Which Way?, page 17
In one of the cleverest moments of reversal in the novel, when Lionel says he wishes he’d seen Lotinga with them, Hugo and Claudia ‘exchange unrepentant glances. How could any lowbrow appreciate it with the subtlety of their enjoyment?’ The glances remain unrepentant, but the person receiving Claudia’s glance has changed – and so has its purport. No longer is Claudia defending the lowbrow against the intellectual; rather, she is defending it for the intellectual.
It’s a small moment that sums up Claudia’s personality in the novel: a flexible one, ready to be moulded by her surroundings and the people she knows. When Hugo is explaining the theme of his novel to Claudia, he describes a woman “who’s got to face her crisis. Shall she leave her husband or not?”. Ultimately, he says, she will not because “she’s not the type [...] She has to go through this hell of mental strife, and any passing acquaintance could tell the outcome long before with hardly a thought”. Which Way? ultimately disputes this reasoning. Claudia is the same woman, whichever pathway she chooses, but whether she becomes a wife, a mistress, a dutiful mother is little to do with her ‘type’. Even the core of her morality shifts. Her interests, the way she presents herself, and the things that make her happy are all malleable – so, when Claudia is choosing between three invitations, she is ultimately choosing between three selves. The only consistency is ‘Blue Danube’ played in the background. Benson uses a sort of ‘multiverse’ to show the instability of the self – exploring very different positions within the parameters available to women in the 1930s.
Simon Thomas
Series consultant Simon Thomas created the middlebrow blog Stuck in a Book in 2007. He is also the co-host of the popular podcast Tea or Books? Simon has a PhD from Oxford University in Interwar Literature.
Theodora Benson, Which Way?
