The Solid Mandala by Patrick White

First published: 1966

Type of work: Psychological symbolism

Time of work: Roughly the first sixty years of the twentieth century

Locale: The fictional town of Sarsaparilla and its suburbs, in Australia

Principal Characters:

• Arthur Brown, one of the novel’s protagonists, a friendly, kind soul
• Waldo Brown, another protagonist, Arthur’s twin brother and his opposite in temperament
• Mrs. Poulter, the Browns’ neighbor, a friend of Arthur
• Dulcie Feinstein, a friend of both Brown brothers

The Novel

The action of The Solid Mandala is divided evenly between Arthur and Waldo Brown. The first and last sections of the four-part novel, narrated from an omniscient third-person point of view, describe events before and after the climactic moment in the Brown brothers’ lives. The two middle sections are narrated from each brother’s point of view; both recount in quite different ways the story of their lives up to the fateful climax of their relationship.

Arthur and Waldo Brown, fraternal twins, are born in Australia to parents transplanted from England. George and Anne Brown preserve some grandiose ideas about life, and so Waldo and Arthur grow up in the un-noteworthy suburb of Sarsaparilla in an atherwise average house made unusual because of its incongruous classical pediment in front. Arthur is the strong, sturdy son who is slow but also sensitive and kindly. Waldo, by contrast, is physically weaker than Arthur but clever enough to become a dry, unemotional librarian. As they mature, it becomes clear that Arthur considers himself Waldo’s protector, while superior Waldo resents having to admit to his dull-witted dill of a brother.

As the story begins, the brothers are both retired old men who live together in their original childhood home, take their scruffy dogs for daily walks, and spend the rest of their time bickering. The two have always been viewed as eccentric by their neighbors, although, as Waldo tries to make abundantly clear, it is Arthur who gives them the bad reputation. Waldo’s reminiscence about their combined past reveals him to be an unsympathetic character: bookish, prudish, and egotistic. He considers Arthur his duty, his responsibility, his “club foot,” and does his best to dissociate himself from his embarrassing twin. Meanwhile, it is Waldo who has a limp, figuratively speaking; he never gets further than working at the library in Sarsaparilla and writing bad poems and futile essays about obscure authors. Waldo remains friendless and loveless throughout his life: Although he attempts relations with women such as Mrs. Poulter across the street and Jewish—hence exotic—Dulcie Feinstein, he is sufficiently ambivalent about his feelings toward them that neither friendship nor love ever develops. Arthur infuriates Waldo throughout their lives together, not only because he is more popular but also because he has an uncanny knack for undeliberately yet effectively one-upping Waldo in almost every way, including poetry writing. Tension between the two grows until it erupts in a single, violent gesture which ends Waldo’s narrative.

Arthur re-creates many of the same events from his own perspective. Considered backward by most people, Arthur leaves school early to work first in a store, then in a garage. He builds intimate, meaningful relations with Mrs. Poulter and Dulcie because he is so utterly honest and open. Arthur’s simplicity sometimes results in his saying and doing disconcerting things, but both women value his innate wisdom and goodness. Both Dulcie and Mrs. Poulter come to think of Arthur as a kind of shaman: Dulcie names one of her children after him, and Mrs. Poulter considers him her savior. Because Arthur lives by intuition and instinct, he knows much about people, dogs, and things that Waldo never learns. Arthur, despite his lack of intellect, harbors sophisticated tastes: One shameful incident has Waldo discovering unpresentable old Arthur in the library reading Fyodor Dostoevski’s The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880) and ordering him to leave the premises as if he were a stranger. Forgiving as always, Arthur attempts to reconcile with his brother, but his efforts only enrage Waldo all the more.

Most precious to Arthur is his collection of glass marbles, of which four in particular are solid mandalas, the mandala being a symbol of totality and also the purported dwelling for a god. Its geometric form is usually represented by a square within a circle, symbolizing order imposed on chaos. Arthur reserves each of these special agates for a particular person; he bestows two on Dulcie and Mrs. Poulter in turn. Waldo rejects the one Arthur tries to give him and so Arthur keeps it as well as his own. This collecting and endowing of the mandalas represents the novel’s symbolic center. Arthur’s section ends at the same place as that of Waldo; part 4 returns to an objective narrator in order to detail the events which follow the catastrophe.

The Characters

Because Patrick White develops a distinctive, individual voice for each brother, both emerge as memorable characters, although Arthur Brown is an especially compelling creation. The style of the two middle sections varies according to which brother narrates: Arthur’s chapters are more impressionistic and poetic, while Waldo’s are more straightforward and prosaic. Whereas the prevailing tone of Waldo’s version is one of anger and resentment, Arthur’s story is warm and generous. Waldo presents dry recollections because he filters everything through his intellect: Arthur’s memories, by contrast, are visceral as well as emotional and imaginative. Both styles are realistic in method in the sense that the brothers, their dogs, and their house are evoked in all of their shabby, unlovely detail, but the narrative also relies heavily on symbols such as the mandala as well as on the allegorical implications of twins.

Arthur, the more appealing brother, is a modern version of the noble primitive or God’s fool. Patrick White invokes the stereotype in order to satirize provincial Australian values; because Arthur is good, humble, and incapable of hypocrisy, he stands out as eccentric, even inferior. Except for Dulcie and Mrs. Poulter, both atypical Australian women, the suburban populace (represented by the appropriately named Mrs. Dun) regards Arthur with distaste and fear. Suburbia’s values are entirely materialistic and do not permit acceptance of any person or thing which exists outside their narrow, prescribed standards of conduct.

Waldo is the more pathetic of the two because he attempts to conform to the community standards even though he despises them. He, too, is a stereotypical White character: a dry, bookish academic who lacks imagination and humanity. Waldo remains a prisoner of his own tortured, frustrated emotions; unable and unwilling to understand how much a part of each other he and his brother are, he denies the truly symbiotic, even psychic connection between them and thus also denies love.

Arthur and Waldo are two characters but also one. Each represents half of the other; neither is complete without his other self. While Arthur realizes their special status as twin brothers and strives toward unity, Waldo rejects his brother and the proffered mandala, thus also refusing wholeness. In keeping Arthur at arm’s length, Waldo prevents either of them from enjoying a complete life. The fact that both Waldo and Arthur are derived from stereotypes limits their development into fully rounded characters; Arthur especially seems too disingenuous at times to be believable. Waldo remains more realistic because more flawed, although he is, finally, the least attractive of the two. The Brown brothers are opposites in every way, yet, taken together, they can be seen as the good and bad, or light and dark aspects of the human soul, both of which are necessary and mutually dependent.

Critical Context

The Solid Mandala remains one of White’s least critically acclaimed novels, probably because it is so schematic in structure. The notion that an individual contains many selves and both sexes originates as early as The Aunt’s Story (1948), in the character of Theodora Goodman, and dominates novels such as The Twyborn Affair (1979) and Memoirs of Many in One (1986). The Solid Mandala is, however, the first of White’s books to explore fully the consuming nature of family ties, a subject which he takes up again, more successfully, in The Eye of the Storm (1973).

Arthur Brown is one of a series of innocents blessed with visionary insight who people White’s novels, just as Waldo Brown joins another line of Whitean characters who place their faith in the life of the mind. Riders in the Chariot (1961), the novel which precedes The Solid Mandala, contains examples of both such types. The “elect,” of which Mary Hare from Riders in the Chariot and Arthur Brown of The Solid Mandala are members, lead shabby, disreputable lives in the eyes of the world at large. Waldo Brown is a descendant of Mordecai Himmelfarb from Riders in the Chariot, except that Mordecai only pursues an academic career until the inexplicable evil of the Holocaust causes him to abandon books for simple, humble living. Waldo is never redeemed by this lesson, and his character type does not reappear, except for certain aspects of it, in White’s novels. What The Vivisector (1970) inherits from its predecessor The Solid Mandala is a vision of Australia as ugly and static.

White satirizes the narrow Australian mentality which condemns what it considers unusual and, hence, threatening. His consistent establishment-bashing has won for White the enmity of many Australian critics as well as the admiration of readers in other postcolonial cultures where there are similar conflicts between a stiff, British past and the immense freedom a new land offers. The fictional suburb of Sarsaparilla first makes an appearance in Riders in the Chariot but is also the setting for some of White’s plays and certain of his short stories in The Burnt Ones (1964). Squalid, stifling Sarsaparilla and its intolerable inhabitants represent White’s most scathing indictment of middle-class Australia.

Bibliography

Herring, Thelma. “Self and Shadow: The Quest for Totality in The Solid Mandala,” in Ten Essays on Patrick White: Selected from Southerly (1964-1967), 1970. Edited by G. A. Wilkes.

McCulloch, A. M. A Tragic Vision: The Novels of Patrick White, 1983.

Morley, Patricia A. The Mystery of Unity: Theme and Technique in the Novels of Patrick White, 1972.

Walsh, William. “Patrick White’s Vision of Human Incompleteness: The Solid Mandala and The Vivisector,” in Readings in Commonwealth Literature, 1973. Edited by William Walsh.

Wilkes, G. A. “An Approach to Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala,” in Southerly. XXIX, no. 2 (1969), pp. 97-110.