The Ebony Tower: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Ebony Tower: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the intricate dynamics and conflicts among its central characters, each embodying distinct artistic and personal struggles. David Williams, a successful abstract painter, confronts his identity and artistic integrity during a visit to the reclusive artist Henry Breasley in Brittany. Breasley, a once-celebrated painter, rejects abstraction and embodies a defiant stance against societal norms, reflecting a fear of aging and decline. The character of Diana, Breasley's young companion, grapples with her artistic aspirations and independence, finding herself caught between her admiration for David and her complicated relationship with Breasley. Anne, Diana's friend, serves as a foil, representing emotional awareness and encouraging Diana to assert herself. Meanwhile, Beth, David's wife, symbolizes the conventional life he feels trapped in, further complicating his emotional landscape as he navigates feelings of regret and missed opportunities. The interactions among these characters reveal profound themes of artistic authenticity, desire, and the tension between personal fulfillment and social expectation. Through their relationships, the narrative prompts readers to reflect on the nature of creativity and the choices that define one's life path.
The Ebony Tower: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: John Fowles
First published: 1974
Genre: Novel
Locale: Manoir de Coëtminais, in Brittany; and Orly Airport
Plot: Love
Time: Two days in September, 1973
David Williams, an artist and art critic, formerly a teacher and lecturer. At the age of thirty-one, David is a painter whose small-scale abstracts sell well because they “o well on walls.” David has been commissioned to write the introduction to The Art of Henry Breasley and is visiting Breasley's home in Brittany, Coëtminais. Without his wife, David is faced by a double challenge at Coëtminais. On one hand, Breasley's contempt for abstract painting challenges the vitality and honesty of David's identity as an artist. On the other, the intellectual, imaginative, and sexual attraction David begins to feel for Diana challenges his comfortable conformity as a person—as husband, as father, and as “normal” English intellectual. Having hesitated and thus lost Diana, David knows as he drives to Paris and meets Beth at Orly Airport that his choice—rather, his failure to choose—has doomed him, artistically and personally, to a life of unchanged mediocrity.
Henry Breasley, an elderly and famous British painter, expatriate, and bohemian. Born in 1896, Breasley went into self-imposed exile by 1920. A London exhibition of Spanish Civil War drawings in 1942 established him both as a great artist and as a difficult man. Breasley acquired the Manoir de Coëtminais in 1963 and withdrew into a nearly reclusive life in which he could maintain his view of himself and his art without constant challenge from current artistic trends. In Coëtminais, Breasley is painting a series of huge canvases, described by him as “dreams” and as “tapestries.” In contrast to David Williams, Breasley is verbally inarticulate, violently opposed to abstraction in art (he sees it as a retreat from real human facts and needs and calls it the “ebony tower”), and contemptuous throughout his life of social and moral conventions. Breasley's ostentatious obscenity is largely a defense against his fear of old age and diminishing emotional and physical—though not conceptual—power. David recognizes that Breasley has a real connection to the past that is lost to David and all of his generation.
Diana (The Mouse), formerly an art student at Leeds, then at the Royal College of Art, and now companion to Henry Breasley. She has lived at Coëtminais since the previous spring. She is a slim woman in her early twenties, with brown and gold hair and level eyes, both honest and reserved. The end of a love affair and her belief that the Royal College did not allow her to develop her full range of artistic talent induced Diana to drop out of school and go to Coëtminais. She is learning much from Breasley, but he has asked her to marry him, and she is beginning to wonder whether she is quite normal, whether she can develop her considerable artistic gifts at Coëtminais, and whether it is too late to leave Coëtminais and return to the real world. In David, whose art she admires, she finds a knight in shining armor, yet one who cannot save her. She refuses to let David take her to bed because she knows that their attraction for each other is potentially much more than physical. Diana is David's missed chance to become alive again as an artist and a person.
Anne (The Freak), Diana's friend and formerly an art-education student at Leeds, now living with Diana and Breasley at Coëtminais, where she shares with Diana the nursing and sexual chores that are expected of female companions by Breasley. Unlike Diana, Anne is neither emotionally nor sexually naïve. Her wild looks and talk hide a rare ability to give of herself. She worries that Diana will not have the assertiveness to leave Breasley and asks David to talk with Diana. She later berates him for not taking Diana to bed.
Beth Williams, a former student and the wife, since 1967, of David Williams. Beth is an illustrator of books for children. In contrast to Diana, Beth seems to David to represent all in his life that is unfree and conventionally responsible. Beth has not accompanied him to Coëtminais because their daughter Sandy has suddenly become ill with chicken pox. She flies to Paris to meet David after the conclusion of his visit with Breasley.
Mathilde and Jean-Pierre, elderly servants to Henry Breasley. Mathilde, Breasley's cook and housekeeper, had been cared for by Breasley when her husband was serving time in prison for murder. She had modeled for the painter and, possibly, been his mistress. Because of Breasley's kindness to Mathilde and Jean-Pierre, they serve him now with fierce devotion.