ABSTRACT
Something weird happens to Godwin Peak when he is invited to dine with the Warricombe family after meeting his old Whitelaw College colleague in Exeter. At first, with typical self-consciousness, he scrutinizes his speech and movements - 'Any defect of pronunciation, any native awkwardness of utterance?' - thankful that he ' de fie[ s] inspection' as far as his clothes and general performance are concerned. He is hopeful that he might break out of his narrow social existence as an analyst in a Rotherhithe chemical factory - that he might expunge the horrible memory of his uncle's 'Refreshment an' Dinin' Rooms', and could 'by the force of his personality, ... obliterate from their minds such disagreeable thoughts as they might secretly entertain' by his performance in the private theatre of middle-class domesticity (Born in Exile, pp.l56f.). Suddenly he is asked about Sunday's sermon at the Cathedral, which he has half-heard while covertly contemplating Sidwell:
Peak's reply was one of those remarkable efforts of mind - one might say, of character, - which are called forth, without premeditation, almost without consciousness, by a profound moral crisis. A minute or so ago he would have believed it impossible to recall and state in lucid terms the arguments to which, as he sat in the Cathedral, he had barely given ear .... [At] the time he was indisposed to listen seriously, and what chance was there that the chain of thought had fiXed itself on his memory? Now, under the marvelling regard of his conscious self, he poured forth an admirable rendering of the canon's views, fuller than the original, more eloquent, more subtle.... Godwin felt that a slight bow of acknowledgement was perhaps called for, but not a muscle would obey his will. (pp.l57f.)
Godwin Peak's powerful social ambition crystallizes into the desire to join the ranks of the traditional upper-middle class soon after this moment - a desire figured in his imagination as his evolutionary destiny; the means by which he could 'cast away the evil grudge, the fierce spirit of self assertion, and be what nature had proposed in endowing him with large brain, generous blood, delicate tissues' (pp.l60f.). His resolution to impersonate a Broad Church Anglican in order to become intimate with the Warricombe family and marry a 'lady as England has perfected her at the close of this nineteenth century' (p.l70) is made in response to this simultaneously physical and emotional drive, which has been performatively prefigured in the earlier moment of lapsed consciousness. Peak
thenrationalizeshisdecisiontomakerealthisspontaneousimpulse,seeingitas thelogicalactingoutofhisrelativistsecularprinciplesreinforcedbyaDarwinian modelofsexualselection,andjustifYingitwithhisownbrandofspecialpleading: 'Letthesocietywhichcompelledtosuchanexpedientbeartheburdenofits shame'(p.l69).ButhisannouncementtoBucklandWarricombethatheisgoingto trainfortheclergy-againdrivenbyforcesapparentlybeyondhiscontrol-is followedbyverydifferentemotions;nowheseeshisunconsciousselfasthe perverseactingoutofaverydifferentstory:
Sincethedisplayofrhetoricatluncheonallwasdownrightsomnambulism.What fatalpowerhadsubduedhim?Whatextraordinaryinfluencehadguidedhistongue, constrainedhisfeatures?Hisconsciousselfhadhadnopartinallthiscomedy;now, forthefirsttimewashetakingcountofthecharacterhehadplayed....Intowhat unspeakablebasenesshadhefallen?Happily,hehadbuttotakeleaveofthe Warricombehouseholdandrushintosomeregionwherehewasunknown.Years hence,hewouldrelatethestorytoEarwaker....
