Jeeves and the nostalgia for unity

This paper argues that the Jeeves saga by P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) is imbued with a nostalgia that does not simply pander to the desire to relive or reinstate a particular historical way of life, but is instead part and parcel of Wodehouse’s comic evocation of a stereotyped Englishness. Such an Englishness is in turn tied to notions of a golden pastoral past, a “Merry England” reminiscent of utopias like Eden and Arcadia. The case is then made that this nostalgia amounts to what Albert Camus called a “nostalgia for unity” (Camus 1979, 23), a desire to return to a reality in which the individual is in harmony with both society and Nature, and one that is central to the practice of literature. Ultimately, the conclusion sets forth that the Jeeves saga deals with this nostalgia – a nostalgia for what is likely an impossibility – in the way that its author deals with the cliché: acknowledgement and playfulness.