Sam Wyper

How is Briony portrayed in the first pages (1-3) of the novel?

Despite being such a complex character, almost everything that the reader

needs to know about Briony is implied within the first three pages of the book.

McEwan’s descriptions of the dramatic, obsessive, lonely girl spiral and intensify

to create a vibrant, intricate character –every aspect of the adult Briony is linked

to these three pages. As a reflexive novel, it is also important to remember that

despite the third person narrative style, it is Briony trying to explain her

behaviour later in the book, and the mocking tone is intended to engender

empathy towards the girl.

‘The play’ – which Briony has overwrought in her attempt to make impress her

brother – ‘was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition.’ Such a

description of her creative style has certain implications of destruction and

carelessness, but there are also connotations that come with a child using such a

metaphorical phrase in the first place; foremost of these is that Briony is

incredibly over dramatic, a childish trait that the reader is invited to laugh at.

This idea is repeated in the use of ‘the distant North’ to describe a location that

can be no further than 600 or so miles away, thought this also shows just how

isolated Briony is that she considers her closest family ‘distant.’

Briony’s synopsis of the play, while being fraught with foreshadowing vis-à-vis

Robbie the ‘impoverished doctor,’ also suggests her foolish and naïve attitude to

life and to love. The play is a melodrama: ‘a wicked foreign count’ demonstrates

that Briony’s unsophisticated moral compass swings between good and evil, a

childlike dichotomy that explains her attitudes and responses in the later

chapters. The thinly veiled metaphor of the good doctor and the count serves to

highlight the childish understand of love that Briony has acquired from fairy

tales. This description of the Trials of Arabella features a heavy bathos: the

dramatic events are split by ‘an impestuous dash towards a seaside town.’ This

shows how undeveloped Briony’s writing style is and the resulting ‘cholera,’

which should have been ---------, shows how little research she has done for the

play; possibly this is McEwan foreshadowing how little thought she genuinely

applies to her later accusation of Robbie.

Part of Briony’s nature comes from the babying that she receives from her

family (specifically her mother), who would sit ‘with the author’s arms wrapped

around her shoulder the whole while’ that she read any of Briony’s writing. At

Sam Wyper

this point, it is reasonable to assume that Briony’s neuroses and self-absorption

is keeping her arms there ‘the whole while,’ but at some point, it must have been

Emily Tallis’ encouragement: this behaviour has been taught to her, and her

solipsism developed over 13 years of being ignored and isolated in a family with

a bed ridden mother and hard working father. The idea that Briony’s greatest

desire is attention is supported by McEwan’s descriptions of her ‘yearning

fantasies... every one of which featured Leon.’ Leon, though ultimately useless,

is in these pages, painted as an idol, and acts as a pathway through which

McEwan can explain Briony’s aspirations. ‘Yes, my younger sister, Briony Tallis

the writer, you must have heard of her.’ The expectation implied in the word

‘must’ shows that Briony wishes to be a household name for her stories. The

irony here is that her stories (i.e., her accusation of Robbie) is what brings her

fame – not her original melodramas.

Briony also has a need for control, as proved by her obsessive, unnecessary

front of house preparations, is ultimately her downfall. By portraying a girl so

heavily influenced by literature, a girl who, by writing stories, plays God, McEwan

(and meta-fictional author Briony) explain her behaviour later in the novel, as

well as her conviction. This is not to say that her actions are forgivable, but they

are supposedly understandable. Her toys even, childish things, are ‘neatly

corralled,’ ‘like a citizens’ army awaiting orders,’ show how much she has to

have everything just so; each aspect of the world set out in the perfect story of

her design. This need for control prevents her, however from having secrets, at

least not of the childish sort she seeks. While ‘none of this was particularly an

affliction,’ it’s ‘solution’ is devastating and, unfortunately for Briony, causes her

perfect life to spiral out of control and slip away from her.

Though, on a first reading, these pages begin to offer Briony some chance at

redemption, it is ‘her’ writing the book several decades later, and so on a second

reading, it seems a lot less pleasant to give this girl an out. Any understanding

that these pages foster is the result of artifice and one sided, biased explanation

of some of the facts in an attempt to find redemption for her shame and her

guilt. Perhaps Briony ‘did not have it in her to be cruel,’ but ultimately, she was

cruel. The greatest villain in fiction might ask for empathy, but does not need

always to be forgiven.