Eyeless in Gaza: Character Map and Chronology

Part of: The Deep Reader

Full spoilers: this guide discusses the entire novel, including its ending.

Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza follows Anthony Beavis through dated chapters that move between 1902 and 1935. School nicknames return as adult names; a woman who first appears as someone’s lover may later appear as someone’s mother. The quickest way to stay oriented is to keep Anthony’s childhood friends, the Amberley family, and his later political companions distinct, then check the date whenever a chapter begins.

Contents: The story at a glance · Characters and families · Relationships that change · Chronological timeline · Chapter dates · Names and nicknames · Places and political circles · Conversions and the ending · Sources

The story at a glance

Anthony belongs to several overlapping circles. At Bulstrode, Brian Foxe is his friend and moral counterweight, Mark Staithes is the commanding boy who bullies others, and Hugh Ledwidge is a frequent target. At Oxford and afterward, Anthony enters Mary Amberley’s society and becomes her lover. Mary’s younger daughter, Helen, later marries Hugh and has an affair with Anthony. His journey to Mexico with Mark brings him into contact with Dr. James Miller, whose treatment of people and practice of nonviolence change Anthony’s direction.

The novel moves among these lives in 54 chapters rather than following their events from childhood onward. Its third-person narration often enters the thoughts of different characters. The dated diary entries are Anthony’s: the early heading identifies them as passages from A.B.’s diary. Joan’s account of Brian’s difficulties, Mary’s stories about her admirers, and Anthony’s explanations of his own conduct therefore require different kinds of attention. A character’s confident explanation may reveal that character’s needs without settling the truth about another person.

Anthony’s oldest friendship, his two Amberley affairs, and the Mexican journey belong to different periods. Miller enters his life in January 1934.

Characters and families

Anthony, Brian, and Joan

Anthony Beavis is a sociologist, the writer of the diary entries, and the main connection among the novel’s separate periods. As a schoolboy he is called Benger; among Gerry Watchett’s Oxford friends he becomes the Professor. He values Brian but joins in Hugh’s humiliation, shares Brian and Joan’s private troubles with Mary, and later kisses Joan after accepting a bet. The encounter helps precipitate Brian’s final crisis. Anthony conceals what happened and burns Brian’s papers. His adult movement toward practical care and pacifism must be read alongside this earlier evasion of responsibility.

Brian Foxe, nicknamed Horse-Face at school, is Anthony’s oldest friend. He stammers, loves poetry, and defends Hugh when the other boys persecute him. His mother’s spiritual expectations and his own wish to be worthy of love complicate his relationship with Joan: desire makes him ashamed, and his refusal of his mother’s money delays marriage. In 1914 he works on a Manchester newspaper while pursuing his thesis. After Joan’s letter announces her love for Anthony, Brian disappears on a walk. His farewell letter and the discovery of his body below a cliff strongly imply suicide, although the death is presented to others as an accident.

Rachel Foxe, usually Mrs. Foxe, is Brian’s widowed mother. She comforts the bereaved young Anthony and devotes herself to religious and charitable work. Her affection for Brian is powerful and, as she later acknowledges, possessive. Joan regards her apparent encouragement of marriage as manipulative; Brian remembers her approval of his renunciation. Those accounts should remain distinguishable. After Brian’s death, Mrs. Foxe asks Anthony to occupy a son’s place in her affection. He does not confess to her his part in Brian’s crisis. A stroke is reported in 1931, when he still has her old letters unopened.

Joan Thursley, sometimes Joanie, is the daughter of the vicar near the Foxes’ home and Brian’s intended wife. Her father’s temper constrains her life at home; London offers work, pleasure, and greater independence. She trusts Anthony because he is Brian’s old friend and tells him how Brian’s sexual scruples make her feel rejected and ashamed. Anthony’s kisses convince her that he loves her. She writes to Brian on that understanding, assuming Anthony has already told him. Her belief in mutual love and Anthony’s desire to escape the consequences are sharply different.

Mr. and Mrs. Thursley are Joan’s parents. The vicar combines scholarly work on Neo-Platonism with outbursts of anger that his wife attempts to appease. Their younger sons, George and Arthur, are Joan’s brothers. The family’s poverty and domestic tension help explain the importance of Joan’s move to London.

The Beavis household

John Beavis, usually Mr. Beavis, is Anthony’s father, a philologist. His interest in words, classical quotations, and respectable manners often makes emotional intimacy with Anthony difficult. After Maisie’s death, he tries awkwardly to make father and son into companions. He later marries Pauline Gannett. His disappointed professional ambition in 1933 helps Anthony recognize how closely his own intellectual retreat resembles his father’s.

Maisie Beavis is Anthony’s mother and John’s first wife. She dies on November 2, 1902; her funeral appears in the chapters headed November 6. The photographs Anthony examines at the novel’s opening belong to different moments of her life. His memories of her also carry her warnings about dirt and germs into scenes of mourning.

Pauline Gannett, later Mrs. Beavis, becomes Anthony’s stepmother when John marries her in December 1903. She is the mother of his two younger half-sisters. The named younger daughter, Diana, is studying medicine in 1931 and expects to qualify the following year. Her older sister is mentioned without a name.

James Beavis, Uncle James, is John’s younger brother and Anthony’s uncle. An actuary, he begins as a forceful atheist. His wartime care for wounded soldiers precedes his conversion to Catholicism in 1923; he dies of cancer in 1931. Anthony’s thoughts about his uncle’s hidden sexuality are Anthony’s interpretation, rather than a confession by James. Uncle James and Dr. James Miller are separate people.

Mary Amberley and her daughters

Mary Amberley, born Mary Champernowne, is the mother of Joyce and Helen. At Maisie’s funeral she is newly married to Roger Amberley; by Anthony’s Oxford years they are divorced. Her London house becomes a center of clever conversation, sexual rivalry, and amusement at other people’s expense. She is Anthony’s lover from 1912 until their rupture in 1914 and Gerry’s lover in the 1920s. Gerry’s handling of her money ruins her financially. Sleeping draughts and later morphine accompany her decline, and by 1933 she is living in diminished circumstances in Paris. Some of her late stories about sexual admirers are explicitly sustained by fantasy and should not become additional affairs on a map.

Helen Amberley, later Helen Ledwidge, is Mary’s younger daughter and Joyce’s younger sister. Her relationships have different beginnings: Gerry exploits her grief over her kitten in 1927; Hugh offers kindness and intellectual attention; Anthony becomes her lover in 1933; Ekki brings a love she experiences as transformative, together with commitment to Communist work. In 1928 she learns that Gerry was also her mother’s lover, undergoes an abortion in Paris, and asks Hugh to marry her. Her separation from Hugh is announced in autumn 1933. After Ekki’s abduction and reported execution, she struggles to sustain the work she had shared with him.

Joyce is Mary’s older daughter. She favors the conventions that her mother treats as comic material. Engaged to Colin in December 1926, she is married and living in Aldershot by June 1927. Their later life in India and their visit to England in 1934 reveal jealousy and resentment within the marriage.

Colin Egerton is Joyce’s husband, an army officer. He dislikes Mary’s circle and imagines himself rescuing Joyce from it. His preference for military life and Poona helps distinguish the Egertons’ household from Helen’s changing London relationships.

Roger Amberley is Mary’s former husband, seen at the 1902 funeral and remembered in connection with her early married life. Lady Champernowne and the General are Mary’s parents.

Hugh Ledwidge is the schoolboy called Goggler, now a museum ethnologist. Mary’s party brings him back into the company of boys who once tormented him, including Anthony and Mark. He idealizes Helen, provides her with reading and encouragement, and becomes her husband by 1931. His novel, The Invisible Lover, gives Helen another version of herself to mock. Hugh’s devotion does not produce the intimacy he hopes for, and Helen eventually leaves him. Gerry’s “Colonel” is a taunting address, not Hugh’s military rank.

Gerry Watchett belongs to the rich Oxford circle that attracts Anthony away from Brian. In the 1920s he is involved with Mary while pursuing Helen. He deliberately uses Helen’s distress after Tompy’s death to seduce her and gives Mary an excessive sleeping dose so that she will not interrupt. He also takes control of Mary’s investments, cheats her, and leaves for Canada. Helen discovers the affair with Mary only after he has gone.

Joyce and Helen are sisters. Mary is their mother; Roger is Mary’s former husband. Helen proposes marriage to Hugh in April 1928, and they are married by 1931.

Mexico, Communism, and pacifism

Mark Staithes is Anthony’s school contemporary, later friend, and companion in Mexico. His contempt for weakness appears early in his bullying, but the adult Mark quietly supports his former teacher, Miss Pendle. He rejects the career his father arranged, works on a Mexican coffee estate, and seeks the danger of revolutionary action. A mule accident injures his knee during the journey toward Don Jorge’s rebellion. Infection leads Miller to amputate his leg. Mark resents dependence on the doctor and continues to oppose his nonviolent approach.

Dr. James Miller is the physician and anthropologist whom Anthony meets in Mexico in January 1934. He treats Mark, remains to oversee his recovery, and cares for people in the neighboring villages. His discussions with Anthony connect bodily habits, attention, compassion, and political conduct. He later participates in peace meetings in Britain.

Ekki Giesebrecht is a German Communist refugee introduced by Mark and later Helen’s lover and political companion. “Ekki” and “Giesebrecht” name the same man. He is lured to Basel, drugged, and taken across the German frontier. Anthony’s August 1934 diary reports his execution, while acknowledging that the tortures preceding it are unknown to him. Helen’s grief remains central to the final chapter.

Jorge Fuentes, Don Jorge, is Mark’s former colleague and friend in Mexico. Earlier revolutionary violence killed members of his family. His own attempted insurrection against the Oaxaca governor draws Mark and Anthony back toward armed politics. The expedition is interrupted by Mark’s injury, and news later reaches them that Don Jorge’s revolt failed and he was captured and shot with his chief lieutenant. Mark believes that Jorge died thinking he had deserted him; that belief belongs to Mark.

Purchas is the clergyman associated with the pacifist organization Anthony joins in Britain. Anthony contributes money, literature, and speeches, and is writing another pamphlet for Purchas near the end. The organization gives his changed convictions a continuing practical occupation.

Friends, helpers, and people who set events in motion

Beppo Bowles is an aesthete in Mary and Anthony’s social circle. His pursuit of young men and fashionable company becomes increasingly distressed as he ages. The young Mr. Simpson invokes the possibility of blackmail during a humiliating dispute over money. Anthony’s encounter with Beppo’s misery in 1933 helps make a return to detached social amusement less bearable.

Sidney Gattick is a barrister who joins Mary in mocking Anthony and encouraging the bet over Joan in July 1914. He is involved in the pressure that turns Joan’s unhappiness into an opportunity for Anthony to prove himself. Mary briefly prefers his company, then finds him insufferable.

Miss Pendle, Penny, was Mark’s first teacher. After illness and destitution, he takes her into his home and supports her; she keeps house for him. Sir Michael, Mark’s father, is the senior civil servant who had arranged his promising City career. Pendle’s recollection of her earlier employment connects the two generations.

Fanny Carling, “the mouse,” is the religious acquaintance whose happiness Helen envies while doubting her faith. Aunt Fanny is Joan’s London aunt and hostess; the novel does not connect her name with Carling’s.

Holtzmann is the journalist Ekki trusts for information about Germany. He arranges the supposed Basel meeting with Ludwig Mach, whose reputation as an underground Communist worker makes the invitation persuasive. Holtzmann participates in the trap; Willi assaults Helen. Mach’s actual presence or involvement is never established by the episode.

Mme Bonifay performs Helen’s abortion in Paris. When Helen becomes dangerously ill afterward, a surgeon is called to save her. After these events, Helen asks Hugh to marry her. She values his kindness and trustworthiness but explicitly says she is not in love with him.

Juan, the mozo, accompanies Mark and Anthony’s mule journey. Mrs. Benson cooks and cleans at the Lake District cottage and makes Brian take food on the walk from which he does not return. Both help orient scenes where the principal characters rely on practical care.

Tompy is Helen’s kitten. Gerry exploits Helen’s grief when Tompy dies in 1927. The dog that falls onto the roof near Helen and Anthony in 1933 belongs to a separate episode.

Relationships that change

Anthony, Mary, and Helen

Anthony’s affairs with Mary and Helen occur a generation apart. He meets the young married Mary at his mother’s funeral, becomes her lover during his Oxford years, and breaks with her during the crisis over Joan in July 1914. He accepts her invitation to dinner again in December 1926. Helen, a child in the 1914 scenes, is then a young adult. His affair with Helen belongs to 1933; its end does not end their connection. By the final chapter he remains close enough to lunch with her and discuss her grief over Ekki.

Mary’s affair with Gerry and Gerry’s seduction of Helen also overlap, but Helen does not knowingly enter that overlap. Her shocked discovery in March 1928 is essential to the relationship. Mary’s later accusation that everything is Gerry’s fault expresses her distress; the narrated fraud and seduction support specific accusations without making him the cause of everything in her life.

Helen’s marriage overlaps some of these relationships. She learns only in March 1928 that Gerry was also Mary’s lover. Her relationship with Ekki ends with his abduction in 1934; Anthony later records his execution.

Brian, Joan, and Anthony in July 1914

Brian’s struggle with desire has already hurt Joan before Anthony intervenes. She confides in the friend she expects to understand him. Anthony turns that confidence into an amusing story for Mary, then agrees to the bet that he can seduce Joan. After their evening at Othello, he kisses her; she interprets the encounter as love and writes to Brian announcing the changed relationship.

Brian receives the letter while Anthony is staying with him in the Lake District. Anthony postpones telling him, even as Brian describes his distress. When Brian vanishes, Anthony finds his farewell letter together with Joan’s letter and sealed letters addressed to Joan and Mrs. Foxe. He burns Brian’s papers, including the sealed letters. Those letters remain unread, so their contents cannot be reconstructed. After the body is found, Anthony preserves the accident account and deceives Joan about when her letter arrived. His betrayal is both the encounter and the concealment that follows it.

Joan believes the encounter with Anthony is mutual love. Anthony knows it is not, conceals it from Brian, burns Brian’s papers, including the unopened letters, and maintains the account of his death as an accident.

Anthony, Mark, and Miller

Mark offers Anthony an escape from spectatorship through dangerous action. Mexico makes that invitation concrete, but their journey changes course when Mark becomes ill. Anthony cares for the injured man and assists Miller’s operation. Miller then offers another form of action: treating people as people, accepting the risk involved in kindness, and trying to interrupt violence without reproducing it. Anthony chooses to work with him; Mark regards the choice with contempt. The novel’s later peace activity grows from this disagreement, not from a successful revolution.

Chronological timeline

Period	Where the principal stories stand
1902	Maisie dies; Anthony returns from her funeral to Bulstrode, where Brian, Mark, and Hugh belong to his school world.
1903–1904	Anthony visits the Foxes at Twyford. John marries Pauline; school scholarship preparation links Anthony, Brian, and Mark.
1912	Anthony and Brian are at Oxford. Brian loves Joan; Anthony enters Mary’s circle and begins the affair later described as two years old in 1914.
May–July 1914	Joan trusts Anthony with her unhappiness. Mary and Gattick encourage the bet; Anthony kisses Joan, Brian dies, and Anthony conceals the letters.
1923	Uncle James converts to Catholicism, as recalled in the 1931 chapter.
1926–1928	Anthony reenters Mary’s company. Joyce marries Colin; Gerry seduces Helen and cheats Mary. Helen’s abortion and her proposal to Hugh follow in 1928.
1931	Helen is Hugh’s wife; Diana studies medicine; Uncle James dies, and Mrs. Foxe’s stroke is reported.
1933	Anthony and Helen’s affair ends. Helen turns toward Ekki and Communist work and announces her separation from Hugh. Anthony leaves for Mexico with Mark.
January–February 1934	Mark is injured; Miller treats him, and Anthony chooses Miller’s approach. Don Jorge’s failed revolt and execution are reported. Ekki is abducted after the Basel trap.
Spring 1934–February 1935	Anthony pursues bodily and contemplative discipline alongside public peace work. Helen mourns Ekki. The final chapter ends before Anthony’s threatened Battersea meeting.

Chapter dates

The table follows the novel’s reading order. Dates are the printed chapter headings and any additional dated diary headings within that chapter; memories and subsequent events can extend beyond them. Two passages resist a tidier calendar: chapter 39 is headed March 25, 1928, although Hugh’s embedded letter speaks of high summer; chapter 53 is headed February 23, 1934, introduces a journey planned for “tomorrow,” and is recalled on February 23, 1935, as exactly a year earlier. The printed dates are retained here.

Chapter	Date or dates printed in the chapter
1	August 30, 1933
2	April 4 and 5, 1934
3	August 30, 1933
4	November 6, 1902
5	December 8, 1926
6	November 6, 1902
7	April 8, 1934
8	August 30, 1933
9	April 2, 1903
10	June 16, 1912
11	December 8, 1926
12	August 30, 1933
13	May 20 and 24, 1934
14	December 8, 1926
15	June 1903–January 1904
16	June 17, 1912
17	May 26, 1934
18	December 8, 1926
19	July 7, 1912
20	December 8, 1926
21	August 31, 1933
22	December 8, 1926
23	June 1 and 3, 1934
24	June 23 and July 5, 1927
25	May 20, 1931
26	September 5, 1933
27	May 27, 1914
28	June 25, 1934
29	May 24, 1931
30	July 2, 1914
31	September 6, 1933
32	July 29, 1934
33	July 18, 1914
34	March 3, 1928
35	August 4, 1934
36	July 19, 1914
37	Autumn 1933
38	August 10, 1934
39	March 25, 1928
40	September 11, 1934
41	December 1933
42	September 15 and 17, 1934
43	July 20 and 21, 1914
44	September 21, 1934
45	April 14, 1928
46	October 30 and November 4, 1934
47	January 10 and 11, 1934
48	July 23, 1914
49	January 12 and 14, 1934
50	Christmas Day 1934 and January 1, 1935
51	February 7, 1934
52	July 24, 1914
53	February 23, 1934
54	February 23, 1935

Names and nicknames

Name on the page	Person or meaning
A. B.; Benger; the Professor	Anthony Beavis. A. B. identifies the diary writer; Benger is his school nickname; Professor belongs to his Oxford social circle.
Horse-Face; Foxe; B. in the farewell letter	Brian Foxe. Mrs. Foxe is his mother, Rachel.
Goggler; Ledwidge; Hugh; the Colonel	Hugh Ledwidge. Goggler is the school nickname; Colonel is Gerry’s mock salute.
Mary Champernowne; Mrs. Amberley	Mary Amberley before marriage and under her married surname.
Helen Amberley; Helen Ledwidge	Helen, Mary’s younger daughter, before and during her marriage to Hugh.
Joyce	Mary’s older daughter, married to Colin Egerton.
Uncle James; James Beavis	Anthony’s uncle, John’s younger brother.
Dr. Miller; James Miller	The doctor and anthropologist Anthony meets in Mexico.
Ekki; Giesebrecht; E. Giesebrecht	Helen’s German Communist lover.
Don Jorge; Jorge Fuentes	Mark’s friend and intended ally in the Mexican revolt.
Penny; Miss Pendle	Mark’s former teacher, later his housekeeper.
The mouse; Fanny Carling	Helen’s religious acquaintance. Aunt Fanny is Joan’s London hostess.
Madame Roger	Mary’s Paris cleaner, distinct from her former husband Roger Amberley.
Bob; Cecil; Quentin	Different lovers Helen recalls in the 1931 scenes; Quentin invites her out that evening.
Gladys	Anthony’s lover in the 1931 scenes.
Aganeezer Lemon-squeezer	Mark’s mocking name for Agnes, the school maid.
Bumface	The schoolmaster who gives botany lessons.
Jimbug	Mr. Jameson, the schoolmaster.

Thompson, Pembroke-Jones, Partridge, and Butterworth are schoolboys around the bullying scenes. At Oxford, Mumby is the alternative left when Brian and Mark withdraw from the Fabian presidential contest. Caldwell publishes Hugh’s novel, Catesby Rudge reviews it, and Croyland is the art dealer at its celebration. Mrs. Weeks is the cook in Mary’s Berkshire house. Madame Cayol prepares Anthony’s meals at the French villa.

Places and political circles

Place or circle	Connection to the characters
Bulstrode; Eton; Oxford	Bulstrode is Anthony’s school with Brian, Mark, and Hugh. Anthony and Brian prepare for Eton scholarships; Mark prepares for Rugby. Oxford reunites Anthony, Brian, and Mark in the later student scenes.
Twyford and the nearby vicarage	The Foxes’ home and the Thursleys’ household place Brian, his mother, and Joan near one another.
London	Mary’s social circle, Anthony’s research, Hugh and Helen’s household, and the later pacifist organization overlap here. Joan stays with Aunt Fanny while doing charitable work.
Aldershot and India	Joyce and Colin’s married life leads into a military setting, later including Poona.
Berkshire	Mary’s rented country house is the setting for Tompy’s death and Gerry’s seduction of Helen in 1927.
Paris and the south of France	Paris holds Helen’s abortion and Mary’s later impoverished life. The French villa is the setting of Anthony and Helen’s affair and the falling-dog episode in 1933.
Manchester and the Lake District	Brian works in Manchester. His summer stay near Langdale and Ambleside becomes the setting of Anthony’s concealment and Brian’s death.
Mexico: Oaxaca and Chiapas	Don Jorge’s rebellion concerns Oaxaca. Mark recalls managing a coffee estate in Chiapas; Miller has been working among the Lacandones there. The journey toward the revolt instead brings the men into medical care and moral argument.
Basel and the German frontier	Holtzmann’s false invitation leads Ekki and Helen to Basel. Ekki is taken into Germany; Helen is assaulted and left behind.
Communists and pacifists	Ekki’s work draws Helen toward Communist activity. Mark seeks revolutionary action but later also advocates withdrawal. Miller, Purchas, and Anthony undertake nonviolent peace work.

The anonymous “Group of Patriotic Englishmen” that threatens Anthony at the end is identified by its letter and its hostility to his pacifism. The novel does not supply names or establish a formal organization behind those signatories.

Conversions and the ending

The changes of allegiance in Eyeless in Gaza happen through different relationships. Uncle James moves from atheism to Catholicism. Helen’s love for Ekki makes political work meaningful to her, but after his death she finds his comrades and their activity difficult to endure. Anthony moves toward contemplation and pacifism through Miller’s teaching, his own discipline, and work with Purchas. Each change leads into a different form of attachment and activity.

Anthony’s conversion is also unfinished in practice. In the final chapter he urges Helen to cultivate love as a continuing task; she considers attending his meeting without committing herself. A threat then forces him to confront the possibility of public humiliation and physical violence. He meditates, regains calm, and makes a meal with the eight-o’clock meeting still ahead. The novel ends before the speech, before any assault, and before Helen’s choice is shown. Its last movement brings Anthony to the responsibility he once escaped, with the consequences still ahead of him.

Sources

Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza (first published by Chatto & Windus, 1936), Faded Page ebook 20170662, produced by Distributed Proofreaders Canada and posted July 1, 2017. Character names and chapter dates follow this text. Its front matter identifies a Penguin edition in association with Chatto & Windus; a printing date is not supplied.