Plot
The protagonist of Kipps is Arthur "Artie" Kipps. In Book I ("The Making of Kipps") he is raised by his aged aunt and uncle in New Romney, on the southern coast of Kent. He attends the Cavendish Academy ("a middle-class school," not a "board school") in Hastings, in East Sussex. "By inherent nature he had a sociable disposition," and Kipps befriends Sid Pornick, the neighbor boy. Kipps falls in love with Sid's younger sister Ann, and Ann gives him half a sixpence as a token of their love when at the age of fourteen he is apprenticed to the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar, run by Mr. Shalford. But the Pornicks move away and Kipps forgets Ann. He becomes infatuated with Helen Walshingham, who teaches a wood carving class on Thursday nights. When Chitterlow, an actor and aspiring playwright, meets Kipps by running into him with his bicycle, their encounter turns into an inebriated evening that leads to Kipps's being "swapped" (dismissed). But before he leaves Mr. Shalford's establishment, Chitterlow brings to his attention a newspaper advertisement that leads to an unsuspected inheritance for Kipps from his grandfather of a house and £26,000.
In Book II ("Mr. Coote the Chaperon"), Kipps fails in his attempt to adapt to his new social class while living in Folkestone. By chance he meets a Mr. Coote, who undertakes his social education; this leads to renewed contact with Helen Walshingham, and they become engaged. But the process of bettering himself alienates Kipps more and more, especially since Helen has in view taking advantage of Kipps's fortune to establish herself and her brother in London society. Chance meetings with Sid and then Ann (now a house servant) lead to a decision to abandon social conventions (and his engagement to Helen) and marry his childhood sweetheart.
In Book III ("Kippses"), the attempt to find suitable lodging precipitates Kipps back into a struggle with the "complex and difficult" English social system. Kipps and Ann quarrel. Then they learn that Helen's brother, a solicitor, has lost most of their fortune through speculation. The loss of most of Kipps's money leads to a happier situation, however, when Kipps opens a branch of the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union (Limited) in Folkestone, and they have a son. The success of Chitterlow's play, in which Kipps had invested £2000, restores their fortune, but they are content to remain shopkeepers.
Read more about this topic: Kipps
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)