“I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgment of a present, a nod in the crowd.”
~ Brideshead Revisited.
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Understanding Charles Ryder’s Conversion in Brideshead Revisited
When we read a great novel and later discuss it in class, we might leave with a sense of deep confusion about the conclusions drawn, especially at the level of plot and structure. If you didn’t understand how Charles is heroic at the end, in that he finds God (true love), and in doing so loses Julia (false love), let’s take another shot and get even more specific.
The answers to all live at the moment (s) of Lord Marchmain’s final illness. There’s intense conflict about whether to bring a priest for last rites. Brideshead wants to call one, while Julia initially resists. Charles, consistent with this staged out dismissal of Catholicism that expresses itself systematically throughout the whole novel, sides against it, seeing it as an intrusion on Lord Marchmain’s dignity.
Here is the staged out pattern of dismissals and turning points for reference:
Charles’ Dismissal of Catholicism
- University Days: Charles begins as an agnostic/atheist. When he first encounters Sebastian’s Catholicism, he views it as merely an aesthetic quirk rather than genuine faith.
- Reaction to Lady Marchmain: He develops a strong aversion to Catholicism through Lady Marchmain, seeing it as a controlling force that suffocates Sebastian.
- Conversation with Brideshead: When Brideshead (the elder brother) discusses religion, Charles dismisses his belief as irrational.
- With Sebastian in Venice: Charles is uncomfortable with Lord Marchmain’s mistress Cara’s Catholic observations, particularly when she notes that those raised Catholic never truly escape it.
- Relationship with Julia: When reconnecting with Julia years later, Charles is pleased she has seemingly abandoned her Catholic upbringing.
- Direct Statement: Charles explicitly says to Julia: “I’m not going to be involved in any medieval mysticism.”
- Reaction to Cordelia’s Faith: Charles views Cordelia’s devotion with a mixture of condescension and bewilderment.
- The “Unconscionable, Hypocritical” Church: Charles uses these terms to describe the Church when Julia is struggling with the conflict between her relationship with him and her faith.
The Turning Points
- Sebastian’s Decline: Charles witnesses how Sebastian, despite his alcoholism, finds peace through faith at the monastery.
- Lord Marchmain’s Deathbed: The pivotal moment comes when Lord Marchmain, who had rejected the Church for decades, makes the sign of the cross before dying. Charles sees this as a profound moment of grace.
- Final Scene: Charles kneels in the chapel at Brideshead and prays, described as “an ancient and a subtle visitor,” suggesting his newfound humility before faith.
Then comes the pivotal climactic moment: Charles, who has maintained this skepticism throughout the novel, falls to his knees and prays: “I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgment of a present, a nod in the crowd.”
- It’s the first time Charles actively seeks divine intervention
- He acknowledges his own desire for “a sign”
- He frames it initially as being for Julia’s sake, but the very act of prayer suggests something deeper happening within him
And this prayer is followed by Lord Marchmain making the sign of the cross when the priest administers the last rites – the very sign Charles had asked for and so, this sequence represents the breakthrough moment in Charles’ conversion. After years of intellectual resistance and aesthetic distance, he humbles himself in prayer and witnesses what he can only interpret as a response. It’s powerful because it’s not presented as a dramatic epiphany but as a quiet, almost reluctant opening to grace.
Now the stage is set for the novel’s conclusion where we find Charles kneeling again in the chapel at Brideshead, embracing what he once dismissed. Charles finds himself unable to deny what he witnesses: that faith offers something his rational, aesthetic approach to life could not provide. Elaborating on this point, go back and note for yourself as a reader how Charles, who spent much of the novel pursuing happiness through human relationships and aesthetic pleasure, finds spiritual fulfillment in that turning point moment when he loses the woman he “loves.” Here are the layers making this meaningful:
- Sacrifice as authentication: The fact that Charles’ conversion costs him something so precious suggests its authenticity. It’s not a convenient faith but one that demands real sacrifice.
- Julia’s own spiritual journey: Julia’s decision (“I can’t fight my own battle anymore”) shows her recognizing that their love, however genuine, stands in opposition to her deeper spiritual obligations. Her statement that their love had become “to adore the gold and ivory” rather than God reveals the insufficiency of romantic love as an ultimate value.
- The inversion of Charles’ values: Throughout the novel, Charles believed human relationships (first with Sebastian, then with Julia) would fulfill him. The irony is that only when he relinquishes this belief does he find what he was ultimately seeking.
- Grace operates beyond human desires: Waugh suggests that divine grace works in ways that don’t align with our conventional understanding of happiness. The novel challenges the modern notion that personal fulfillment is life’s highest aim.
- The completion of a pattern: Just as Sebastian had to be “lost” for Charles’ spiritual journey to progress, so too does Julia. The painful separations become necessary steps toward Charles’ conversion.
A climactic moment like this can be hard to see because Waugh doesn’t present it with sentiment. There’s genuine loss and pain in Charles and Julia’s separation, yet also the suggestion that something more profound has been gained. Joy and suffering/gain and loss are linked.
Right There in Plain Sight
A watchful reader will realize that all of this was set up in the prologue when Charles describes his feelings about the military: “I am homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless…and as I lay in my bed that night… I felt for the first time how much it was, how long it had been, since I was last here… Here love had died between me and the army.”
This metaphor of a failed marriage with the army establishes several key patterns that will be echoed in Charles’ relationship with Julia:
- The fading of initial passion: Just as his enthusiasm for the army has dimmed, his relationship with Julia follows a similar arc—intense passion that cannot sustain itself against deeper spiritual realities.
- The sense of displacement: Charles feels “homeless” and “loveless” in the army, prefiguring the spiritual and emotional homelessness he experiences after losing Julia.
- The inability to recapture the past: Charles cannot revive his former feelings for the army, just as he and Julia ultimately cannot build a future while denying their pasts—particularly Julia’s Catholic upbringing.
- The recognition of something dead: The blunt acknowledgment that “love had died between me and the army” foreshadows how his worldly love for Julia must also “die” for his spiritual awakening to occur.
Waugh uses this opening frame to establish the novel’s central theme: human relationships, however passionate, are ultimately insufficient. The army metaphor prepares us for the novel’s conclusion, where Charles must surrender his love for Julia to find something more transcendent.
This parallel adds another layer of structural elegance to the novel—showing how Waugh had the entire spiritual arc mapped from the beginning, with Charles’ eventual conversion implied even in his disillusionment with the military.
For the Romantics in the Crowd:
Why, you might ask–hoping for the love match between Julia and Charles–was this a tainted love? In today’s culture of “anything goes” as long as it feels good, it can be confusing so let’s take a closer look from the position of core values of right/wrong, good starts/bad starts, and motivations. Looked at in this way, we see how their relationship was built on morally compromised foundations:
- Adultery: Both are married to others when they begin their affair on the ocean liner. Their passion ignites during a storm—a symbolic upheaval that mirrors their moral transgression.
- Divorce and remarriage: Their plan to divorce their spouses and marry each other would still be considered invalid in Catholic teaching, which doesn’t recognize divorce.
- Self-deception: They convince themselves they can escape their past and the moral framework they were raised in (especially Julia).
- Pride: Their relationship involves a deliberate turning away from religious and moral obligations in favor of personal desire.
Julia articulates this reality with devastating clarity when she finally breaks with Charles, saying their love had become “to adore the gold and ivory” rather than God. She recognizes that what they’ve built together is essentially idolatrous—placing human love above divine law.
What makes Waugh’s treatment so profound is that he doesn’t condemn their relationship as sinful. Instead, he shows how their genuine love for each other becomes the very path that leads Julia back to her faith. The fallen side of their connection makes her more aware of what she has forsaken.
For Charles, losing Julia becomes necessary for his spiritual awakening. Had their relationship succeeded, he might never have experienced the emptiness that prepares him for conversion.
In this way, Waugh suggests that even sin can become part of the mysterious workings of grace—not because sin itself is good, but because God can use our failures to draw us toward redemption. The very impossibility of their relationship, given its foundations, becomes instrumental in both characters finding their way to spiritual truth.
The Journey’s True Destination
In Brideshead Revisited, Waugh crafts a narrative that subverts our expectations about what constitutes a happy ending. For modern readers accustomed to stories where romantic love triumphs over all obstacles, Charles’ loss of Julia can seem like tragic defeat. Yet through Waugh’s Catholic vision, this apparent loss reveals itself as the necessary precondition for Charles’ true fulfillment.
And it’s subtle. Charles’ conversion isn’t marked by dramatic declarations or sudden enlightenment, but through quiet moments of surrender—a prayer offered hesitantly, a final kneel in the chapel that once meant nothing to him. This restraint makes the spiritual transformation all the more authentic, suggesting that genuine conversion often happens not in thunderclap moments but in quiet reckonings with the insufficiency of purely human connections.
What Charles ultimately discovers is that his pursuit of beauty and love through Sebastian, through art, and finally through Julia were all incomplete attempts to fill a spiritual void. Only when these earthly loves fail him—not because they aren’t genuine, but because they cannot bear the weight of ultimate meaning—does Charles find himself open to the transcendent reality that had been pursuing him all along.
In this light, the novel’s ending isn’t a tragedy but a resolution—not of the plot Charles thought he was living, but of the deeper story being written through him. His journey from skeptical observer to reluctant participant in grace becomes a powerful testament to Waugh’s belief that our deepest hungers can only be satisfied when we recognize what they’re truly for.
