***NOVEL SYNTHESIS***

In each of the four novels we read for the London course, there has been an in-class focus on relationships between characters. In all cases, a homosocial aspect has been present, not to be confused with the homosexual elements so prominently displayed in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Mrs. Dalloway. With the topic of the homosocial versus the homosexual, it is easy to make connections and distinctions between the four novels.

In Bleak House, we saw Esther participate in many homosocial relationships. She was connected with many female characters; her relationship with Ada was most prominent. In this case it is interesting to see how female friendships are portrayed in Dickens' time in comparison to Virginia Woolfe's time. In some senses, the relationships between Esther and Ada and Clarissa and Sally are very similar. In both instances, the women were socially thrown together and became the closest of friends almost immediately. In contrast, the two relationships are different in that Esther and Ada were close friends, but Esther played a more maternal role in Ada's life. It seems that Clarissa and Sally had a much different sort of relationship- I was left with the impression that Clarissa idolized Sally in a way; we know she admired Sally and had strong feelings for her. While the relationship between Esther and Ada was pure friendship and nothing more, I would argue that there was romantic love present between Clarissa and Sally, as we have some insight into the matter:

"But this question of love (she thought, putting her coat away), this falling in love with women. Take Sally Seton, her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?"

In this vein, we can move along to the comparison of Dorian Gray's relationships and the friendship between Samad and Archie in White Teeth. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, nearly all of the male relationships had a homosexual element to them: Basil's obsession with Dorian's beauty, Dorian's fixation on Lord Henry's words, Lord Henry's fascination with toying with Dorian's mind, and on and on. Though the novel was written in a time in which homosexuality was a crime to be imprisoned for; Oscar Wilde was quite blatant in his approach to describing these relationships. Although nothing overtly sexual occurs in the novel between men, it is implied in his flow of descriptive language.

This bears sharp contrast to the friendship of Samad Iqbal and Archie Jones. The two men have an unlikely friendship, connected probably solely through the war. They have completely different backgrounds, yet their lives are connected through the war and the things they have in common in their current lives, such as their children of the same age in the same school, the pub they convene in daily for chips and beans (or mushrooms in Archie's case), PTA meetings- the sort of day to day mundane is what continues to bind the two together, in addition to their constant rehashing of old war stories. It's interesting how much more functional a relationship between two men of such different backgrounds is in comparison to the relationships in Dorian Gray, in which all of the men are of the same social class and background. The men in Dorian Gray are all mentally or socially peculiar in one way or another, and the result is confusion, manipulation, and death. This proves an interesting point: congruent social, historical, even geographical backgrounds do not a perfect friendship or relationship make. Archie and Samad are almost polar opposites in that respect, yet their relationship has survived for years, through thick and thin.

It is also interesting how the city of London plays into these stories. London's role in the novels is perpetually shifting- we move from the sludge, mire and soot of Dickensian London to the wealth of The Strand in Wilde's time. From there we walk with Clarissa Dalloway through the streets of a still wealthy yet less extravagant London, to the more modern day suburbs of a poor east London- Willesden Green, where Archie and Samad reside. This course in the city and the novel has tied these two elements together in a way I had never previously thought to take note of; in hindsight it seems so completely obvious that I can't believe I passed over such an important element of reading a novel. The ever-changing background of London and its interaction with the lives of the characters and their relationships proves most interesting; the city truly colors each novel in a different way and gives each one a completely different energy.