Honoria Glossop Explained

Honoria Glossop
Series:Jeeves
First:"Scoring off Jeeves" (1922)
Last:"Jeeves and the Greasy Bird" (1965)
Creator:P. G. Wodehouse
Portrayer:Donna Lynne Champlin
Miriam Margolyes and others
Full Name:Honoria Jane Louise Glossop
Gender:Female
Family:Sir Roderick Glossop (father)
Lady Glossop (mother) (deceased)
Oswald Glossop (brother)
Relatives:Tuppy Glossop (cousin)
Heloise Pringle (cousin)
Nationality:British

Honoria Glossop is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves stories by English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. Athletic as well as scholarly, she is a formidable young lady and one of the women whom Bertie Wooster reluctantly becomes engaged to.

Life and character

Honoria Glossop (full name Honoria Jane Louise Glossop)[1] is the daughter of Sir Roderick Glossop and the older sister of Oswald Glossop. Large, brainy, and athletic, she has an assertive personality and a forceful voice. She plays every kind of sport, and Bertie suspects she may have boxed for her university.[2] She has a strong presence; Bertie notes that "there is something about Honoria which makes almost anybody you meet in the same room seem sort of under-sized and trivial by comparison."[3] A graduate of Girton College,Cambridge, she is interested in intellectual pursuits, and reads Nietzsche and Ruskin.[4]

In the Jeeves canon, Honoria gets engaged to Bertie Wooster twice. The first instance occurs sometime around the end of "Scoring off Jeeves". Bertie does not actually want to marry her, but he is too intimidated by Honoria, and by his Aunt Agatha who wants him to marry Honoria, to turn her down.[5] The engagement is over by the end of "Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch". Both short stories appear in The Inimitable Jeeves.[6]

Honoria is briefly engaged to Bertie's friend "Biffy" Biffen in "The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy".[4] Honoria has a cousin, Heloise Pringle, who appears in the short story, "Without the Option". Heloise resembles her cousin in almost every respect.[7] Both of these stories are collected in Carry On, Jeeves.

She is mentioned in "Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit" (in Very Good, Jeeves), in which Aunt Agatha's plan to have the engagement between Honoria and Bertie restored is preemptively thwarted by Jeeves.[8]

Bertie finds himself engaged to Honoria a second time in the short story "Jeeves and the Greasy Bird", after Bertie courts her to make the novelist Blair Eggleston jealous, hoping that Blair will be compelled to admit his feelings to Honoria.[9] Though events do not proceed exactly as Bertie planned, Honoria returns Blair's feelings, and ultimately, she is engaged to Blair.[4] Blair Eggleston had previously appeared in the novel Hot Water.

Appearances

Honoria is mentioned in several stories, including:

Quotes

Honoria is distinctive for her vigorous laugh, which is described in several different stories by Bertie Wooster:

Adaptations

Television
Stage
Film
Radio

See also

References

Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Notes and References

    1. Wodehouse (2008) [1925], Carry On, Jeeves, chapter 6, p. 145.
    2. Ring & Jaggard (1999), p. 100.
    3. Wodehouse (2008) [1923], The Inimitable Jeeves, chapter 8, p. 79.
    4. Cawthorne (2013), pp. 191-192.
    5. Wodehouse (2008) [1923], The Inimitable Jeeves, chapter 7, pp. 72-74.
    6. Garrison (1991), pp. 80-81.
    7. Cawthorne (2013), pp. 195-196.
    8. Cawthorne (2013), p. 75.
    9. Wodehouse (1968) [1966], Plum Pie, chapter 1, pp. 21-22.
    10. Wodehouse (2008) [1923], The Inimitable Jeeves, chapter 6, p. 66.
    11. Wodehouse (2008) [1923], The Inimitable Jeeves, chapter 6, p. 69.
    12. Wodehouse (2008) [1925], Carry On, Jeeves, chapter 6, p. 146.
    13. Wodehouse (2008) [1930], Very Good, Jeeves, chapter 3, p. 65.
    14. Wodehouse (2008) [1947], Joy in the Morning, chapter 2, p. 20.
    15. Web site: P. G. Wodehouse's The World of Wooster: 1: Jeeves and the Greasy Bird . . 2019 . BBC Genome Project . 8 August 2019.
    16. Web site: Jeeves and Wooster Series 1, Episode 1 . . British Comedy Guide . 12 January 2018 .
    17. Book: Taves, Brian . P. G. Wodehouse and Hollywood: Screenwriting, Satires and Adaptations. McFarland & Company. 2006 . 199 . 978-0786422883.
    18. What Ho, Jeeves!: Part 3: Honoria Glossop . 2588 . 47 . . 1973-06-14. The Radio Times . 12 January 2018.