Ethel and Ernest: A True Story

AUTHOR: Briggs, Raymond

ARTIST: Raymond Briggs (illustrator); Carol Devine (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: Jonathan Cape

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1998

Publication History

Ethel and Ernest was published after Raymond Briggs had become a celebrated creator of children’s, young-adult, and adult books. It evolved from his creative development and adaptation of experiences, people, and places. As he develops his art, Briggs draws on his family and home and on world events. His father, a milkman, grumpily but dutifully going about his work, models grumpy, dutiful Saint Nick in Father Christmas (1973). The Snowman (1978) depicts Briggs’s own house, the house that is the home of Ethel and Ernest. Briggs begins to utilize a comic-book-style format to tell more serious, even satiric stories. Cartoonlike Fungus the Bogeyman (1977) depicts the filthy world of bogeys who scare human beings. When the Wind Blows (1982) presents the life of a couple living before, during, and after a nuclear war. Characters and places in these books draw on Briggs’s own experience. After experimenting with serious themes and comic book style, Briggs dramatized the story of his parents’ life in Ethel and Ernest, a work categorized as a graphic novel. Using bubbles for dialogue and panels for characters, he presents his parents and working-class England during a period of change and trauma between 1920 and 1970, the years of the married life of Ethel and Ernest.

Plot

Ethel and Ernest renders the life and historical circumstances of two ordinary but representative people who lived through the ever-changing, sometimes traumatic events of the middle years of the twentieth century. Describing his parents, the author tells a love story that resonates with all who have experienced social changes and all who have worked to keep a marriage joyful.

The novel begins with the courtship of Ethel and Ernest, a story that has become family lore for this small and close family. Ethel initiated the meeting when, while working as a ladies’ maid, she saw out the window the handsome Ernest approaching on his bicycle. Boldly, she waved her dusting cloth at him. He, charmed, waved back. After they greeted each other like this for a few days, Ernest appeared at the front door with flowers and an invitation to dinner and a film. They both felt their love was meant to be. Though they had distinct backgrounds and differing political opinions, they nourished first and foremost their loving relationship, which was enhanced by the arrival, after a few anxious years, of a child, Raymond, born when Ethel was thirty-seven. Raymond was doted on.

Their life then revolves around making their home, meeting the challenges of the Battle of Britain (1940), adapting to a changing society, and marveling at new inventions. They follow the complicated discussions about war while listening to the radio, one of the first technical advances from which they would benefit. Their responses to impending war, the speeches of Winston Churchill, and the postwar shift in political power present the individuality of the two people who reflect differing political and class philosophies. Their actions and their quiet courage demonstrate the suffering, strength, and cheerfulness the British people exhibited during these years.

Postwar years bring challenges and surprises. Ethel and Ernest acquire a washing machine, a television, and a telephone. They experience the Cold War; they learn of the explosion of the atom bomb; and on the television, they watch a man walk on the moon. Their son becomes an artist, a disappointing career choice in their minds. They grow old and die, and their son contemplates selling the family home. Ethel and Ernest is a straightforward story of an ordinary life that projects simple beauty.

Characters

•Ernest Briggs recognizes the honor and the opportunity of Ethel’s special greeting from the window and responds, creating the fortuitous turning point of their lives. A versatile, handy man, he enhances their home and thrives on his work, delivering milk, refusing to be persuaded by his wife to seek advancement. He embraces the politics of the Labor Party and advocates socialization. Though he expresses his views with gusto, he knows when to hold his tongue.

•Ethel Briggs initiates the relationship with Ernest. Her simple act of spontaneity and courage typifies the woman who has her own opinions about politics and class structure, views that are different from her husband’s. While she does not hesitate to assert them, she, like her husband, values their family bonds above their political disagreements.

•Raymond, the artist son, pursues his talents even when his choice causes his parents some consternation. He depicts clearly the beauty of their ordinary life and reflects on it as he deals with their deaths.

•Julie Briggs, Raymond’s wife, because she suffers from schizophrenia, chooses, with her husband, to limit their family to themselves.

Artistic Style

The graphics of this novel reflect the artist’s skill and training. Briggs draws with accurate and realistic detail, including each check on Ethel’s apron, each brick on the facade of their home, and each repeated pattern of the paper on the walls. The characters express joy, sadness, anger, and delight in face and body. Through the artwork, daily life is conveyed, as, for example, Ernest taps replacement nails into the soles of his worn boots with his special hammer. This is the work of an artist/illustrator accustomed to writing wordless picture books in which each emotion and activity is fully represented through picture. There is nothing cartoonish about the artwork.

Briggs also uses color to convey mood. While the work as a whole is colorful, the palate is muted. Within this palate are variations. Dark colors for the jackets and boots present the somber mood when, for example, Ethel helps Ernest off with his boots after he returns from fourteen hours of putting out fires and picking up bodies of children following a particularly devastating bombardment during World War II. Bright colors present the birthday party for two when they celebrate Ethel’s pregnancy.

Generally, speech is conveyed in traditional comic-strip bubbles; sustained conversation appears in boxes of text with speakers alternating in order on opposite halves of the text boxes. The picture panels vary in size. At times they are small, depicting a face or two. At other times, they fill half a page to display the culmination of a process, as when Ethel washes clothes in the old (but “new”) washing machine and then hangs them on the line in their little back yard where they blow in the breeze. Drawn in pencil and filled in with color, the pictures present an intimate look at two lives.

Themes

A hardworking ladies’ maid, no longer young, who feels life may soon pass her by, waves flirtatiously at a young man cycling by. The young man, no fool, seizes the opportunity and soon presents himself with flowers in hand. Thus begins Ethel and Ernest’s tale of love. The rest of the story shows that married life includes much to try the spirit. However, despite economic depression, war, life in the nuclear world, and social changes (from the introduction of radio to the atomic bomb and then a man walking on the moon), the love of these two people, committed to marriage and each other, endures and deepens. The challenges to their marital happiness unfold in their dialogue and individual responses to political and social changes. While bluster and disagreement reflect on their faces and in their words, in their hearts the two clearly value their relationship with each other and their son above all. In the end, both get old, then get sick, and then die. The lonely husband follows the wife. When the husband dies, the once faithful cat, who wrapped himself around the husband’s neck while he read the paper, is pictured walking away, seeking a new home. Their son, reflecting on their lives while noting the blossoming of a pear tree he planted during the war, moves ahead, as he must; he sells the family home and recycles their possessions. Their gentle world has come to an end, and yet it has been dramatized and celebrated.

Impact

Ethel and Ernest depicts vividly the reality of “happily ever after.” The romantic story of how Ethel met Ernest is followed by what life brings to this ordinary, working-class couple. The novel expresses a natural evolution of the artistry of Briggs, renowned first as a children’s book artist, whose wordless picture books present characters, even snowmen, so expressively that words are not necessary.

In Ethel and Ernest, though, the bubbles of dialogue create context, especially when the words are quotes or summaries of the news. In many ways this graphic novel is similar to others of the Modern Age (the late 1980’s to the present) of graphic novels. Like Maus (1986-1991) by Art Spiegelman, it explores the response of a son to his parents’ life. Like Persepolis (2003) by Marjane Satrapi, it explores the lives of people caught in a particular historical moment.

The artistic style makes this graphic novel different, however. The highly detailed, careful drawings set it apart from other acclaimed graphic novels to which it might be compared. In the mode of a children’s book, it presents a realization, a clear theme, and an affirming, though adult, resolution. The artwork is so descriptive that it could almost stand alone and is the work of a practiced artist, who, through painstaking detail, expresses subtle differences in mood and personality. In its appearance, which is more like a children’s book than a graphic novel, Ethel and Ernest melds word, picture, and dialogue so that the total effect is like the experience of delight produced by music or poetry.

Further Reading

Briggs, Raymond. The Man (1992).

Katchor, Ben. The Jew of New York (1998).

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis (2003).

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986).

Bibliography

Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. “Mum, Dad, and Not Always So Merry Old England.” The New York Times, September 23, 1999.

Murray, Mike. “Which Was More Important Sir, Ordinary People Getting Electricity or the Rise of Hitler? Using Ethel and Ernest with Year Nine.” Teaching History 107 (June, 2002): 20-25.

Tabachnick, Stephen E. “A Comic-Book World.” World Literature Today 81, no. 2 (March/April, 2007): 24.

“The Way I See It: Raymond Briggs—Artists Tackle Ten Existential Questions.” New Statesman 136 (December 17, 2007): 72.