Gormenghast (novel)

Gormenghast

First edition cover - 1950
Author	Mervyn Peake
Language	English
Series	Gormenghast
Genre	Gothic
Publisher	Eyre & Spottiswoode
Publication date	1950
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	Titus Groan
Followed by	Titus Alone

Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake, is the second novel in his Gormenghast series. It is the story of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast Castle, from age 7 to 17. As the story opens, Titus dreads the pre-ordained life of ritual that stretches before him. To Titus, Master of Ritual Barquentine and his apprentice Steerpike are the embodiment of all he wants to rebel against. An important sub-plot involves Titus at school, where he encounters the professors, especially Bellgrove, who becomes Headmaster of Gormenghast school.

Plot summary

Steerpike usurps Barquentine

Steerpike, despite his position of authority, is in reality a dangerous traitor to Gormenghast who seeks to eventually wield ultimate power in the castle. To this end, he kills Barquentine so that he can replace him and so advance in power. Although he is successful in his murder of Barquentine, the old master of ritual put up such a severe struggle that Steerpike is severely injured in the process, suffering extensive burns and almost drowning. As Steerpike lies recovering in a delirious state from his ordeal, he cries out the words And the twins will make it five. This is overheard by the castle's doctor, Dr Prunesquallor, who is greatly disturbed to hear it. Although the reader is not told this explicitly, Steerpike's words are a clear reference to the number of people he has killed. The reference to the twins is to the aunts of Titus, the twin sisters Ladies Cora and Clarice. Steerpike has effectively been holding them captive in a remote and abandoned part of the castle, and they are utterly dependent on him for food and drink. Due to Steerpike's prolonged recovery he is unable to supply them (and at some level Steerpike is aware of this, even in his delirium), and by the time he has recovered they have already died of thirst and starvation.

Dr Prunesquallor discusses Steerpike's words with the Countess Gertrude, but they disagree over its meaning and the ambiguity over exactly what Steerpike meant is never resolved. Nevertheless, both of them are now thoroughly suspicious about Steerpike and his role in the various disappearances and deaths among the happenings of the castle. Although Steerpike appears to make a full recovery, he is left disfigured with a morbid fear of fire. It also becomes clear that the balance of his mind is increasingly disturbed.

The professors

An important part of Titus' life is spent at school, where he encounters the school professors, especially Bellgrove, one of Titus's teachers, who eventually ascends to Headmaster of Gormenghast. The other teachers are a collection of misfits, each with idiosyncrasies of their own, who bicker and compete with each other in petty rivalries, being not unlike a bunch of overgrown schoolboys themselves. A welcome humorous interlude in the novel occurs when Irma Prunesquallor (sister of the castle's doctor), decides to get married, and throws a party in the hope of meeting a suitable partner. To this end she invites the school professors, who are so terrified of meeting a woman that they make fools of themselves in various ways. One professor faints at the prospect of having to speak to Irma and has to be revived by the doctor. When he wakes up he flees naked and shrieking over the garden wall, never to be seen again. Only Bellgrove, recently made headmaster, rises to the occasion and behaves in a gentlemanly way to Irma. Bellgrove and Irma thus begin a rather unusual romance. Bellgrove becomes an important figure in Titus' development. In many respects, he is the standard absent-minded professor who falls asleep during his own class and plays with marbles. However, deep inside him there is a certain element of dignity and nobility. At heart Bellgrove is kindly, and if weak, at least has the humility to be aware of his faults. He becomes something of a father figure to Titus.

The Thing

An important development for Titus is his brief meeting with his "foster sister" a feral girl known only as 'The Thing', the daughter of Titus' wet-nurse Keda of the Bright Carvers. The Thing, being an illegitimate child, is exiled by the Carvers and lives a feral life in the forests around Gormenghast. Titus first meets her when he escapes from the confines of Gormenghast into the outside world. Titus is entranced by her wild grace, and sets out to meet her. He does so, and holds her briefly, but she flees him and is fatally struck by lightning. However, her fierce independence inspires Titus, and gives him courage to later leave his home.

The unmasking of Steerpike

Due to the vigilance of the old servant Flay Steerpike is eventually unmasked as the murderer of the aunts of Titus, Cora and Clarice. He becomes a renegade within the castle, using his extensive knowledge to hide within its vast regions, and waging a guerilla campaign of random killing with his catapult. Steerpike's capture seems impossible until the entire kingdom of Gormenghast is submerged in a flood, due to endless rains. The mud dwellers are forced to take refuge in the castle and the castle's own inhabitants are also forced to retreat to higher and higher floors as the flood waters keep rising. Fuchsia, grown increasingly melancholic and withdrawn after the death of her father and betrayal by Steerpike, briefly contemplates suicide. At the last moment, she changes her mind, but slips and falls from a window, striking her head on the way down and drowning in the floodwaters. Unaware of the accident when they find her body, both Countess Gertrude and Titus are convinced that Steerpike is to blame, and both resolve to bring the murderer to justice.

So begins an epic manhunt through the rapidly flooding castle, with Steerpike forced into ever smaller areas and eventually surrounded by the castle's forces. Even at this late stage, his ruthlessness and cunning mean that Steerpike almost evades capture. However, Titus realises that he is hiding in the ivy against the castle walls, and full of rage and hatred against Steerpike he pursues and kills him himself. Despite being hailed as a hero, Titus is intent on leaving Gormenghast to explore a wider world, and the novel ends with him dramatically riding away to seek his fortune in the unknown lands outside.

Mark Robertson's cover illustration for the Mandarin paperback edition

Book Review

Gormenghast: The book ‘Gormenghast’ is the sequel to ‘Titus Groan’. This novel narrates the childhood of Titus and his growing longing to be free.

The story begins when Titus is seven years old and ends when he is seventeen.

‘For the first nine years of his life the heir to the earldom was made to mix with, and attempt to understand the ways of, the lower orders.

On his fifteenth birthday such friendships as he had struck would have to cease’ 

It is the castle’s tradition that the heir to the throne of Gormenghast should be treated like any other child until his fifteenth birthday. In the beginning he is considered to be mischievous and he is often punished for avoiding the daily rituals that are his duty to carry out as the Lord of Gormenghast.

‘First and ever foremost he is a child. A ritual, more compelling than ever man devised, is fighting anchored darkness. A ritual of the blood; of the jumping blood.’

Titus attends school with the other children of Gormenghast.

Steerpike has been keeping Cora and Clarice prisoner in a secluded room of the castle for two years under the pretence that he is protecting them from an outbreak of some horrible disease. The other occupants of the castle think that they have killed themselves as Steerpike has forged a suicide note in their handwriting.

Titus decides to escape the castle for a day and goes to Gormenghast Mountain. He gets extremely lost in the woods and becomes frightened. He sees a mysterious humanlike creature ‘this creature was exquisitely slender. It floated through the golden air like a feather, the slender arms along the sides of the gracile body’ and he is shocked but the creature runs away before he can get a closer look.

Titus gets still more lost but is rescued by Flay who now lives in a cave in the woods. Flay feeds him and because he is ‘a traditionalist of the old school’ he scolds Titus for running away from his duty. Flay brings Titus back to the castle where he is kept in isolation in the ‘Lichen fort’ for two weeks for ‘flagrant offenses against the hierarchy’.

Steerpike does not like Mrs. Slagg, the Nanny of Fuchsia and Titus so he poisons her. She is found dead ‘lying on her bed like a grubby little doll’.

Irma, the sister of Gormenghast’s doctor, has a party find a husband. She decides to marry the head master of Titus’s school, Belgrove. Meanwhile Cora and Clarice have grown tired of the degrading way in which Steerpike treats them and they decide to kill him. They are however unsuccessful and remain Steerpike’s prisoners.

Steerpike wants to be the master of rituals and so he decides to kill Barquentine.

‘He had to kill him in some way which left no trace: to dispose of the body and at the same time mix pleasure and business in such a compound that neither was the weaker for that union.’

He decides to burn Barquentine but his plan goes wrong and although Barquentine does die, Steerpike is horribly injured and spends many months recovering.

While Steerpike is unconscious the twins have no way of getting food and they die.

Titus discovers that the creature he saw in the woods was the illegitimate child of Keda, the woman who was Titus’s wet nurse when he was a baby. Keda killed herself shortly after giving birth to the child. The people of the village of bright carvers ostracise her because ‘for a child to be illegitimate was for that child to be loathed, as though it were diseased. Not only this. A bastard babe was feared. There was a strong belief that in some way a love-child was evil.’ She does not even have a name, they just call her ‘the thing’.

Titus tells Fuchsia that Flay is living in the woods and takes her to see him and they tell him about a tunnel they have discovered under the castle. Flay moves into this tunnel and starts to wander the castle at night for he is worried that something bad is happening in the castle, ‘was is merely his ingrained pessimism and the fear which had understandably grown stronger since his banishment, that, with himself away, the castle was the weaker?’

Steerpike decides that he must seduce Fuchsia to increase his power.

‘He must woo the daughter of the house; He must woo her with all the guile and artistry in his power.’

Steerpike plan seems to be working but one night Flay sees Steerpike wandering the castle. He is suspicious so he wakes Titus and Doctor Prunesquallor. They all follow Steerpike down underneath the castle to the room of Cora and Clarice. They see Steerpike enter the room and watch him as he plays with the corpses of the twins.

‘Steerpike’s gaze having returned to the skeletons , he wandered toward them, and running the long, resilient splinter along their ribs as a child might run a stick along a railing, he heard the bone notes of an instrument’

They confront Steerpike and he stabs Flay and runs away. The castle is so big that it seems it will be impossible to find Steerpike but Gormenghast becomes flooded and everyone in forced to move to the higher rooms of the castle.

Titus tries again to run away. When he is in the forest he sees ‘the thing’ die. He is then forced to return to the castle because the rain is so heavy.

When Fuchsia finds out the horrible things that Steerpike has done she decides to kill herself. Titus assumes Steerpike is the one who has killed her; he manages to find Steerpike and kill him.

Once the flooding is gone down Titus decides to leave once and for all. The book ends with Titus leaving Gormenghast.

‘And so, exulting, as the moonlit rocks fled by him, exulting as the tears streamed over his face-with his eyes fixed excitedly upon the blurred horizon-and the battering of hoofbeats loud in his ears-Titus rode out of his world.’

I really enjoyed reading Gormenghast. Peakes style and humour is as good as ever while the plot is exciting and engrossing. This book really revolves around the character of Steerpike more then anyone else. While I believe that Steerpike is a very interesting and engaging character I would have liked for there to be more written about the character of Titus because the idea of his longing to be free really intrigued me. I think in a way we all sometimes long to be free of the lives we must live but in Titus this is greatly increased because the life that is stretching out before him is one of misery and mundane rituals. He tries several times to escape despite believing that it is impossible, however, in the end he finally manages to walk away.

I would recommend this book mainly to adults as the dark nature of the book probably isn’t suitable for everyone and the language Peake uses can be difficult to deal with. I think to truly enjoy the book you have to have at least some degree of appreciation of poetry as the way Peake writes is very poetic.

Other minor characters

The Poet: Known only by his professional name, the Poet holds a relatively important function of ritual in the castle. He is described as having a wedge-shaped head and a voice "as strange and deep as a lugubrious ocean". After Barquentine's death and Steerpike's unmasking as a traitor, he is hastily appointed as the new Master of Ritual.

Bright Carvers: or Mud Dwellers Hereditary population of the extensive Mud Village situated up against and outside the walls of Gormenghast Castle, who are famed for their skill in woodcarving.

Opus Fluke, Flannelcat, Shred, Shrivell, Mulefire and Perch-Prism: School professors.

Cutflower: School professor. A dandy and a fop.

Deadyawn: Headmaster of the Gormenghast School. Spends most of his time asleep in a tall high chair on wheels, pushed around by his assistant, the Fly. He is killed whilst organising the search for Titus when the Fly slips and accidentally tips him out of his high chair onto his head. Bellgrove immediately assumes command of the School.

(The) Fly: Deadyawn's assistant. His main function appears to push Deadyawn around in his high chair and keep his hot water bottle topped up. After accidentally killing his master he leaps out of a window to his death.

The Leader: School professor. Only known as "The Leader", this ancient bearded character proposes a philosophy where everything in this world is an illusion - even including sensations such as pain. He is forcibly brought into reality and subsequently dies, when his long white beard is set alight by a young man during an argument.

Spiregrain, Splint and Throd: School professors. Disciples of The Leader, they live empty lives in the thrall of his nihilistic teachings. Upon witnessing the Leader's ignoble and ironic death they are liberated to celebrate life with jubilant abandon.