Professionalism and Englishness in The Remains of the Day

In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro exemplifies English identity from the perspective of the
butler of a prominent estate, Mr. Stevens of Darlington Hall. Ishiguro uses Mr. Stevens’s account to
establish English identity, allowing Mr. Stevens’s conservative perspective to be a commentary on
that identity as it relates to professionalism and integrity. Ishiguro’s rendering of English identity
privileges service (though not necessarily professionalism) over all, and other facets of humanity like
pride and integrity are expected to yield to service; however, Stevens’s conservative nature slightly
exaggerates these aspects of English identity as the society around him gradually begins to liberalize
its Englishness, relaxing its privileging of professionalism.

Mr. Stevens is both the protagonist and the narrator of the text, and as the narrator, he communicates
to the reader in such a way that evinces Ishiguro’s authorial intent to establish his account as
unreliable. Stevens’s unreliability only applies, however, to certain contexts, and in many other
contexts, the reader is led to trust his explanations. Broadly, one of the reasons Ishiguro does this is
to make it easy for the reader to ultimately view English identity as slightly different from what Stevens
exemplifies. Specifically, the reader easily sees Stevens as an old-fashioned representation of
Englishness.

One way Mr. Stevens’s old-fashioned nature is made apparent to the reader is by way of Stevens’s
many stories about his father who was also a butler; Stevens lives to be like his father for whom the
profession was life, nearly in its entirety, and Stevens’s strict adherence to his father’s model and,
perhaps, even greater conservatism strongly suggests that Stevens is, indeed, old-
fashioned—fashioned after a previous generation. The arguably most reliable commentary on
Stevens’s conservatism, though, typically comes from Miss Kenton who worked closely with Stevens
at Darlington Hall for many years prior to the start of the novel. Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton
reminisce together about an incident in which Lord Darlington fired two Jewish maids for no other
reason than that they were Jewish, which greatly upset Miss Kenton at the time. Stevens was also
disturbed by this, claiming in his account to be as disturbed as Miss Kenton, but he deemed it
requisite of a butler not to question Lord Darlington’s decision, even in a private conversation with
Miss Kenton; consequently, she assumed Stevens agreed with the decision until a year later when
they discuss it all and Stevens informs Miss Kenton that Lord Darlington regretted firing the maids
and asked Stevens to find them again. Miss Kenton’s reaction is not to Lord Darlington’s regret but to
Stevens having withheld his true feelings about what transpired. She says, “Why, Mr. Stevens, why,
why, why do you always have to pretend?” (Ishiguro 154). Her response confirms somewhat late in
the novel that Stevens’s old-fashioned view of his profession is not representative of Englishness for
everyone, even if it was once so.

For Mr. Stevens, English identity allows itself to be defined and stationed by one’s profession. Pride is
irrelevant with regard to where one belongs, and those who would challenge their stations out of pride
are deviant. Stevens does not vocally empathize with Miss Kenton’s reaction to Lord Darlington’s
firing of the Jewish maids solely because he believes his station both does and should restrict him
from doing so; he considers his own opinion undeserving of representation outside of his personal
privacy. Even at the risk of Miss Kenton believing that he lacks integrity, Mr. Stevens maintains this
notion.

Mr. Stevens’s Englishness is so contingent upon his professionalism, in fact, that he speaks of his
professional development the way one would personal development as from adolescence to
adulthood, which makes professionalism more encompassing of human identity. When discussing
Lord Darlington’s convivial gathering of prominent figures who sympathized with Germany to discuss
ways to loosen the Treaty of Versailles, Stevens says, “Let me make clear that when I say the
conference of 1923, and that night in particular, constituted a turning point in my professional
development, I am speaking very much in terms of my own more humble standards. […] For all its
sad associations, whenever I recall that evening today, I find I do so with a large sense of triumph”
(Ishiguro 110). Stevens’s words establish professionalism as the cornerstone of his identity as an
Englishman because Ishiguro uses his father’s mortal illness to show what shapes Stevens the most.

Ishiguro expects that, for most people (including the implied reader), the death of a close parent or
guardian would have the most profound effect on one’s personal development, but for Stevens, the
most profound effect comes from his performance on the job under such unprecedented pressure; his
father’s death is, in fact, reduced somewhat to being merely the ultimate challenge in performing his
duties as a butler.

Since Ishiguro uses Mr. Stevens to depict English identity, Englishness forms in the text from its
conservative fringe first and then expands to position that starting point relative to other, differing
representations of Englishness. Because Stevens is a subaltern character (unlike Mr. Farraday or
Lord Darlington), Ishiguro is able to create a rather reliable, thick description of the mid-twentieth
century in England. He captures the discourse of the day (that which “remains” after observing
Stevens’s angle) as growing less conservative and, perhaps, reducing professionalism’s ability to
define an Englishman or Englishwoman in favor of, at the very least, integrity and a modicum of pride
in that integrity.

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