Teddy Barnes

Teddy Barnes is an English professor, June Barnes’s husband, and William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s longtime friend. He moves through the novel’s academic and personal crises with a characteristic mixture of loyalty and caution: he keeps showing up for his friend, but often hesitates at the moment decisive action is required. His marriage is entangled with departmental alliances, while his decades-long crush on Lily Devereaux exposes a private longing that he has tried to keep within safe bounds. The contrast between what Teddy wants and what he dares to do gives his apparently steady life much of its tension.

Identity and Character

Teddy first appears driving William Henry Devereaux, Jr. home in an old Honda Civic that he refuses to replace. The car’s passenger seat is supposed to slide back, but does not; Teddy observes the problem with an academic helplessness rather than fixing it. At an intersection, he leans forward as if ready to move, then gives up when the opening in traffic proves too small. The scene offers a compact image of his habitual caution: readiness and desire are present, but action is checked by the possibility of risk.

That hesitation is not indifference. Teddy drives his friend home after William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s nosebleed, and the old Civic remains a regular means of practical care. He also takes him on the four-mile drive from the basketball court to his country house, even though the detour is not necessary for Teddy. Their friendship has lasted through years of university politics, and Teddy’s attention to his friend persists even when he disagrees with the way he behaves.

Teddy is tenured, a status that initially gives him and William Henry Devereaux, Jr. confidence amid rumors that the university may cut faculty positions. The threatened purge reportedly reaches into the tenured ranks, and department chairs are said to be under pressure to identify colleagues who might be expendable. Seniority may not protect anyone. Teddy brings this anxiety to his friend during the drive, beginning a conversation that reflects both his access to departmental concerns and his willingness to share troubling news.

Marriage and Unrequited Attachment

Teddy and June are known in the English department as Fred and Ginger because they move together with practiced coordination toward shared professional and political aims. Their partnership is understood as a source of influence in a department governed by suspicion and factional maneuvering. To William Henry Devereaux, Jr., their closeness initially makes rumors that June is involved with a junior colleague hard to believe. He sees the marriage as a powerful alliance, but also recognizes that political efficiency and romantic intimacy are not the same thing.

Teddy’s private attachment to Lily Devereaux complicates that picture. He has had a crush on her for more than twenty years, and after William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Lily Devereaux moved to a country house, Teddy had fewer chances to see her. He continued to seek opportunities, including offering his friend a ride after their occasional Saturday basketball games. More than a decade earlier, while drunk, he confessed his infatuation to William Henry Devereaux, Jr., then immediately tried to extract a promise that the secret would not be revealed. The episode makes his feelings both enduring and carefully contained: even when he admits them, he is anxious about their consequences.

The novel places this attachment beside Teddy’s marriage without treating the two relationships as equivalent. Lily is someone he knows he cannot have, which makes the crush comparatively safe; his marriage to June, by contrast, is bound up with shared work, status, and everyday life. Later, June admits that her affair with Orshee had reflected her growing desperation and her sense that the brightness was draining from her life. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. imagines that it cannot be easy for Teddy to learn that his wife has been involved with someone he regards so poorly, though the account does not establish precisely when Teddy learned the full story. His lowered head and reluctance to meet colleagues’ eyes suggest distress, but the narrator’s interpretation remains an inference rather than Teddy’s own explanation.

Friendship and Department Politics

Teddy’s friendship with William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is tested by the possibility that the department will remove his friend as chair. When Finny, the English Department Instructor, has colleagues alarmed and mobilized, Teddy warns that the recall vote requires a two-thirds majority under the department’s operating paper. He believes that persuading a few colleagues may still matter, and urges William Henry Devereaux, Jr. to make calls. Teddy and June separately press him not to let the process proceed without a fight. Their proposed defense is straightforward: attend the meeting, deny giving Dickie Pope a faculty list, and reassure colleagues that he would not betray the department. Teddy expects this to return the faculty to its familiar division and deadlock.

His appeal also reflects affection and political realism. Teddy reminds his friend that the department’s last genuine consensus came when it hired Gracie DuBois, suggesting that disagreement is the group’s normal condition rather than a problem easily overcome. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. refuses to follow the advice and chooses not to attend the recall meeting. In the aftermath, Teddy remains concerned: while the vote is under way, he waits outside his friend’s office, then wonders where he has gone. He even proposes, without much conviction, driving to Allegheny Wells to check on him. The concern continues after the dispute has moved beyond the department’s formal proceedings.

Teddy’s own history as chair helps explain why the recall is personal as well as political. Paul Rourke had been instrumental in forcing him out of the chairmanship that William Henry Devereaux, Jr. temporarily occupies. At a later dinner, Teddy eagerly asks whether Rourke might support his return. He knows the prospect is uncertain, but hope shows in his response. The possibility that his own tenure now looks more reasonable beside William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s combative leadership gives the reversal an ironic edge: the man who once lost the position may again appear acceptable as the department’s politics shift.

Setbacks, Reconciliation, and Return to Leadership

Teddy’s relationship with June becomes harder to separate from work. After June’s involvement with Orshee is disclosed, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. considers how much the discovery might hurt Teddy, even as he sets those concerns aside to follow the department’s vote. Later, when Teddy and June are back together after a costly cruise, he describes the marriage as having returned to a better course. That account does not erase the earlier strain; it records a recovery that Teddy himself believes has occurred.

The cruise is a decision they make together because they need time away, despite its expense. Teddy reports the trip with visible pleasure, presenting it as an attempt to renew the marriage rather than an escape from it. Afterward, he tells William Henry Devereaux, Jr. that he intends to give up his crush on Lily, which he has come to regard as unhealthy. He does not claim to have stopped loving her altogether: he expects that some affection will remain. His admission, delivered with tears in his eyes, is a small but consequential change from the guarded confession of years before. Instead of merely protecting the secret, he recognizes its cost and expresses an intention to relinquish it.

Teddy also returns to the department’s leadership. He wins a runoff election for a three-year term as chair by one vote. The narrow victory leaves him with a less decisive mandate than William Henry Devereaux, Jr. had, and Teddy expects a difficult term with Paul Rourke as a hostile dean. He nevertheless accepts the office and its responsibilities, noting that the chair’s salary will help offset the expense of the cruise. His return is both professional reversal and practical new beginning: he regains authority in the institution where he had once been displaced, while trying to restore steadiness at home.

Narrative Role and Significance

Teddy is a measure of the difference between accommodation and courage in the novel’s academic world. He can recognize danger, convey information, and maintain relationships, yet the image of his poised foot that never reaches the accelerator captures the limits of his decisiveness. His efforts to save William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s chairmanship are active and specific, but he relies on familiar departmental habits—alliances, persuasion, and the return of gridlock—rather than demanding a clean resolution. His loyalty is real even when his strategy is cautious.

His story also connects private attachment to institutional power. Teddy and June’s partnership has functioned as a political bloc, but their marriage cannot be reduced to that advantage; her affair and his later account of repair reveal the human costs concealed beneath their public coordination. His crush on Lily, meanwhile, persists alongside his commitment to June, and his decision to relinquish it is necessarily incomplete. By the end, Teddy has reclaimed the chairmanship and says his marriage is back on track, but neither success nor reconciliation turns him into someone without doubt. His ending is a qualified restoration: a renewed role, a marriage he believes has recovered, and an affection he can acknowledge while trying not to let it govern his life.