Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928) is a biting satire and black comedy concerning British society in the 1920s. Evelyn Waugh drew from his own experiences to craft the novel, including his schooldays at Lancing college, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his time spent as a teacher at the Arnold House in northern Wales.

The narrative follows Paul Pennyfeather, a modest and by all appearances average theology student who is wrapped up in the drunken antics of the Bollinger Club, a high-society group known for raucous engagements. He is thereupon expelled from Oxford and travels to Wales to find work as a teacher. There begins his spiral down the moral vacuum, as he takes up with a wealthy widow, the Honourable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, who operates a chain of upscale brothels in Latin America. He even goes so far as to travel to Marseille on her behalf to grease the palms of French authorities who are holding up the widow’s trafficked girls bound for Brazil. Waugh’s intention in writing was never subtle, taking deliberate aim at various parts of British society he found unsavory, including cultural confusion, moral disorientation, and social bedlam. However, it must be remembered that this is a work of satire and, in the author’s own words from the first edition, “IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.”

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