Volume nine in Snow’s 11-volume series Strangers and Brothers, Corridors of Power follows The Affair and precedes the elegiac closing volumes of The Sleep of Reason and Last Things. The first-person narrator of the series, Lewis Eliot, has achieved a position of enough importance to place him as a witness to the workings of political power in Parliament; the scope of the action has grown from the intrigues of academic politics in The Affair to matters of global importance in the new nuclear era. Snow draws on his real-life experiences to produce verisimilitude in the novel’s representation of the machinations of power. In this novel, Eliot is again an observer of the narrative’s main events rather than serving as a key participant or the subject of the story.
In the novel’s opening event, the Eliots have dinner with a young Conservative member of Parliament, Roger Quaife, and his aristocratic wife, a leading socialite. With his connections and his achievements to date, the story of Quaife’s future success could already be written were he prepared to toe the party line rather than to follow the dictates of his conscience. On the matter of the nuclear arms race, however, he feels compelled to oppose the continued participation of Great Britain in spite of the Conservative Party’s support for it. Through Eliot, who is experienced in these issues (first dealt with in The New Men), Quaife builds a circle of supporters to assist him in exposing the issue to critical examination.
If his project could proceed in a political vacuum, Quaife might have a better chance of success; however, he is immersed in a continually changing scenario among shifting loyalties. When the Suez Crisis of 1956 occurs, Quaife’s Conservative connections separate him from his supporters on ending the arms race. As important as the nuclear issue is, it cannot be extricated from the give-and-take negotiations of politics.
Additionally, his personal life complicates the political work he is attempting to complete: he has been entangled for some time in an affair with the wife of another member of Parliament, and gossip about this indiscretion surfaces just when it can do the greatest damage to Quaife’s credibility with his supporters and to his standing with the public.
Quaife must face a dilemma that will destroy some part of his integrity. He can back down from his opposition to nuclear arms to salvage his political career, or he can stick to his position and suffer the consequences in his professional and personal life. The ramifications of his decision extend beyond his own life and career, however, since Eliot and others are now committed to his project and will suffer no matter which decision Quaife makes.
As a consequence of this political battle, Eliot reaches a turning point in his own life. Snow’s narrative emphasizes that idealism makes a poor political instrument and is likely to become a sacrificial lamb as compromises chip into it. He echoes the existential message of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Dirty Hands in demonstrating how agents cannot act in the world and simultaneously avoid becoming besmirched by the choices they make to achieve their goals.
Bibliography
De la Mothe, John. C. P. Snow and the Struggle of Modernity. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
Ramanathan, Suguna. The Novels of C. P. Snow: A Critical Introduction. New York: Scribner, 1978.
Shusterman, David. C. P. Snow. Rev. ed. Twayne’s English Authors, 179. Boston: Twayne, 1991.