laurie & andrew

At the end of The Charioteer, Laurie lies to Ralph but feels the lie as if it's true. There's something that must be done, and only he can do it. He accepts this, even if he lies in order to achieve it.

Before, Ralph told Laurie he hates to stand by watching while there's pain or the possibility of it, and do nothing. It's not the way he's made, he says. This is a direct contrast to Andrew, who we see literally standing, watching and doing nothing when caring for Charlot. This is not because Andrew is unkind, it is because there is right and wrong and nothing whatever in between. Ralph is not like this: people need someone, he takes on that responsibility, even if it isn't his to shoulder. He acts like God, they say. He's the opposite of Andrew in this regard. Maybe the point is that Laurie isn't like Andrew either, although he loves him. It's also not in his nature to stand and watch people suffer; this is why he felt something ought to be done in school when Ralph was being kicked out, and why he feels it at the end of the book when he realizes what Ralph is planning to do. It's why he feels the pressing demand to deceive Charlot even as he knows that, in his right mind, the man would never want it. I got the sense the first time I read the book and now the second, that Laurie is much more generally suited to Ralph, and this is why.

I don't know if this makes sense, I've not gotten much sleep. Any thoughts? Do you think this is right, wrong? Am I overthinking it?

A young man sat down beside him on the divan and, without any kind of preliminary, said, "Is it a queer book?" "No," said Laurie. "Oh," said the young man, on a note of utter deflation. He got up and went away.

Relatable, tbh 👀

That Bunny car scene

Hi there @telltaleangelina I just wanted to think a bit more about the scene with Bunny and Laurie in the car scene on the back of your ask/answer.

I think you really got to the heart of it with that line ‘the practiced inflection’.  Laurie uses his intuition a lot (sometimes without even being sure what he is picking up) and it’s just such a creepy line, indicating how Bunny seamlessly adopts that tone.  Although I suppose there is an analogue with Ralph giving Bunny ‘the straight look’ for the first time back at the flat.

It suddenly occurred to me that cars are so symbolic of male power at that time, and it evokes that horrible trope of men taking women out and expecting some kind of ‘payment’.  I wonder if Bunny is just so cynical that he assumes Laurie is paying Ralph back in kind for the lift, and decides he wants a piece of the action.  Or he thinks Ralph is being ridiculously gentlemanly about Laurie and wants to bring him down to his level.

I realised the scene provides a contrast to the earlier car scene with Ralph.  I know we love the little knee touch in the 1953 version when they are parked up at the scenic spot, but to me, she took that out for a reason in the 1959.  It shows the high level of tension (not just sexual!) between them and the way both of them are being hyper-vigilant – Ralph trying very hard to judge the moment with Laurie, and Laurie trying very hard to be respectful of the fact that Ralph has a boyfriend.  And also, Laurie sits in silence to avoid attracting Ralph’s anger when he hits the traffic.  And he is so uncomfortable with being dependent on Ralph – the number of times he tries to leave the party to get the bus, and he tries it again at Bunny’s.

I also realised that it almost doesn’t matter whether Bunny would have followed through with his threat or not.  It just conjures up the horrible thought that he is used to getting what he wants, and most of the time, people don’t stand up to him.  So perhaps this is a neat way to show Laurie’s strength of character in a crisis.

The other thing that is quite disturbing, if not surprising, though, is that Laurie then plays it down with Ralph.  Partly because he fears not being believed (a bit like Alec silently taking the blame for Bunny’s gossip for a quiet life), and partly to spare Ralph’s feelings.  I realised he would be very influenced as well by the ‘no snitch’ rule in school, where telling on another boy would be considered worse than the original offence.  But it is cowardly too.  I wonder if his anger on the staircase is partly fueled by his frustration at being put in that situation, the suggestion that Ralph is so inured to that kind of behaviour that he doesn’t even notice any more.  And in a way Ralph is responsible, because even if Bunny spiked his drink, he still chose alcohol over tea.  But Laurie is also too passive.  In the end Ralph ends it with Bunny without knowing for sure what he did.  Unless he knows because Bunny has form.  In which case why is he with someone like that?  Either way, Laurie’s horrible accusations on the staircase have the ring of truth.

And finally I can’t go without mentioning that other linked car scene – Ralph kissing Laurie on the first night at the party (very heavy hint anyway) when he is dreaming about his mother kissing him!!  And Ralph sitting there having a cigarette while he waits for Laurie to wake up is so sweet.

Ok but girls the ‘53 Quaker picnic, but Laurie and Andrew get some alone time just as the sun’s setting <3

For an art trade with @famousmyth !!!

I was just thinking about The Charioteer's ending and how, at the time the book was written, most gay books (if not all gay books) ended with suicides and tragedy. I love how Mary Renault just plays into the expectative. Ehm... obvious spoilers under the cut.

So, we see Laurie lose Andrew because of Bunny (was he really his to lose, that's a discussion for another time, I guess) and then confront Ralph because of what he supposedly did. Now, the smart reader probably had caught the clues by now: that was really out of character for Ralph to have done, plus the line in Andrew's letter saying that he didn't seem like how he had imagined Ralph to be. So they would know that Laurie was probably unfair and that he broke Ralph's heart, and probably assumed that Ralph was gonna kill himself, and then Laurie would be left all alone and feeling guilty, and either will kill himself too or would go and do something stupid like marrying nurse Adrian (even though she's wonderful, just not for him). But then Renault made her wonderful plot twist by introducing Alec in the scene, just in time for Laurie to go and save Ralph, giving us hope for a happy ending.

This book was meta before the word "meta" even existed, and that's why I adore Renault's writing.

Btw, talking about the last paragraph. "Now their heads droop side by side till their long manes mingle; and when the voice of the charioteer falls silent they are reconciled for a night in sleep." I interpret that like Ralph and Laurie's bodies mingling in sex until they fall asleep together. The charioteer in this could be Laurie's thoughts (doubts) finally falling silent as he accepts his true feelings for Ralph. I don't know. Am I reading too much into it?

I'm just happy believing that they fall asleep together with their bodies intertwined, reconciled and satisfied.

Okay Charioteer fandom, which version of the book am I using for the re-read?

-The 1953 Longmans first edition

-The 2003 First Vintage Books edition

-or the edition with the tagline "the story of three men who are homosexuals"? 😂

Ok so, what do I mean about Laurie has a thing for hands? Well...

Other people have already pointed out the physical description given for Andrew, specifically his face and hair, and how this might remind us of someone. I would add that Nurse Adrian also has the same type of hair. Oh Laurie, you are as transparent as the pane of glass in that window over there. The hands thing is set up more subtly. We're given no reason to think about it at first and then later you look back and go 😮

Right around the time that Laurie is deciding he's in love with her in chapter 3, we get a description of Nurse Adrian's hands:

"Her hand, resting on the locker, looked cool and slim, with nice bones."

Later, Laurie meets Andrew, who is working with his hands at the time. We don't get a description, but he certainly notices them because we're told how Andrew pushes his hair back. The description comes in chapter 4:

"His hands, which were structurally long and fine, were cracked and calloused, and etched with dirt which had gone in too deep to wash away."

Clearly Laurie has a thing for blonds with slim hands. I wonder where that came from? 🤔 Someone was conspicuously fidgeting with a mechanical pencil in chapter 2, but no one said anything about what his hands are like. We'll just have to keep reading and hope to find out...

Oh look. The three men… who are homosexuals… the story is about them

Poster boys

more the charioteer art what started as a silly doodle of bunny as an actual bunny turned into a bunch of the charioteer characters as animals ,, ralph's group + andrew !!

So I wanted to ask you a bit more about Bunny and Ralph and their ‘domestic ménage’!  I find it weird too.  It’s never really clear, they seem to speak in code, then there is the separate kettles thing, that freaked me out when I noticed it, and that weird ‘Bunny’s gone’ except that he hasn’t, and then Ralph ‘Do you feel like believing that?’  What do you think is going on there…….

Honestly, I have no idea! I was very meh the first time I read about their relationship (before the car scene, of course) because I was convinced that Laurie was just blowing it all out of proportion. It seemed to me to be a casual relationship: stuff like the separate kettles, Ralph having his own apartment (even though Bunny lives downstairs), etc. all formed this idea in my mind that they were just messing around and weren't anything really serious. Now, I don’t think that’s true anymore but I’m no more clear on the intricacies of their relationship than I was before. Ralph certainly doesn’t seem to respect Bunny and Alec seems to agree that he’s not suited to him (which Laurie reiterates through his constant questioning of how Ralph can stand him). But other than that, I’ve no idea what is going on.

I think a major reason I thought their relationship was weird is because of the fact that all the information we get of it comes from Laurie, who himself feels that way but doesn’t know enough about the situation to provide an answer as to why Ralph would be in it in the first place; he doesn’t know most of the story, is only there at the end, adores one-half of the equation while despising the other…and he’s the only one we can follow along with! It doesn’t help that most of his observations only serve to reintroduce/reinforce the same two questions constantly in his mind: 'why is Ralph with someone like this?' and ‘how can Ralph stand him?’ And that's all we get as readers! It's just Bunny being odd or painfully tone-deaf (the comments about Bim) or actually evil (the car scene+what he does to Andrew) and Laurie looking at Ralph, who he adores and has been dreaming about for years, going: 'but why though?’

I don’t have many other thoughts but I would love to hear more (real, unlike mine) theories! I’m really in the dark about Bunny generally; I feel there’s lots of stuff I didn’t pick up on regarding his character because I was too busy focusing on Laurie and Ralph. Oh, and as far as the ‘can you really believe that?’ comment, I assume it’s just that Ralph is used to such things being disbelieved. Laurie himself has a moment where he thinks they might get back together so long as no one intervenes to keep them away from one another in 48 hours (I think so anyway, I might be misremembering what he said). But anyway, thank you for the ask! I'm sorry I don't have much more to say!

Daydreaming of Laurie discovering Ralph’s tattoo(s) 👀

So what does 'gone the whole way' mean?

So while we're on the subject, as I've never really had an answer to this one, Ralph says this in his suicide note:

I can see now that I was wrong even at school; I should either have gone the whole way, which in those days would probably have shocked you and put you against it all, or shut up about it altogether.

I know 'go the whole way' probably didn't have the (to me slightly comedic) overtly sexual connotations it does now, but if there is a kiss I can't see what else it means. So is he basically saying 'I should have gone full Hazell with you?' Presumably not that day, he's talking about before? And Laurie is still pretty conflicted about sex even at 23, so why the reference to 'in those days'?

Ralph had been concerned to notice him thinking, so early in the night, with the empty room upstairs. It hadn’t taken him long to put a stop to that. He had considerable skill and experience, and his heart was in it.

The wedding night, featuring Laurie’s stripped pyjamas.

I have a doubt. So, I was rereading The Charioteer, and in this reread I'm focusing only on the parts with Ralph on it. After Ralph tells Laurie about how he's going to be moved to the other hospital and Laurie tells Ralph about Andrew, there's a moment in which they both lie on the rug in front of the fire while Ralph tells him some story about his time on the sea, and then comes this paragraph:

"The strange feeling of fulfilment touched Laurie again; suddenly he remembered and understood. In the weeks of that summer holiday seven years before, after he had read the Phaedrus by the stream in the wood, he had gone for long walks alone, and, returning, sat in the evening by a September fire, so silent and enclosed that more than once his mother had asked if he was well. It was of this that he had been dreaming."

I remember that afterwards, when Ralph's helping Laurie pack up his room after his mother's wedding, Laurie tells him to sit in a chair, and tells him that it's the chair he always sat on. Is he refering to that dream? Was 'Ralph' always sitting on that chair while Laurie fantasized about him after reading the Phaedrus by the stream in the wood? Because I never really understood the chair thing before. But within this context... I think it kind of make sense?

I would love to read your opinions in the matter, please!