62 pages • 2 hours read
Aldous HuxleyCrome Yellow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1921A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Gulf Between Ideas and Reality
Crome Yellow is full of scenes in which characters discuss abstract ideas or schemes, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing. In this sense, it is a prototypical “novel of ideas,” or a novel in which characters give speeches in the form of monologues or dialogues in order to incorporate real-world debates into the fictional narrative. The novel of ideas is also sometimes designed to explore the process of argumentation itself, which Huxley would do in a later social satire, Point Counter Point (1928). In Crome Yellow, the concepts with which the characters engage are significant largely because they ultimately prove untenable or unappealing: In other words, what the novel aims to examine is what happens when even the most disciplined thinker cannot put their passionately held ideas into practice.
Denis is the first character to articulate the mismatch between ideas and actualities. During an early conversation with Anne, he reflects on the challenges he has faced when trying to put theories into practice: “In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled” (18). Denis sees this gulf as the root of all his unhappiness, saying that in such a world it makes sense that everyone is “miserable, horribly unhappy” (18). When Anne asks how he can stand to live this way, he explains that he has to justify every feeling of pleasure by connecting it to a larger idea within his life philosophy: In other words, he privileges theories and concepts over actions and sensations. While he admits that this is an absurd and painful way to live, he clearly cannot easily change his behavior. At the end of the conversation, he wants to tell Anne that he needs her—indeed, he thinks it to himself three times—but he cannot say it. Even after recognizing the destructiveness of devoting himself to ideas rather than his everyday lived experiences, Denis cannot use that new awareness to change his reality.
Mary also struggles with the slippage between theory and practice. During her conversation with Anne in the latter’s bedroom, she presents her ideas about resisting sexual repressions in a formal, almost academic way, guiding Anne through the conversation by using terms from rhetoric and debate. She argues that conclusions must be reached “logically” and refers to their shared perspective on sexual repression as “our fundamental postulate” (33). She thinks carefully and at length about which man to pursue. However, her flirtations with Denis, Gombauld, and Ivor all go terribly; the only source of any satisfaction at the end of the novel is the fact that she has control over Denis, although the outcome of this is the opposite of what she intended. While they have extremely different personalities, Mary and Denis both embody the novel’s ambivalence about the inherent virtue of ideas that cannot be successfully put into practice.
Changing Gender Roles and Sexual Politics
Throughout Crome Yellow, many characters express discomfort about both their private sexual desires and gender expressions and how those desires and expressions should be communicated publicly. Sexuality is such a fundamental part of what transpires at Crome that even the landscape itself is figured as a sexualized human body: While riding toward Crome on his bicycle, Denis thinks of the word “curve” and pictures the valleys around him as breasts belonging to a “huge divine body” (2-3). Despite the persistent undercurrent of sexuality, however, the characters do not know how to talk openly or confidently about it. Their unease around gendered and sexual behavior speaks to the clash between conservative Victorian mores and the more open, progressive world in which these characters are moving.
One of the instances in which this uncertainty is most clearly articulated is the scene in which Mary and Anne discuss sexual repressions. Their conversation is simultaneously about sex and is sexually charged: Anne reclines in bed while Mary sits on the edge, and they use scientific jargon and metaphors to talk about a variety of sexual desires and experiences. The persistent dreams that lead Mary to believe she is sexually repressed include climbing up ladders and falling down wells, which can be read as being about sexual encounters with people of different genders. Anne refers to the fear of being “old maids,” a term frequently used to describe unmarried older lesbians (32). Later in the novel, while Mr. Scogan talks about the ways different centuries have reacted to sexual openness, Mary attempts to bring up Havelock Ellis (although Mr. Scogan talks over her). Havelock Ellis was a late 19th-century psychologist who wrote the first textbook in English on gay sexual orientation and was also an early researcher into transgender identities. Ultimately, Mary embodies the dual obsession with and fear of sexuality that runs throughout the novel; even as she tries to manufacture a traditional heterosexual relationship for herself, she has clearly had a longstanding interest in sexual psychologies that include identities and attraction outside of heterosexuality.
In addition to uncertainty about how to navigate dating, falling in love, and having sex, the novel is interested in the ambivalence that comes with having a gender in a public world. This is represented in characters’ conversations about sexual politics: For example, Anne dresses Gombauld down for accusing her of teasing both him and Denis, saying his behavior is “[so] like a man” and arguing that accusing malicious women of tempting innocent men sexually is simply “the same old story” (118). By asserting herself, Anne becomes dominant in the conversation, and Gombauld has no words: All he can do is channel his frustration into his portrait of Anne. Mr. Scogan also—if inadvertently—undermines gender constructs by asking to work as the fortune teller at the fair and choosing to do so in a female costume. He calls himself “Sesostris,” a name that evokes Tiresias, who, in Greek mythology, was turned from a man into a woman for seven years (147). Mr. Scogan uses his disguise, which fools many visitors into thinking he is actually a woman, to try to arrange a rendezvous with a young woman from the village. Regardless of whether this attempt is successful, it has the same valences of queerness and gender-bending that run throughout the novel and speak to its fascination with new, modern ways of expressing sexual and gender identities.
The Nature of Art in the Modern World
Many of the characters in Crome Yellow are in creative fields or are interested in artistic creativity: Denis is an aspiring writer, Gombauld and Ivor are talented visual artists, Mary is knowledgeable about current trends in painting, Henry is an art collector, and Mr. Scogan feels strongly about the kind of art he likes. A number of their conversations about art are specifically concerned with how art has changed and is continuing to change, and they often—but not always—draw value judgments about “old” art versus “new” art. The novel’s concern with how art is created, how the public sees artists and how artists see themselves, and how all of these processes and identities are being reshaped in the modern world mirrors its larger awareness of its own constructed nature. In other words, Crome Yellow depicts artists being aware of art and is simultaneously aware of its own existence as an aesthetic object. This is a trait common to modernist fiction, which was unique in the first decades of the 20th century for being self-reflexive and actively commenting upon its own formal and stylistic elements.
Crome is full of art, but the first thing that catches Denis’s attention when he arrives at the house is one of his own collections of poetry, which is lying open on a table. It had been published six months prior, and he reflects on the process of writing it, thinking wistfully about what a genius he had been back then and wondering if he will ever again write anything as good. He realizes that if Anne had been reading it, she might have recognized herself as the inspiration for the Hamadryad, a tree nymph from Greek mythology: “He had given her the book when it came out, hoping the poem would say what he hadn’t dared to say” (5). In this moment, the novel reveals that Denis hopes to use his artistic creations to communicate things he himself cannot, suggesting that one of art’s utilities in the modern world is as a stand-in for people like Denis who struggle to navigate changing social roles.
Mary also tries unsuccessfully to use art to develop romantic relationships. While visiting Gombauld in his makeshift studio, she is surprised to see that he has not painted “a Cubist masterpiece” but instead a painting of a man and horse “that was recognizable as such” (58). She has made a point to keep up with trends in modern art, one of which is the extreme abstraction that characterizes Cubism, and is thrown off when she encounters something much more old-fashioned. However, when Gombauld accepts her first remark about the painting, she is encouraged, recognizing it as “a serious discussion” (58). She goes on to describe her reaction to the highly abstract paintings of Tschuplitski, which she saw in Paris, and recounts the painter’s evolution through greater and greater levels of abstraction until he simply presented a blank canvas as a work of art. This attempt to identify art in the modern world and to use that identification as part of a social interaction does not work, and Gombauld escorts her from the studio even as she tells herself that “she would not cease to be intellectual, serious” (59).
Both of these scenes ultimately demonstrate the novel’s interest in how art should work in the modern world as well as how discussions about visual and textual art should be represented in literature.
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