Walsingham, Volume IV.

One of the most prevalent themes that struck me while reading Walsingham’s fourth volume was that of the consistent irony both portrayed and enacted by the character himself, both throughout the novel as a whole and in leading to the ultimate climax of Sidney’s true gender revealed. Specifically in Volume IV, we see Walsingham more than eager to conclude that “the young lord was duped, and self-love was mortified” (379) following Lord Kencarth’s erroneous judgment of charging forth upon the wild horse and subsequent injury – a pattern of rash behavior and resulting wounds that we are far too often familiar with in context of Walsingham’s own actions. Then in attempt to converse with Isabella after his forceful meeting with Sidney in the coffee shop, Walsingham endures with much self-satisfied indifference the attacks of Mrs. Blagden, entreating her at one point to “Rail on… the dead cannot hear, and the living despise thy malice” (410) – only to turn and in the next moment himself pour forth a seemingly frivolous, emotionally-unbound entreaty to Isabella in the form of poetry. Finally, we see the culmination of Walsingham’s obstinate irony in claiming so fervently (and almost proudly) personal victimhood and suffering throughout our novel’s course, only to switch focus to a gusty lament for blindness to his cousin’s constant peril, begging for a reason as to why he had “so long been deprived of such a pure and generous friend” (493) while the reader is left to fight the urge to roll their eyes.

In the context of differences of education between genders, this irony seemed to me to ask whether we might consider Walsingham’s torment one shaped of his own making, and thus the subsequent results of such torment intentfully enacted upon those he cares for, or if his seeming blindness might be instead caused by the structure instilled by male education, reinforced by the weight of society’s expectations upon young men – who are pressured to be self-sufficient and independent in all matters. In this light, I felt it might be possible to ultimately view Walsingham as an unknowing victim of the part of himself molded by his environment, which is then carried forth by his own emotional and proud personality, even as he makes such rightfully judgment-worthy faults.