The Code of the Woosters

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1938

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary

After some time and effort, Wooster finally impresses Gussie—who he says is “pure concrete” above the neck—regarding the situation’s gravity. If Sir Watkyn reads the mislaid notebook, with its merciless dissections of Spode and himself, the wedding will be off, at the very least. Desperately, Gussie ponders where he might have lost it and concludes that he must have dropped it while taking the fly out of Stiffy Byng’s eye. Wooster, thinking Stiffy may have picked it up, heads out to intercept her on her evening stroll. In the gloam of a country lane, he witnesses a furious altercation between Stiffy and a local police officer, Constable Oates, whom Stiffy’s Aberdeen terrier has knocked off his bicycle and bitten. Stiffy snipes that Oates should know better than to ride bicycles since her poor dog “hates” them. Once they’re alone, Wooster learns that Stiffy does have Gussie’s notebook and has read its “excellent” commentary on Spode and her Uncle Watkyn. However, she keeps changing the subject back to Constable Oates, against whom she harbors a bitter grudge, largely he has complained about her dog to her uncle, who is now a Justice of the Peace. She even shares that she has been plotting revenge on him by pressuring her “secret” fiancé, a local curate named Harold, into stealing his helmet; she credits Wooster himself, who once tried to steal a police helmet in Leicester Square, as the inspiration for this.

The curate she loves just happens to be Harold “Stinker” Pinker, an old chum of Wooster’s whom he hasn’t seen since their school days. Wooster, who remembers Harold as good-hearted and athletic but hopelessly inept, feels that his involvement in this caper can lead only to disaster. Moreover, as Stiffy foreshadowed in her telegram, she wants to implicate Wooster in yet another scheme: the theft of her uncle’s silver cow creamer—coincidentally, the same curio his Aunt Dahlia wants him to steal. Stiffy’s plan is for Harold to heroically foil Wooster’s burglary, preferably with some minor bloodshed for show, after which her uncle will much more likely accept the lowly curate as his nephew-in-law and may even “cough up” a vicarage for him. Wooster, she thinks, can easily escape after the brief “struggle” and avoid suspicion. Wooster absolutely refuses, on the grounds that Harold would “muck up” the caper, as he does everything. With questionable timing, he now demands the return of the incriminating notebook, lest he be forced to wed Madeline in lieu of Gussie. After brief reflection, Stiffy says that her “conscience” urges her to show the notebook to her uncle—unless, of course, Wooster agrees to assist Harold in the mock burglary.

On this note, Stiffy departs, and Roderick Spode now appears on the dark path, calling Wooster a “miserable worm” and cautioning him against any attempt to steal Sir Watkyn’s cow creamer. Spode warns that Wooster is being “watched closely” and if caught in the act will certainly go to prison. In addition, Spode will personally beat him to a “jelly.” Jeeves interrupts the tête-à-tête, bearing the news that Aunt Dahlia has arrived and wishes to discuss something “important” with Wooster.

Chapter 5 Summary

Suspecting that Aunt Dahlia will harangue him for refusing, per his telegram, to steal the cow creamer, Wooster hopes to postpone the meeting for as long as possible. Meanwhile, he describes to Jeeves his ever-escalating dilemmas, but his valet can offer no solutions. After fortifying Gussie with a shot of brandy, Wooster breaks the news that Stiffy has the notebook and her extortion scheme. Gussie, relieved to learn of a way out, insists that Wooster go through with the theft despite the multiple threats to his life and liberty. He reminds Wooster that his school nickname was “Daredevil Bertie,” but Wooster won’t budge. Next, Gussie suggests that Wooster try to ferret out the notebook by “prodding” Stiffy’s legs, since she probably keeps it concealed in her stocking, but Wooster shoots down that (unseemly) suggestion too.

After Gussie’s frantic departure, Aunt Dahlia enters in a similar state; her “important” news involves her beloved chef Anatole, whom her husband is set on trading to Sir Watkyn in exchange for the cow creamer. Again, she demands that Wooster steal it. Meticulously, Wooster lists for her the most recent developments in the case, any of which render his involvement in the theft absolutely impossible—notably Roderick Spode’s promise to beat him to a “jelly.” Pondering the problem of Spode, Aunt Dahlia wonders if Spode might have a “shady secret” they could use to neutralize him. After she leaves the room, Jeeves confides to Wooster that his private “gentleman’s gentleman” club, known as Junior Ganymede, keeps a detailed log of the checkered pasts of all its members’ employers. Besides providing “entertaining reading,” this resource helps warn members away from certain prospective employers, whose conduct may fall short of their standards. After pondering the implications (for himself) of this news, Wooster urges Jeeves to call the club secretary at once, citing an emergency, for any scandal he can dig up on Spode. Jeeves assents and then mentions that he has just run into Gussie Fink-Nottle in the hallway: Regrettably, Gussie’s engagement to Madeline has once again been cancelled.

Chapter 6 Summary

Dinner that night is sumptuous, but Wooster takes little pleasure in it, since it’s plain to him, if only from Madeline’s stricken face, that Gussie has made an “ass” of himself yet again. Spode amply confirms this when he visits Wooster in his room after dinner, thinking Gussie, whose neck he wants to “break,” might be hiding there. Spode refers to Gussie as a “butterfly” who discards women’s hearts like “soiled gloves.” Wooster still doesn’t know what his friend has done, but the answer is forthcoming: After Spode’s departure, Gussie, haggard and wild-eyed, emerges from under Wooster’s bed. Apparently, Gussie, desperate to get his notebook back, found Stiffy Byng seemingly alone in the drawing room and took the opportunity to frisk her stocking. Unfortunately, Madeline was behind a screen in the corner and saw the whole thing. Now, with Spode hot on his trail, he sees no alternative but to lower himself from the window on a rope of knotted sheets and flee to California.

Wooster manages to talk him down, promising that the two of them can still find the notebook, show it to Madeline, and trust that she can understand Gussie’s motives and forgive him. They decide that Stiffy, who has just left for the village on an errand, must have hidden the notebook in her room, but Gussie is too terrified of Spode to search for it there. He would rather take his chances “hiding somewhere” and stowing away on the milk truck in the morning.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

Wooster’s friend Gussie shows (yet again) that he has a far better grasp of newts than of the social graces of human beings. When he loses the notebook, the screws on Wooster tighten appreciably, and his meeting with Stiffy Byng (who, as they suspected, has the notebook) exacerbates that dynamic. He finds her quarrelling with Constable Oates, a lumbering, Scottish-accented police officer whom her dog has just attacked, not for the first time. In her tirade against the innocent Oates, Stiffy reveals herself as haughty, self-righteous, and pigheaded, which doesn’t bode well for Wooster’s mission. This is the novel’s only depiction of a conflict between a patrician and a member of the working class, and Stiffy, as a representative of the upper class, notably lacks the noble behavior commensurate with her upbringing. Oates, conversely, is hardly the idealized image of a noble proletariat: A bit of a buffoon—like almost everyone in the novel—he’ll soon become an oafish obstacle to Wooster’s aims, a tool of Sir Watkyn Bassett. Stiffy, despising the officer’s coziness with her uncle, obsessively plots a petty revenge on him, in which Wooster will circumstantially play a part. Additionally, she has plans for Sir Watkyn’s precious cow creamer and wants Wooster to help her with that too, though it conflicts with his Aunt Dahlia’s plans.

The two women’s machinations, as in many a classic farce, pull Wooster in two directions at once, and the dangers of being caught by Spode intensify the situation. Worse, Stiffy has involved the hapless Harold “Stinker” Pinker, Wooster’s old school chum and her “secret” fiancé, in her harebrained plan to steal the creamer. Moreover, Dahlia soon turns up the pressure on Wooster with the terrifying news that she may soon lose Anatole to Sir Watkyn if he doesn’t steal the creamer for her: The stakes, for both of them, no longer involve a mere magazine article but their very quality of life. Regardless of what happens to the cow creamer, Wooster knows that he’ll be blamed for its theft.

Jeeves’s secret knowledge will soon neutralize Spode, but the exuberantly selfish Stiffy has already begun to replace him as one of the story’s chief troublemakers. To coerce Wooster, she flaunts Gussie’s notebook and threatens to show it to her uncle; her very presence at Totleigh Towers is an existential threat to his and Gussie’s happiness because of Madeline’s jealousy. These plot threads interweave when Gussie, trying to frisk Stiffy’s leg for the notebook, throws his engagement into the lurch, along with his personal safety. Meanwhile, Jeeves’s answer to the problem of Spode, like many of his solutions, discomfits his master: His “gentleman’s gentlemen’s” club, he says, keeps detailed records of all the foibles of their employers, including Spode (and of course Wooster). Although he feels a bit violated by this news, Wooster can’t help but trust Jeeves.

The “Junior Ganymede Club” provides Jeeves with a personal victory of sorts, again foregrounding the theme of Class Satire of Master and Servant. Although compelled on the job to express his frustrations only through “pregnant pauses” or perhaps a slight tightening of the jaw, Jeeves (the reader now learns) has a liberating sanctum away from home where he and others of his profession share the catharsis of the “club book,” a rollicking compendium of their masters’ foolishness and indiscretions.