The Widmerpool Problem

The figure of Time in Poussin's,
A Dance to the Music of Time [selection]

I am in general inclined to agree with those who claim that Kenneth Widmerpool* is "one of the more memorable characters in 20th century fiction", but I have to attach a large caveat to the assessment.

Widmerpool is the antagonist, if the term is at all applicable, in Anthony Powell's roman-fleuve A Dance to the Music of Time, one of the great achievements of English fiction. He is one of the few characters to appear in all twelve novels making up the cycle. And for much of the cycle he is an astonishing creature indeed, rising ever-higher in both status and infamy despite being an utterly boring and inconsequential person.

The problem alluded to by the title of this post is one that applies to any multi-volume piece of writing that attempts to use a single villain throughout its full length: the villain has to continually top himself if he's going to remain interesting over the course of the story.

Powell doesn't quite manage this with Widmerpool. The character reaches a peak of despicability during the trio of novels covering the second world war; as a viciously officious military bureaucrat he casually condemns several other characters to death while persuading himself he's done no such thing. But how do you top this?

Powell tries to top it by introducing an almost unbelievably horrid female character, Pamela Flitton, and then marrying Widmerpool to her for no readily apparent reason. Then he turns Widmerpool into a successful Labour politician and peer who betrays his country to the communists (specifically to a country never identified but quite clearly Yugoslavia), a betrayal for which he is never punished. And hard as this is to stomach, the Widmerpool arc in the final two novels becomes utterly preposterous.

So Widmerpool's destruction in the final novel does not feel like just desserts. It is, rather, a colossal letdown. It's almost as if Powell realized he'd let the story go on too long, had got himself trapped, and couldn't find the way out.

Lesson learned: keep your villains within the range of human believability.

*Until I heard the name spoken I had cherished the hope that "Widmerpool" would turn out to be one of those wonderful Britishisms like "St. John" or "Worcestershire" and would be pronounced Wimple or something like that. Alas, it is pronounced precisely as written.