46 pages • 1 hour read
George Grossmith, Weedon GrossmithDiary of a Nobody
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1892A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
After the Mansion House ball, Carrie sharply criticizes Pooter’s friendliness with Farmerson. Pooter is disappointed to find their names missing from a newspaper account of the ball; when he asks them to correct the omission, the paper names them “Mr. and Mrs. C. Porter” (46). After another letter, the paper says that “Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pewter” has twice asked them to announce the “important fact” that they attended the ball.
When Carrie laughs at his pun about frayed shirts, the two amend their previous disagreement. The two laugh extensively, and Pooter then repeats the joke to a bus driver, the office staff, and the tailor.
For a change, the Pooters sit with the Cummings, Gowing, and Mr. Stillbrook. Mrs. Cummings and Carrie sing a duet, and Gowing sings a comic song that Pooter mostly enjoys but finds somewhat distasteful.
Pooter meets a friend named Mr. Franching, whom he describes as a “swell,” and invites him home for a potluck. When Carrie doesn’t answer the front door, Pooter goes around to the side, where the grocer’s boy is picking off the blistering paint. The men instead enter through the kitchen window.
Pooter and Carrie begin arguing again after Carrie refers to Pooter’s father’s money troubles. Pooter retorts that his father was a gentleman, and Carrie bursts into tears. At the office, Mr. Perkupp informs Pooter that he must take his annual holiday starting next Saturday. The Pooters’ usual rooms in Broadstairs, a seaside resort, are not available, and they must stay at a strange boardinghouse and miss the first several days of the holiday. Pooter dines with Mr. Franching at his friend’s club.
Chapter 6 Summary
The next day, Pooter and Carrie’s son, Willie, arrives, saying he is on leave from his bank job. Pooter disapproves of Willie’s clothing, failure to attend church, drinking, and decision to go by his middle name, Lupin. After sleeping late and missing meals, Lupin confesses that he has resigned from his job. Pooter demands that he withdraw the resignation, and Lupin admits that he “got the chuck” because he was uninterested in the work and constantly late (59). His holiday postponed, Pooter declares it his life ambition to get Lupin a job at Perkupp’s firm.
They take Lupin with them to Broadstairs, where he again disappoints his father by going to a “common” show. They take the train to Margate, another resort, where they find Gowing and Mr. and Mrs. Cummings. Lupin continues to misbehave, playing an expensive game of billiards with Gowing and smoking fine cigars. They visit the Cummingses, where Gowing suggests a silly parlor game that ends up with the guests thrown to the floor.
Chapter 7 Summary
One company after another declines to hire Lupin and to cheer him up, Carrie invites her good friend, Mrs. James, to come and stay with them. Mrs. James is obsessed with clothes and encourages Carrie to wear the latest fashions, which Pooter finds ridiculous.
Someone has torn roughly six weeks of Pooter’s diary entries out of the journal to light the fire. He interviews the charwoman, the chimney sweep, and Sarah, who all deny the deed. He is somewhat consoled when Mr. Perkupp says he has found a place for Lupin, who has been elected a member of an amateur dramatic club, the Holloway Comedians. While celebrating the news of Lupin’s new job, Lupin announces his engagement.
Chapter 8 Summary
Lupin describes his fiancée, Daisy Mutlar. His new job turns out to be a clerkship with a stockbroker firm. He brings Daisy Mutlar’s brother, Frank Mutlar, a member of his drama club, to visit. Frank entertains the Pooters by playing a tune on his cheek with his knife and imitating a man with no teeth. Frank continues his comic imitations long past bedtime.
Lupin’s job starts and seems to suit him. He has a part in the Holloway Comedians’ upcoming performance, a farce of which Pooter disapproves. Pooter comes home to find Sarah, the charwoman, and Carrie arguing over the missing diary pages. Pooter settles the argument by saying he is “master of this house” (78), at which Lupin laughs at him.
The Pooters meet Daisy, who is overweight and about eight years Lupin’s senior. Carrie nonetheless invites some of their friends, along with Mr. Perkupp, to a party to meet Daisy. When Lupin criticizes how Cummings is likely to dress, Pooter loses his temper and tells him that Daisy “is not the Queen of England” (81), he needs to earn some money before marrying, and her brother, Frank, is a loafer.
Chapter 9 Summary
The Pooters hold their party for Daisy. Gowing arrives first and asks why Pooter’s trousers are so short. Pooter wonders why he wastes his time putting Gowing’s insulting comments in his diary. More guests arrive, including some of Lupin’s friends. Daisy arrives wearing a low-necked red dress, which the party attendees find tasteless. Daisy sings to entertain the company, and Lupin and Frank put on a vulgar show about a donkey and a clown just as Mr. Perkupp arrives. There is no food or good drink left in the house, and Mr. Perkupp leaves. Pooter tells Carrie the party was a failure, but Carrie calls it a success, and they dance.
Chapters 5-9 Analysis
The “swell,” or socially prominent, Mr. Franching’s characterization and his entrance to the Pooter home represent the theme of The Absurdity of Social Aspirations. Deeming it impossible to take Mr. Franching inside through the front door and reluctant to take him through the lowly side door he deems correct only for working-class tradespeople, Pooter takes him in through the kitchen window instead. Pooter’s desire to uphold rigid class categorizations through where and how visitors can enter his home directly leads to this comical situation. Here, the authors depict Pooter’s preoccupations with gentility and the absurdity of rigid class structures during the Victorian era.
Several episodes in Chapter 5 show the dangers of Taking Oneself Too Seriously. Pooter complains to the newspaper about the spelling of his name, repeats his pun about frayed shirts to anyone who will listen, and suspects the entire household of ripping pages out of his diary. In each instance, when Pooter takes himself too seriously, he receives some form of retribution. In particular, his pronouncement in Chapter 8 that he is “master of this house” sends Lupin into fits of laughter (78). Pooter’s habitual pompousness threatens his sense of masculinity and dignity. Interactions between Pooter and his son further demonstrate Pooter’s high regard for himself and the tensions that will continue to arise throughout the novel. Notably, Lupin refuses to embrace his father’s middle-class values, and his off-again, on-again relationship with Daisy Mutlar provides both humor and drama.
Pooter considers himself a gentleman, though other characters have a different opinion of him. This reveals the theme of The Discrepancy Between Self-Perception and the Perception of Others. For example, when Pooter tells Carrie his father was a gentleman, he upsets her deeply, instituting that her father is not one. This foreshadows tensions that may arise at a later Christmas visit to the country to see Carrie’s mother and her family. As the Grossmiths show, when Pooter is not physically clumsy, he often puts his foot in his mouth, negatively affecting family members or friends with his remarks.
