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Virginia WoolfA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Flush is placed in a box and taken on a long railway journey. Despite the conditions, he is “not afraid” (72). During one stop, Robert and Elizabeth (now secretly married) baptize him in Petrarch’s fountain. When allowed to run around outside, Flush encounters a very different world. Rather than the crowded streets of London, he is now in the hot streets of Italy. Among the “profound differences” that he notices, he realizes that Italian dogs are different. They are not beholden to the ranks and hierarchies of English dogs. Though he has long considered himself to be an aristocrat among dogs and is something of a snob, he finds that the dogs of Italy think of themselves (and of him) as equals. Flush is changed by his experiences, as is Elizabeth. She seems like “a different person altogether” (75). She is more active, and she seems healthier. In particular, she praises the “freedom and life and the joy” of Italy over England (76). Meanwhile, Wilson has a brief romantic interest in a guardsman named Signor Righi.
The Brownings move to Pisa, and then, in the spring of 1847, they move to Florence. Flush becomes acquainted with this new “canine society” that demands no leashes be placed on dogs. Flush wanders frequently around the city and has many romantic encounters with other dogs. He spends time out of the house and then returns home, whereupon he collapses to sleep on the floor. Elizabeth is amused by his “quite disgraceful” behavior (79). The Brownings stay at Casa Guidi, close to Florence’s Palazzo Pitti. They watch parades pass by beneath their window in praise of Grand Duke Leopoldo II and “The Union of Italy” (80). These marches for Italian unification go on for many hours, but Flush is more interested in his romantic adventures with other dogs.
In spring of 1849, Flush notices another change in Elizabeth’s behavior. She is pregnant and preparing for her first child. People come to the house more frequently, causing Flush to feel anxious. On the day of the birth, Flush does not know what is happening. When the baby is finally born, he is led into the room, where Elizabeth has “become two people” (83). At first, Flush is confused and uninterested in the baby. Gradually, however, he and the growing child become close. During the family’s day trips, neither Flush nor the baby takes any particular interest in the countryside. Conveying the complexity and nuance of the world of smells, as experienced by a dog, is very difficult for humans. Flush lives in a “world of smell” that the greatest writers would struggle to convey to human audiences (86).
During this time, both Elizabeth and Robert write. The baby plays in the nursery while Flush explores Florence. Surrounded by so many smells, these years are “the happiest” of his life. He knows the city in a very different way to how other people have known it. Yet there are perils to life in Italy. In addition to the heat, Flush must contend with fleas. When these become a big problem, Robert shears Flush’s fur so that he is “clipped all over into the likeness of a lion” (89). Flush feels ashamed of his absurd new appearance since he no longer looks like a cocker spaniel. During the summer of 1852, Flush notices signs of another brewing crisis. He is taken on another journey and finds himself in London. The familiar sights and smells return. During these weeks in London, he pays a visit to Farnham, where he chases through the countryside as he had done at the farm where he grew up. On another occasion, he returns with Elizabeth to Wimpole Street. They enter the old family house, which now seems quiet and empty (since Elizabeth’s father is dead). Afterward, Flush’s only wish is to “leave England forever” (94). They set sail from England again, and on a violent crossing of the English Channel, Flush becomes sick. He never returns to England.
Flush is “an old dog now” (96). The trip to England and the return to Florence have tired him. When the young dogs speak to him, he tells them stories about England, and he is well-known among the dogs of Florence. He sleeps often in the hot Italian sun. The friends of the Brownings become fascinated by a trend in spirituality. In addition to crystal balls, there is an enthusiasm for knocking tables, which allegedly communicate with the dead. The clattering of the table legs supposedly contains messages from the spirits. To Flush, however, the emotional humans and the loud noises seem strange and annoying. As well as partaking in this fashionable spiritualism, the Brownings show their political support for Italian unification.
Elizabeth is so interested in her writing and the spectacle of turning tables that she pays less attention to Flush. Instead, he wanders out into the street and lays in the market. He watches the “many-colored mongrels of Florence” as they move around him (103). He accepts treats from an old woman who runs a market stall. As he sleeps, he dreams. Suddenly, Flush leaps up “in a state of terror” (104). He rushes back to the Browning house, where Elizabeth is reading on a sofa. When she sees Flush, who is suddenly full of energy, she laughs and recalls lines from her own poem about her dog. She wrote the poem when she was unhappy, but now, many years later, she is happy. Then, she notices that Flush is laying very still and that he is dead. The table beside him remains perfectly still.
The final chapters of Flush move from England to Italy. After Robert and Elizabeth marry in secret, they flee England to get away from Elizabeth’s overbearing father. His intense disproval of the marriage and his desire to control his daughter are not explicitly stated in the novel, as Flush has no way to comprehend this information. To Flush, the motivation for the marriage is as inscrutable as the meaning of the gold ring that appears intermittently on Elizabeth’s hand. Readers possess more knowledge of human custom than Flush, and they are also more likely to know about the life of Elizabeth and the circumstances of her romance with Robert. Thus, these chapters use dramatic irony and exclude conveying information about Elizabeth’s life that would not be understood by her dog.
What Flush can understand, however, is that Elizabeth is a changed person after she has embraced her identity and chosen her own path, which speaks to the theme of The Importance of Self-Reflection and Connection in Identity Formation. The move to Italy coincides with a marked change in her demeanor. For the first time, she seems genuinely happy. Elizabeth is so keen to embrace and praise Italy because she associates the country with this freedom. Flush and Elizabeth still share a deep connection, and he reflects Elizabeth’s newfound delight in life. While Elizabeth has found freedom and happiness in Italy, so has Flush: He is free to wander and explore without a leash, and he enjoys his encounters with female dogs. When he returns from his amorous adventures, Elizabeth sarcastically chides him. However, she completely understands his newfound happiness, freedom, and appreciation of love. To both Flush and Elizabeth, Italy is such a happy place because it is where they discover their truest selves.
Just as the opening chapters create a deliberate contrast between the rural and urban parts of England, the closing chapters create a contrast between England and Italy, highlighting the theme of The Pros and Cons of Urban Living. Elizabeth praises the energy and vigor of Italy, which contrasts with the old, rigid ways of England. The open and accepting nature of the Italians is reflected in her happiness and health, as well as in her increased creative output. Even the weather reflects this contrast: Italy is sunny and warm, in comparison to the wet, cold weather of England. Flush, too, enjoys Italy; in England, he feared the crowds, but in Florence, he fearlessly wanders about by himself and is unafraid of strangers, even accepting treats from a seller at the market. He also notices and appreciates that the Class and Wealth Inequities of Victorian England are absent in Italy: One of his first impressions of Italy is that the dogs there do not have a social hierarchy. Through these contrasts, the novel critiques Victorian England’s restrictive social structures while celebrating Italy’s openness. Flush shows that while urban life can be constraining, as it is in Victorian London, it can also offer opportunities for freedom and creativity if the city embraces openness and change.
Additionally, Elizabeth is deeply attached to Italy because she sees her own journey toward selfhood in the country’s movement toward unification. The parades in the streets mark a jubilant and energetic political movement toward the Risorgimento (the Italian word for the country’s unification, eventually achieved in 1871). Elizabeth witnesses a nation striving to reassert its identity and put a complicated and troubled past behind it. In this, Elizabeth sees a reflection of her own life and her own struggles. She becomes so invested in Italian unification because she hopes that the country can feel the rebirth and renewal that she feels.
The closing chapters are marked by two deaths. First, Elizabeth’s father, Mr. Barrett, dies. Flush never learns why he and the family return briefly to England. For him, the trip is a nostalgic vacation and an affirmation that he much prefers Italy to England. He has seemingly forgotten about Mr. Barrett’s existence. For Elizabeth, however, the trip is more profound. She walks through the empty family home on Wimpole Street and notes that it needs a cleaning. She cannot scrub her father’s memory from her mind any less than she can ever truly forget his negative influence on her life.
When they return to Italy, Flush is an old dog. He has assumed the role of an elder in the dog community, and he spends his days dozing in the market square. In his final moments, he dashes to Elizabeth’s side and lays beside her—he knows what is coming and wants to spend his final moments with her, but Elizabeth misinterprets his rushing toward her and is amused by his behavior. This, once again, conveys the Modernist idea about the subjectivity of experience—despite their deep affection and a lifetime together, Flush and Elizabeth are essentially mysteries to one another. In this moment, Elizabeth is reminded of a poem she wrote many years before. At the time, she was deeply troubled. Now, as she recalls the poem, she feels genuinely happy. She thinks that everything has changed about her life, except for Flush’s presence; Flush’s death soon after underscores another common Modernist theme, which is that change is the only constant. However, while Elizabeth’s father’s death reminded her of her traumatic past, Flush’s death causes her to reflect and realize that she has come far since the days when she had to defer to her father’s authority.
By Virginia Woolf