How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I like it now, when, lurching slightly, but only from his momentum, Dr Crane mounts the pulpit and reads the lesson from a Bible spread on the back of the brass eagle. I rejoice; my heart expands in his bulk, in his authority… There is no crudity here, no sudden kisses." (2b.10)
As you can see here, Louis much prefers the authority of Dr. Crane and his crucifix to the "crudity" of sudden and unwelcomed emotional outbursts such as Jinny's unexpected kiss.
Quote #2
"The brute menaces my liberty," said Neville, "when he prays. Unwarmed by imagination, his words fall cold on my head like paving-stones, while the gilt cross heaves on his waistcoat. The words of authority are corrupted by those who speak them." (2b.11)
While Louis waxes poetic about Crane, Neville is not a fan, as he views Crane as pompous and annoying. Different strokes for different folks?
Quote #3
"There he sits, upright among the smaller fry. He breathes through his straight nose rather heavily. His blue and oddly inexpressive eyes are fixed with pagan indifference upon the pillar opposite. He would make an admirable churchwarden. He should have a birch and beat little boys for misdemeanours." (2b.12)
Neville becomes the king of weird compliments here, lovingly reflecting on Percival's attractiveness while simultaneously envisioning him beating little boys and painting him as aloof and remote. Um, with friends like that…
Quote #4
"At last," said Bernard, "the growl ceases. The sermon ends. He has minced the dance of the white butterflies at the door to powder. His rough and hairy voice is like an unshaven chin. Now he lurches back to his seat like a drunken sailor. It is an action that all the other masters will try to imitate; but, being flimsy, being floppy, wearing grey trousers, they will only succeed in making themselves ridiculous." (2b.13)
Bernard is no fan of Dr. Crane. Interestingly, he draws a connection between Crane and Percival by suggesting that other masters likely try (and fail) to mimic the headmaster, just as the other schoolboys try to master the unique way Percival flicks his hand. Interesting that Bernard would find such a similarity between his good friend and the headmaster he hates. Wonder what that means…
Quote #5
"Look now, how everybody follows Percival. He is heavy. He walks clumsily down the field, through the long grass, to where the great elm trees stand. His magnificence is that of some mediaeval commander. A wake of light seems to lie on the grass behind him. Look at us trooping after him, his faithful servants, to be shot like sheep, for he will certainly attempt some forlorn enterprise and die in battle. My heart turns rough; it abrades my side like a file with two edges: one, that I adore his magnificence; the other I despise his slovenly accents—I who am so much his superior—and am jealous." (2b.14)
Louis, too, notes Percival's command over others. But at the same time he proclaims Percival's "magnificence," he also notes his clumsiness and "slovenly accents." So, do you think that Percival is actually not all that authoritative, or is this just sour grapes from Louis?
Quote #6
"When Miss Lambert passes," said Rhoda, "talking to the clergyman, the others laugh and imitate her hunch behind her back; yet everything changes and becomes luminous. Jinny leaps higher too when Miss Lambert passes. Suppose she saw that daisy, it would change. Wherever she goes, things are changed under her eyes; and yet when she has gone is not the thing the same again?" (2b.26)
Like Louis, Rhoda adores an authority figure at school: Miss Lambert. In an echo of Bernard's comments about Dr. Crane and Louis's comments about Percival, Rhoda notes that others imitate Miss Lambert (although for unkind reasons in this case).
Quote #7
"They are always forming into fours and marching in troops with badges on their caps; they salute simultaneously passing the figure of their general. How majestic is their order, how beautiful is their obedience! If I could follow, if I could be with them, I would sacrifice all I know. But they also leave butterflies trembling with their wings pinched off; they throw dirty pocket-handkerchiefs clotted with blood screwed up into corners. They make little boys sob in dark passages." (2b.29)
Louis views the boasting boys as "majestic" but also brutal. Despite their brutality, Neville and Louis want to be like them, admiring their "beautiful… obedience." It sounds like they're followers more than authority figures, but they do seem to be quite the bullies. It's weird that Neville and Louis hate their authoritarian headmaster so much but still revere people who bully others.
Quote #8
"I see India," said Bernard. "I see the low, long shore; I see the tortuous lanes of stamped mud that lead in and out among ramshackle pagodas; I see the gilt and crenellated buildings which have an air of fragility and decay as if they were temporarily run up buildings in some Oriental exhibition. I see a pair of bullocks who drag a low cart along the sun-baked road. The cart sways incompetently from side to side… But now, behold, Percival advances; Percival rides a flea-bitten mare, and wears a sun-helmet. By applying the standards of the West, by using the violent language that is natural to him, the bullock-cart is righted in less than five minutes. The Oriental problem is solved. He rides on; the multitude cluster round him, regarding him as if he were—what indeed he is—a God." (4b.53)
With this fantasy of Percival swooping in and "solving" the "Oriental problem," Woolf creates a nice advertisement for British imperialism, with Percival as its poster boy. Is the take-home, then, that authority is okay as long as it advances the imperial British effort? Isn't it a little weird that Bernard and Neville mistrust Crane's pompous authority but see nothing wrong with saying that their friend could have been a "God" to the people in India?
Quote #9
"Yet if someone had but said: 'Wait'; had pulled the strap three holes tighter—he would have done justice for fifty years, and sat in Court and ridden alone at the head of troops and denounced some monstrous tyranny, and come back to us." (5b.4)
Here, in the wake of Percival's death, Neville is lamenting that Percival didn't get the chance to "do justice," because he thinks that his friend would have been able to prevent a "monstrous tyranny." Is that why Percival's authority is okay, then? He would have used it to resist tyranny?
Quote #10
"He would have done justice. He would have protected. About the age of forty he would have shocked the authorities. No lullaby has ever occurred to me capable of singing him to rest." (9b.7)
Bernard, too, thinks about Percival's potential to exert authority and views it positively. However, it is interesting and notable that Bernard imagines Percival shocking "the authorities" at around forty, suggesting that he thinks Percival might have ended up being anti-authoritarian after all.