The Acceptance World

Bert Longworth, Cecil Beaton, 1930s

By Anthony Powell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995

This is the third novel in Powell's cycle A Dance to the Music of Time.  My review of the first novel is here and the second novel is here.  Jenkins has an affiar with Jean Templer (now Duport), Widmerpool is making a killing in the financial markets, and Stringham is divorced and drinking too much.  I feel like I am finally getting the gist of Powell's project.  Jenkins is still a bit of a mystery, but the prose seems more concrete and less elusive.  I'll never love the AP as much as the blogger at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings, but the novel's world is starting to cohere.  The female protagonists came alive in this installment.  Jean clearly has a life that extends beyond her interactions with Jenkins, and Mona, Peter Templer's unhappy spouse, is a fully-realized character.


The title refers to a financial maneuver Widmerpool performs, but "The Acceptance World" also stands as a metaphor for life "as one approaches thirty."  Jenkins and his friends from school are grappling with adult responsibilities and making compromises in the course of their lives.  The action occurs in the 1930s: there are workers' demonstrations, and the novelist St. John Clark becomes a communist.  Social and political change is clearly underway, but I was struck at the divorce of the rich from the poor. The novel ends with Jenkins, Templer, Stringham, and Widmerpool attending an Old Boy dinner at the Ritz to honor their ex-housemaster Le Bas. Like Henry Green's Party Going, the elite are isolated (and protected) from the masses while enjoying a fun night out.  The old order may be passing away but privilege endures.