First chapter analysis

Storyline:

In 1962 two guys, Edward and Florence (they are 22 years old), married in St. Mary's Church in Oxford. They went to a Georgian Inn on Chesil Beach, on the Dorset coast, for their first wedding night. They had dinner on the terrace and then both wanted to enjoy their first time.

Characters:

The characters of the novel are Edward and Florence, they are two English guys. They come form two different social classes, the reader can understand it from some book's references. One of them is “Edward did not mention that he had never stayed in an hotel before, whereas Florence, after many trips as a child was an old hand”. The extract underlines clearly the social differences between the characters. Florence belongs to a high social class, as a matter of fact she often attends hotels with her father(he is a businessman), her mother has an expensive car (she is a university teacher), she plays the violin and she lives in a vittorian house. Instead Edward had never been to an hotel before and he lives in a village outskirts.

The two characters are also similar. Florence and Edward are both naïve and inexperienced of the world: they think that their wedding could gave them a place in the society.

Setting:

The space of the novel is the Dorset coast, in particular Chesil beach. The couple is on honeymoon in an hotel on the coast. In the first chapter the references on space are mainlyabout the hotel. As a matter of fact the narrator describes the corridor, the room and the terrace. He only mentions to the beach.

The time is the 1962, a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible because there were more prejudices and stereotypes about this object.

Narrator tecnique:

The narrator is the I person narrator, he is an intrusive omniscient narrator: he knows everything about the facts and he influences our vision of events. The reader couldn't have a personal opinion of the facts.