospects in comparison to Beaver. Tony explicitly dislikes Beaver, believing that Beaver is beneath him in a social sense. Beaver is a comparatively poor man who desperately wishes to belong to the Lasts’ elevated social circle. By having an affair with Beaver, Brenda is rebuking the settled, comfortable, and successful lifestyle that Tony offers. She succeeds in finding excitement, as her affair with Beaver quickly becomes the hot topic of the London social scene. In addition to the social excitement, the prospect of the deceit needed to conduct the affair injects some much-needed energy into Brenda’s life.

The affair with Beaver makes Brenda feel desired. In her old life, she was almost incidental to everything Tony did. His routine was so fixed that, on her occasional trips to London, her absence made no difference. Though she lives with Tony, she is barely a factor in his life. Brenda felt constrained by the lack of excitement in her life, but also by the lack of any consequence to her actions. Her affair is certainly consequential, not only because of the effect she has on Beaver’s social standing but because she is acting in a way that threatens the calm, privileged life she once led. Her affair thus exposes Inherited Privilege as a Source of Dissatisfaction; Brenda is risking everything, which is precisely why the affair excites her. She feels that she might be able to shock Tony out of his mundane existence. In contrast, Beaver depends on her for his social elevation. When he is with Brenda, he is more than just a last-minute seat filler. He is a coveted guest and the hot topic of conversation around town. His affair with Brenda is fascinating to them because he is considered to be beneath Tony and Brenda.

Brenda does feel some guilt, but not enough to stop her affair. She assuages her guilt by trying to find him a woman with whom Tony can have his own affair. Her choice reveals her lack of respect for him, however, as she looks no further than her own hallway. She selects her neighbor, Jenny, to whom Tony takes an immediate dislike. Either Brenda does not know Tony well enough to know what he likes, or she is deliberately undermining her insincere efforts. Quickly, Brenda gives up and lives with what little guilt she has. After John’s death, she pushes for a divorce. Brenda pushes too hard, however, and nearly ends up with nothing. She is abandoned by Beaver, abandoned by Tony, and abandoned by her social circle. She does end up with Jock, however, suggesting that there is a hard limit to how far such women can fall. Brenda’s tumultuous affair motivates the plot and satirizes contemporary morality; she is the catalyst that brings excitement into Tony’s life, whether he wants it or not.

Tony Last

Tony Last is the protagonist of A Handful of Dust. At the beginning of the novel, he is defined by his inertness. Tony is caught in the same cycle, moving from his house to his club and back again with a mundane rhythm. Tony is so inert that he cannot recognize how alienated he has become. Much like his ancestral home, he is a relic of a decaying system. The British social class system has given him everything except meaning in his life. He is out of place, outdated, and privileged, just like the architectural description of Hetton Abbey that appears in the guidebook. British society has elevated Tony and his family into a position of immense privilege, not only compared to his many servants but also to members of the middle class like Beaver. With his wife and young child, Tony has everything he could ever want, and this creates a sense of stasis and boredom so intense that Tony cannot even recognize it. When Brenda begins an affair, he is so numb to the possibility of change that he never even remotely suspects that she might not be faithful to him.

Tony’s inertia and alienation reach a pinnacle following the death of his son, John, contributing to the novel’s exploration of The Social Repression of Grief. The death sends Tony into a state of perplexed numbness in which he does not know what to do, what to say, or how to act. He follows the social etiquette of his society, adhering to the mannerisms that have steered him through his life, but this does nothing to alleviate his grief. When Brenda informs him that she wants a divorce, he is so shocked that he is initially accommodating. Tony is willing to accept the blame for the failure of the marriage, so much so that he will engage in a farcical falsification of evidence to give Brenda everything she wants. Even this falsification of evidence illustrates Tony’s submissive numbness. Against Tony’s explicit request, Milly brings her daughter to Brighton and threatens to undermine the entire enterprise. Fortunately for Tony, his unquestioning behavior becomes the springboard for change. Brenda informs him that she expects him to give up Hetton Abbey to fund her marriage to Beaver. Tony is so shocked by her disrespectful request that he changes his mind. He refuses Brenda the divorce settlement that she wants. Then, he leaves the country, knowing that doing so ensures that Brenda will sink into financial ruin. Thus, Tony removes himself from her presence as an act of self-assertion. He weaponizes his absence by abdicating the situation and leaving Brenda to deal with the consequences of her actions.

Tony’s search for a lost city is an abject failure. He is found by Mr. Todd, though Todd essentially imprisons Tony in his village. When a search party does arrive, Todd drugs Tony and explains to the searchers that Tony is dead. No one else will come. Tony’s fate is to spend the rest of his life in a small Amazon village that is nothing like Hetton Abbey. In Todd’s village, the wealth and privilege he once enjoyed are gone. His manners and his etiquette mean nothing. The irony of Tony’s fate is that he was so alienated from his society that he was not able to recognize his privilege, only to be captured by a man who takes his freedom and demands that he subjugate himself on a nightly basis. Tony is trapped in a purgatory of his own making, denuded of the class pretensions that once defined him while being made to read Victorian novels that explore the rigors of the English class system in detail.

John Beaver

A Handful of Dust opens with the misadventures of John Beaver. The plot of the novel is not focused on Beaver, but he is far from incidental. While the main characters are wealthy and renowned, Beaver is something of a joke. Shortly after his introduction, Tony and Jock mock Beaver behind his back. Beaver may be middle class, he may know the manners and etiquette needed to operate in this society, and he may be a member of the same clubs as these men, but he is not their equal. Compared to them, he is relatively poor. He avoids paying for drinks and connives to insert himself in social situations where he will avoid paying for his meals. To Beaver, attending a party is an opportunity to make friends and fill his belly at a low cost. Nevertheless, he has a function in this society. Since he is so well-informed about how to conduct himself in such situations, he is useful for any host who suffers a last-minute cancellation. Beaver can be obtained on short notice as a seat filler, making up the numbers at a party even if he is not particularly popular. Beaver exists on the periphery of bourgeois society, but he operates in a transactional way. He can play the role at a party, even if he does not enjoy the same benefits that many of his apparent peers have at their disposal.

Tony invites Beaver to Hetton Abbey when he is drunk. The offer is perfunctory, an example of Tony’s automatic employment of manners. He does not necessarily expect Beaver to accept the invitation, at least so soon. When Beaver visits, Tony avoids him. As a result, Beaver spends more time with Brenda and the two quickly strike up a romantic repartee. Tony’s halfhearted invitation to the man he and Jock mocked in Brat’s Club becomes the ultimate undoing of his marriage. Through his relationship with Brenda, Beaver gets everything he wants. With her beside him (and Tony in Hetton), Beaver is suddenly a man about town. He is central to the gossipy social scene in London, and he is invited to all the best parties. With Brenda, he is given a glimpse into how the wealthy live. Gradually, he lures Brenda away from Tony. Following her son’s death, she decides that she loves Beaver and that she wishes to marry him. Beaver is not as attached to Brenda as she has become to him. Since he has no job, he cannot support Brenda in her separation. Since Brenda is going through a difficult divorce, she is no longer invited to the best parties. Since Tony is gone, Beaver lacks access to the financial and social resources that he gained through his relationship with Brenda. She leaves her husband to be with Beaver, only to find that Beaver is suddenly much less interested in being with her. Beaver vanishes from the latter stages of the novel, journeying to America with his mother and leaving Brenda to fend for herself. The pathetic figure who was mocked and ridiculed at the beginning of the novel abandons the woman whose life he has destroyed.

John Andrew Last

John Andrew Last is a young, excitable boy. Still in his youth, his notable excitement contrasts with the mundanity of his parents’ lives. He chatters endlessly about jumping on his pony while his father listens indifferently and interjects only occasionally to correct his choice of vocabulary. John has not yet learned what it means to be an English gentleman. One day, his father hopes he will grow up to inherit Hetton Abbey, so John will have to learn how to behave in public. He must choose his words carefully and conform to social etiquette, as befitting a man of his station. Still in his youth, however, John is immune to the rigors of class politics. His language—influenced by his working-class riding instructor—illustrates that an understanding of class hierarchies and expectations is not innate. John is not born with bourgeois manners; he is taught by his father, as Tony was taught by his parents. As such, John’s youthful naivety provides an important juxtaposition to the serious ideas that govern his parents’ lives.

John dies in a tragic accident before he can learn about these serious ideas. He is killed while riding his horse, an immediate contrast between the joy of his first hunt and the pain that follows. Everyone in the community is eager to assert that the death was no one’s fault. No one can be blamed for what happened to John, but the immensity of the tragedy or the profound seriousness of the death cannot be ignored.

Tony is left in shock by John’s death, but he worries most for Brenda. With the death of his young son, he reveals his naivety. Brenda is so busy with her affair that she does not learn about her son’s death for some time. When she does, she reaches a decision. John’s death prompts Brenda to ask for a divorce from Tony. The death of John is an important turning point in their lives, after which Brenda (and, later, Tony) abandons any pretense as to what she values. While he was alive, John represented naivety and a purity that grounded Brenda. He was a mooring point that kept her tethered to an unhappy life. After John’s death, she is unmoored. She feels no responsibility nor duty to carry on in her unhappy marriage. John’s death is not only the death of a child but the death of a marriage.