This is the first time I've read this novel. I watched the film as well {also for the first time}. In general I found the film to be a fairly faithful adaptation. But the novel gave a far more in-depth treatment of the concept of "dignity" which is a corner stone of Stevens' ethic. Further, the father, William Stevens, is presented far more impressively and with considerable drama in the book.
I found it quite hard to sympathise with Stevens. He uses "dignity" as a means of self-immolation until he has no identity at allーhe is simply a social function rather than a personーone who subverts his own humanity to achieve a life which is no more than a social gesture. I would agree with Issybird that the father is part of the problem.
In the book the father confesses that he may have failed Stevens. I feel that this failure must have been on the level of love. The film {though not the book} movingly dramatised the last words of the father who confessed to his son that his marriage was unhappy because his wife betrayed him. Here, is a significant point. Did the elder Stevens lose his wife's love because he had immersed himself in achieving the dignity of a butler? The book certainly makes the elder Stevens' identification with this persona very clear. Perhaps the father was incapable of showing human affectionーso his wife looked elsewhere.
Then we turn to the son. He cannot respond to the love of Miss Kenton because in his own upbringing he had never seen that kind of emotional relationshipーperhaps even between his own parents. What he saw was a father who was the model butler. Success to Stevens became identified with perfection in playing that role. Love and sexuality became not simply distractionsーthey became obstacles, dangers to be avoided and repressed.
There is another way we can see why Stevens is what he is.
When we see the limitations of Lord Darlington, it would seem that the idea of unthinking service to the 'gentleman" becomes ludicrous. Oddly, I don't think that was such an idea was necessarily all that far-fetched in the time the book's events unfold. Brian Cleeve in his interesting book
1938: A World Vanishing {pub 1982, Buchan & Enright, London} describes how the ultimate paragon in Britain was the "Gentleman" or "Lady" ーan educated member of the upper class who embodied all the ideals and values that made Britain great. Cleeve goes on to attack the lunacy of this attitude but he points out that it was nonetheless an accepted position:
"The realities of 1938 for a vast number of the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland were gruesome in the extreme. Sickness, poverty, hunger, squalor. The fact that in spite of those things people were more submissive to authority than they are today; more willing to sacrifice their lives in war; more willing to believe in moral certainties; more willing to believe that their leaders knew what they were doing; that is not a condemnation of the present and a praise of the past. It is simply a fact."
So Stevens can be seen as one who is making a life statement {however deluded} that epitomizes the values in the world he knew and that most others of that era accepted as being valid. The concept of "dignity" was the nearest approach he could make to being a "gentleman".
I'm going to have to think about it.
BTW Issybird, the idea that
Remains . . . is a kind of allegory about Japan is a fascinating way of looking at the book!
