Christine Callaghan

Character Analysis

Christine's the beautiful object of our hero's attention. Although she seems out of his league to him at first, he gradually gets to know her and sees that she's not as unattainable as he thought. Christine turns out to be pretty different from Jim's first impression. She changes dramatically during the course of the book, and she changes Jim too.

Hot or Not

Christine wins this round vs. Margaret Peel. She's arm candy for Bertrand Welch. The first thing Jim notices about her is her good looks, specifically the small waist and large breasts. Even Margaret notices:

"Pretty girl, that Christine Whatshername," Margaret said.

"Yes, isn't she?"

"Wonderful figure she's got, hasn't she?"

"Yes."

"Not often you get a figure as good as that with a good-looking face."

"No." (4.57-61)

How terribly, terribly nonchalant.

Who's That Girl?

Despite her beauty, Christine comes off at first as a bit of a snob. She seems to be hanging on Bertrand's every word and adopts his attitudes and ideas as his own. Jim's first impression is that she's a bit uptight. However, after he's dying of embarrassment for having mistaken her for Bertrand's ex-girlfriend, she says:

"Don't worry about it, Mr. Dixon," the girl cut in. "It was only a silly little misunderstanding. I can quite see how it happened. My name's Christine Callaghan. Altogether different, you see." (4.36)

She's way more gracious about the mix-up than Bertrand, who gets red in the face and accuses Jim of baiting him. But Jim's still not convinced. When Jim disagrees with Bertrand about a political matter:

Bertrand and his girl were looking at each other with identical expressions, shaking their heads, smiling, raising their eyebrows, sighing. (4.128)

Christine can be friendly and unselfconscious one moment (chowing down on a huge and messy breakfast), then curt and stuffy the next. When Jim staggers down to breakfast with a wicked hangover, she says:

"Well, if you drink as much as that, you must expect to feel a bit off-color the next day, mustn't you?" She drew herself upright in her seat in a schoolmarmy attitude. (6.37)

At breakfast, it dawns on Jim that he has to do something about the bed sheets he burned when he fell asleep smoking. For some reason, he tells Christine about the situation, and she goes back to his room and happily helps him get rid of the evidence. More puzzling behavior. Afterwards, Jim realizes:

How well, really, the Callaghan girl had behaved, in spite of her standoffishness at times, and how sound her suggestion had been. That, and her laughing fit, proved that she wasn't as 'dignant' as she looked. (7.41)

Or is she?

[…] Dixon watched the Callaghan girl listening to something Bertrand was explaining about art. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair, her lips compressed, wearing, he noticed for the first time, exactly what she'd been wearing the previous evening. Everything about her looked severe, yet she didn't mind sheets and charred table-tops, and Margaret did. This girl hadn't minded fried eggs eaten with the fingers, either. It was a puzzle. (7.47)

We're starting to suspect that Jim's willing to get to the bottom of this puzzle.

Partners in Crime

From this point on in the book, we see more and more of Christine's mischievous side. She involves Jim in a plot to find out if Bertrand's planning on going to the Summer Ball. She shows up with Bertrand at the Ball, but when Jim takes the risk of asking her to dance, she agrees. Just a he starts to think they're getting along, Christine gets snippy again. What's with her? Christine finally lets on.

"But you see I didn't feel like discussing it with you because that would have been like laughing at Bertrand behind his back, and that would have been wrong. I'm afraid I must have sounded a bit unfriendly over the phone the second time, but that was only because I couldn't have let myself go like I wanted to without seeming as if I was getting mixed up in a conspiracy to get the better of Bertrand." (11.30)

Christine's conflicted about her relationship with Bertrand, which is why she's blowing hot and cold with Jim. But that same night, after Bertrand ignores her at the Summer Ball, she takes a chance and escapes with Jim in a taxi. It's on the taxi ride home that we learn the real deal about Christine Callaghan.

Christine Explains It All

First of all, Christine reveals that she's only 19 years old. She feels a little lost in the world and admits to Jim that she's been depressed.

"I didn't mean to sound like martyr. […] I do have a good time and I've been very lucky in all sorts of ways. But, you know, I do find some things awfully difficult. I don't really know my way around, you know." (14.27)

Jim's surprised that she feels so insecure.

"I think it must be because I look as if I'm full of poise and that sort of thing. I look as if I know all about how to behave, and all that. Two or three people have told me that, so it must be true. But it's only the way I look." (14.33)

Now Jim has an insight into why she acts "starchy" and uptight at times; it's her default mode when she doesn't know what to say. But he still doesn't understand why a girl like her is depressed. She explains that it all has to do with men.

"So…then it all started, I kept being asked out by men, and of course I kept going, it was such marvellous fun. And I still do enjoy it a great deal. But they kept…trying to seduce me the whole time. And I didn't want to be seduced, you see, and as soon as I'd convinced them of that, they were off." (14.51)

Ah, the burdens of being beautiful.

We learn that she's with Bertrand because he was one of the few men who didn't try to get her into bed the first time he met her. She's fed up with a lot of his behavior—he starts arguments with her and always makes her feel she's in the wrong—but she tries to give him the benefit of the doubt. We see that she's impressed with his ambitiousness as an artist, and gives him some leeway to be inattentive to her.

"Well, perhaps I didn't put it too well, but I should have thought that the work an artist does takes so much out of him, in the way of feeling and emotion and so on, that he hasn't got much left over for other people […]." (14.79)

We're starting to suspect at this point that Christine is more than a little naïve. Jim sees this last statement as a little nuts, and suspects it's just what Bertrand's told her.

If we were psychologists, we say that Christine's having an "identity crisis."

After Jim delivers a rather condescending lecture to Christine on love (like he's the expert on the subject, right?), Christine cuddles up to him and falls asleep on his shoulder. When they get to the Welches' house, they have a passionate moment (not that kind of passionate moment—Jim was paying attention during the taxi discussion) and agree to meet for tea in a few days.

Just when we think that Christine has had a change of heart about her relationship with the horrid Bertrand, we have to think again.

"You're going back on what you said about being rather fed up with Bertrand, then?"

"No, all that's still quite true. What I'm trying to do now is take the rough with the smooth. The rough parts are still as rough as they were when we talked about it in the taxi. But I must make an effort; I mustn't walk out on things just when I feel like it. […] The trouble is I've got to push you around while I'm doing it." (19.83-84)

Honestly, even though we detest Bertrand, we think this is the most mature thing Christine's said about relationships. She doesn't want to toy with Jim while she works out her ambivalence about Bertrand.

Just when we think all is lost, Christine calls Jim and asks to meet him at the train station—she's heading back to London, having left Bertrand when she finds out about his affair with Carol Goldsmith. She finally takes a stand on her own behalf, and decides to try her luck with Jim.

So throughout the novel, we see Christine morph from a seemingly sophisticated ingénue, to the insecure adolescent she really is, and back to a young woman who decides to take control of her own life. We can see that all the contradictions in her character stem from her insecurity and lack of real relationship experience; that leaves her vulnerable to being influenced by the men in her life. That includes Jim, but more on that later.