The Code of the Woosters

Bertie Wooster’s longtime valet (a gentleman’s personal servant, as opposed to a butler, who runs an entire household), Jeeves is the protagonist Wooster’s main comic foil and is relatable because he’s by far the most sensible, principled, and resourceful character in the “Jeeves stories.” Eminently discreet, patient, wise, and knowledgeable, Jeeves serves not only as a fantasy version of the perfect “gentleman’s gentleman” but also as a satirical contrast to his master and social “superior,” who is none of those things. Jeeves has even acquired a reputation as a wise man among Wooster’s friends and relatives, some of whom seek him out for advice; an example is Wooster’s friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, whom Jeeves gives helpful (though somewhat ill-considered) tips for overcoming his shyness.

Jeeves’s first name, Reginald, rarely receives mention in Wodehouse’s stories, in which he’s always addressed simply by his last name, and the stories never reveal his age; though clearly older than Wooster, he’s probably not elderly, since he often displays physical agility and once or twice even considers marriage. One of Jeeves’s signature traits is his coolness under fire, especially given his master’s penchant for getting into trouble. Jeeves tries, often with mixed success, to rein in his master’s rasher impulses and then offer on-the-fly solutions to resolve the escalating crises that result. He always manages, by story’s end, to smooth the troubled waters and restore Wooster’s state of affairs to the placid one at the story’s outset. In this, he suggests a sort of “fairy godfather,” but one who is unfailingly polite and self-effacing, as his station requires. In further contrast with his master, Jeeves is not only more level-headed and well-versed in the practicalities of daily life but is also much better read, which he shows by correcting Wooster’s misquotes of Dickens, Shakespeare, and other writers. Throughout, he displays a dry wit that markedly differs from his master’s broader (sometimes downright insulting) sense of humor. Likewise, he doesn’t share Wooster’s facility for clever wordplay (such as flipping the adjective “disgruntled” into “gruntled”), since he would never use the “King’s English” so wantonly.

Wooster’s “fish-faced” acquaintance from his school days, Gussie Fink-Nottle is a young biology enthusiast who spends much of his time studying the physiology and habits of newts. Jeeves describes him as the “dreamer type,” which may explain his romantic interest in the similarly flighty Madeline Bassett. In The Code of the Woosters, Gussie helps sets the plot in motion by summoning Wooster to Totleigh Towers to help resolve his romantic “rift” with Madeline. Intense, socially awkward, and unwittingly offensive in many of his dealings with others, notably his fiancée (Madeline) and her father (Sir Watkyn), Gussie serves partly as a satire of scientists and their peculiar tunnel vision. Gussie first appeared in Wodehouse’s novel Right Ho, Jeeves, whose events immediately precede those of The Code of the Woosters; there, his shyness and newt obsession proved such a social liability that Wooster agreed to woo Madeline Bassett in his stead, which led the impressionable Madeline to believe that Wooster was in love with her.

Jeeves helps Gussie with his fear of public speaking by suggesting that he cultivate a “lofty contempt” for his audience, which also leads to disaster. Two of the novel’s major plot complications stem from these well-meaning attempts to help Gussie: first, Madeline’s warm acceptance of Wooster’s “proposal,” once her betrothal to Gussie falls through; and second, Gussie’s mislaid notebook of insults, which intricately describes the “contemptible” people who will be witnessing his wedding speech as if they’re insect-like laboratory specimens.

Gussie’s missteps mark a sharp contrast with Jeeves and even with Wooster in their total lack of discretion or awareness of how other humans might take his behavior. In his misapplication of Jeeves’s advice, he betrays a tendency of some scientists to take a theory or process much too far: Emboldened by his “lofty contempt,” the once-shy bookworm reveals an arrogant, abusive side, and writing his insults down is clearly a huge mistake, especially when he keeps mislaying his notebook. Despite all this, Gussie is a mostly positive character. A saving grace is his devotion to the sweet-tempered Madeline; another is the vivid, even poetic, quality of some of his “character studies,” such as his description of Roderick Spode’s moustache as “the faint discolored smear left by a squashed blackbeetle on the side of a kitchen sink” (207).

The cousin of Gussie’s fiancée, Madeline, “Stiffy” Byng is a headstrong, narcissistic young woman who significantly complicates Wooster’s visit to Totleigh Towers by implicating him in the theft of both a silver creamer and a police helmet. She’s the novel’s most self-absorbed and insouciantly amoral character, though Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia, who urges Wooster to steal the same cow creamer, runs a close second. (At least Aunt Dahlia goes to significant lengths to try to save her nephew from prison.) When Stiffy first enters the story, she’s verbally abusing a police officer whom her fierce dog has knocked from his bicycle into a ditch. Her diatribe is both petulant and absurd: “Don’t be an ass, Oates. You can’t expect a dog to pass up a policeman on a bicycle. It isn’t human nature” (72). Like Wooster, she oozes with the fatuous self-absorption of the ruling class but is considerably less generous and genial than he is: Whereas Wooster’s “Code” prompts him to help others, often at his own peril, Stiffy always narrowly focuses on her own needs. Over the course of the novel, she steals Gussie’s notebook, uses it to extort Wooster, and then plots two additional thefts, coercing others into taking all the risks. Finally, she deposits a police helmet, which she coerced her fiancé to steal, in Wooster’s room and bullies him into taking the “rap” for it by invoking his Code, though she knows it could mean prison for him. Throughout, she exudes a breezy surface charm, sweetening her manipulation and threats with endearments like “Bertie, darling,” and glib allusions to self-sacrificing heroes like Sidney Carton.

True to her nickname, Stiffy is stubborn and unflinching; the one time she shows any vulnerability is when she breaks down crying while telling Wooster about breaking up with Harold. Partly ameliorating her amorality in The Code of the Woosters is that most of it is for love—to “sweeten” her uncle toward Harold, her fiancé, and to protect the latter from the consequences of the theft she hectored him into committing. Nevertheless, she shows signs that her feelings for Harold may not run particularly deep: At one point, she breaks off their engagement solely because he won’t risk his career to take petty revenge on the constable who complained about her dog. What defines Stiffy is her winsome determination to always get her way—which may be the strongest emotion of which she’s capable. She thus exemplifies Wodehouse’s satirical view of the upper class and its reflexive sense of entitlement, which often takes the form (in Wooster’s words) of “the velvet hand beneath the iron glove—or, rather, the other way around” (28).