Joy of the Worm: Analysis of Major Characters
"Joy of the Worm: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the intricate lives and developments of its key characters, primarily focusing on Jeremy Bohun, a laborer turned vicar. Set in New Zealand, the narrative intricately examines Jeremy's mental and spiritual growth from his early twenties to middle age, heavily influenced by his father, James Bohun, a Methodist minister. James is portrayed as a vigorous yet pedantic figure, whose incessant lecturing and overwhelming personality shape Jeremy's identity and ambitions. The novel also highlights the struggles of women through the character of Maisie Michie, Jeremy's first wife, whose vibrant spirit is crushed by the burdens of motherhood and financial strain, ultimately leading to her tragic demise. Another significant character, Queenie Quelch, serves as a reflection of the limited roles available to women of the time, caught in a stifling marriage with Jeremy's father. The story delves into themes of heredity, environment, and the cyclical nature of personal struggles, offering a poignant critique of societal norms in early 20th-century New Zealand. Overall, the character analysis presents a deep exploration of ambition, familial influence, and the constraints of gender roles.
Joy of the Worm: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Frank Sargeson
First published: 1969
Genre: Novel
Locale: Rural New Zealand
Plot: Tragicomedy
Time: The early twentieth century
Jeremy Bohun, a laborer in New Zealand who becomes a county clerk, a country schoolmaster, and finally a vicar of the Church of England. The novel focuses on the mental and spiritual development of this sincere, ambitious, well-meaning protagonist from his early twenties to the approach of middle age. He is very much his father's son, having been infected with his father's passion for orotund and edifying literature in the grand manner of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia. Like his father, he has a strong sexual appetite, which eventually results in his fathering ten children by two different wives. His worldly progress is handicapped by an inferiority complex, also attributable to his father's influence. He is painfully aware that his father strongly favors his brother and in fact regards him as a pale facsimile of John, who ran away from home at an early age because he could not stand his father's pedantic, overbearing personality.
James Bohun, Jeremy's father, a Methodist minister. He is already an elderly man when the novel opens, yet he is physically vigorous and vain about his appearance. He is a nonstop talker and would be regarded by most people as a bore. He is infatuated with his inexhaustible flow of second-rate opinions about the conduct of life. He is compared by the author to Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. The Reverend Bohun's well-intentioned but insufferable lecturing drives his younger son clear out of New Zealand. Jeremy, however, remains close to his father. The theme of the novel has to do with the influence of heredity and environment on the development of an individual: Jeremy is gradually molded into a copy of his father and inevitably becomes a clergyman himself.
Maisie Michie, a schoolteacher who becomes Jeremy's first wife. This attractive, vivacious young woman has advanced ideas for such a puritanical environment as New Zealand prior to World War I. She and Jeremy begin sleeping together out of wedlock and get married when she discovers that she is pregnant. She is just as sensual as her husband but, like most women of the period, has been kept ignorant in matters of birth control. As a result, she produces babies at the rate of one a year. The burgeoning family puts such a financial strain on Jeremy that he begins embezzling money and eventually is forced to resign his job as county clerk. The combination of recurring pregnancies and chronic financial worries destroys Maisie's joy in living. She finally attempts to desert her family but is accidentally drowned in her departure.
Queenie Quelch, James's second wife, an attractive and good-natured woman in her mid-thirties who comes to Jeremy's father's home as a housekeeper after the death of his first wife. Queenie is another example of the restricted condition of women in New Zealand in the early part of the twentieth century. At first, she is impressed by her husband's learning and loquaciousness, but she later realizes that he is nothing but a windbag with a very ordinary mind. Her limited intelligence, her lack of education, and her stultifying provincial surroundings prevent her from realizing that there is any escape from the drudgery and monotony of being a housewife and sex object for a ruttish, insensitive old man. She dies under mysterious circumstances, and James starts thinking about finding still another wife to satisfy his lust and act as his unpaid household servant, as Jeremy does after Maisie's death.