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Analysis of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 22, 2025

The third of 12 volumes in Powell’s roman-fleuve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, this novel uses a first-person point of view to continue the narrative of Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, as he completes his transition to adulthood in the years 1931–33. In the overall structure of the series, The Acceptance World is positioned at the close of the first of four “movements,” when the characters are settling into relationships (although not necessarily into marriages) and embarking on careers. The novel follows A Buyer’s Market (1952) and precedes At Lady Molly’s (1957).

As the story opens, Jenkins is employed at a publishing house and has also written his first novel. He worries over the introduction to The Art of Horace Isbister, to be written by the elderly Victorian novelist St. John Clarke, a friend of the painter. When Isbister dies, the book’s publication acquires greater urgency, and events are set in motion that will move Jenkins’s life in new directions.

Two school friends, the Freudian poet Mark Members and the Marxist ideologue J. G. Quiggin, become entangled in Clarke’s affairs. A chance meeting—a recurring device in the series—reunites Jenkins and Quiggin with Peter Templer; with Peter’s wife, Mona; and with his sister, Jean. Mona seems very interested in Quiggin, while Jenkins is interested in Jean, who recently separated from her husband, and to whom Jenkins had previously had a romantic attachment. Both men are soon involved in affairs.

A memorial exhibit of Isbister’s portraits provides Jenkins with the opportunity to meet several old acquaintances, and the setting naturally allows the conversations to focus on questions relevant to art—a subject of considerable interest to Powell and a frequent topic of conversation among the characters he creates. Mark Members tells how Quiggin supplanted him as Clarke’s secretary; ironically, he has also supplanted Peter Templer. A political demonstration passes by, and in the front ranks they see St. John Clarke with Quiggin—and Mona Templer! Jean learns that Mona has left Peter; other young marriages are breaking up as well.

In the closing event of the novel, Jenkins attends the “Old Boy Dinner,” an annual reunion for alumni of his school residential house. He sits between Peter Templer, a golden boy who has outlived his glory, and Kenneth Widmerpool, a man who had been an outcast at school but who is now enjoying great success in the “acceptance world” of futures trading. Widmerpool demonstrates both his folly and his efficiency in the course of the evening, giving an unwanted speech and then taking charge of getting the intoxicated Charles Stringham home. Jenkins goes to visit Jean, but this relationship, too, is fated to end soon. For the moment, Jenkins and Jean agree not to talk about the future.

Formally, The Acceptance World brings to a close the first phase of the lives of Jenkins and his friends. Their school years and the social whirlwind of the debutante period is behind them. They are now independent adults, for better or worse, coping with the personal choices they have made with regard to relationships and employment and attempting to fulfill their ambitions. Collectively, they constitute the figures in a vast dance, turning through the required steps, joining hands and then handing off partners, playing out their parts in the grand design of life.

Bibliography
Joyau, Isabelle. Understanding Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Selig, Robert L. Time and Anthony Powell. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1991.
Spurling, Hillary. Invitation to the Dance: A Guide to Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.