#bertie is a sweet but pitiful and dimwitted creature who's utterly helpless without super-valet jeeves' benevolent guiding hand | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeah-thats-probably-it · 9 months ago

Text

#doesnt bertie do something similar with his vocabulary lapses and the numerous instances of 'if x is the word i mean'#bertie is writing his stories after the fact just like jeeves - he could look it up. he doesnt. in jeeves in the offing bertie gets a word#wrong ergo dahlia doesnt understand what he means and bertie reacts as though it were self-evident that dahlia couldnt have understood him#even if he'd used the right word: 'you are probably not familiar with the word but its one i've heard jeeves use'#if we assume that that is how bertie looks at the world then he doesnt have to look it up - to bertie people like him (people who will read#his writings) dont know words like jeeves does and therefore it is unneccessary to be 100% sure which word he means - noone else would know#and while jeeves doesnt include literary allusions in his narration he very much establishes himself as an authority in that area#except he does it through bertie - he is writing a guide addressed to new valets and right at the beginning he quotes emerson at bertie#who is immediately portrayed as the guy who cant remember the name of the play he saw the evening before. jeeves is absolutely showing off!#there are three foreign words set in cursive in the first paragraph alone! but the difference is while he may be showing off he - just as#you said - has nothing to prove - he is already the authority and here hes just establishing another way in which a valet#has to keep the upper hand

@noandnooneelse's tags for further discussion about jeeves as a narrator but responding in the tags because that's the most superior method of communication

you guys ever notice how in his dialogue when he's in bertie's presence, jeeves uses quotations and references constantly, but in his THOUGHTS during "bertie changes his mind," he doesn't use any? this is obviously because he doesn't care if we the audience know he knows shakespeare, but he will languish and die if he doesn't get to dazzle bertie with his wit and knowledge every five seconds

#the point about emerson and foreign language phrases is interesting!#according to the thompson book this story is the FIRST time jeeves uses foreign language phrases #and also his habit of quotation wasn't firmly established yet #along with the fact that there was a previous version of the story where jeeves' writing style was less formal i wonder #if we couldn't look at it as a writing exercise to help wodehouse fine-tune the character #still though i think the quotation and french words at the beginning immediately help to establish the point jeeves is trying to prove #which like you said is about valets needing to keep the upper hand and employers needing to be managed #he's very deliberate (you could say even heavy-handed) throughout the story about characterizing bertie #as a helpless child who doesn't know what's good for him #look at the words he uses just in the first couple paragraphs! “moody.” “petulant.”#this is the way you describe a toddler who's just been told not to put something in their mouth #it's crazy i never really thought about jeeves' reliability as a narrator before now bc the spin he's putting on the story is very clear!#we open on bertie having an outburst. we know nothing of the days leading up to this other than he's been “moody”#and jeeves seems disinterested in how long bertie's been discontented or why so his narration makes it appear #like this outburst was a random tantrum over nothing that came out of nowhere and that bertie is just cranky bc he's been sick #then he uses the emerson quote which is immediately followed by bertie making it obvious that he doesn't know who emerson is #and this characterization keeps up throughout the story. jeeves takes a patronizing view toward bertie's soft-heartedness #like b is in a position to fall for the little girl's sob story because he's in a “highly malleable frame of mind” after seeing a movie #bertie doesn't know the term “en masse” and needs jeeves to provide it. he's bamboozled by jeeves' technobabble about the car #“he appeared distraught poor young gentleman” like he's not trying to be subtle #bertie is a sweet but pitiful and dimwitted creature who's utterly helpless without super-valet jeeves' benevolent guiding hand #and in the end he sees that jeeves is right and falls back in line #so i feel like from a doylist perspective the quotations in this story are wodehouse deciding to take jeeves' character in a new direction #but from a watsonian perspective jeeves is demonstrating his absolute mastery and superiority over his employer to his audience #who are meant to take this as an instructional guide/aspirational model for the sort of dynamic they should cultivate w their own employers #(and they can trust jeeves' teaching because look how smart he is. he knows emerson)#anyway all this and i didn't even talk about your first point yet which also makes total sense #it's the same sort of thing as bertie attributing quotations he heard from jeeves to jeeves. “not mine. one of jeeves's.”#like he looks at the world through such a heavy jeeves filter that he can't fathom jeeves not being the source of all wisdom and knowledge #and if you're not on jeeves' level or in regular close proximity to him you obviously can't be expected to know anything lmao

291 notes · View notes