Experience and Family

Biological family and chosen family are equally important in forming the personality of the novel's protagonist, Cyril Avery. As a child, his strongest bond is with his friend, Julian Woodbead, whose family he joins when he marries Julian's sister, Alice Woodbead. Though the marriage is unsuccessful, his bond with the Woodbeads' provides a stable version of a family life. Alice and he care for his dying adoptive father, Charles Avery, together. Alice and the extended family Cyril and she have created together (children, grandchildren) attend the wedding of Cyril's biological mother, Catherine Goggin, in the epilogue of the novel. As Cyril has an inoperable tumor by then, he is glad to leave his mother with a chosen family of her own, that of her new husband, Tom.

Though Cyril's biological mother is not the person who raises him, he sees how her family has...