William Henry Devereaux Jr. and Gracie DuBois’s Departmental Feud

William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Gracie DuBois’s Departmental Feud grows out of the English department’s hiring politics and their mutual capacity to turn professional disagreement into personal provocation. During a search committee debate, Devereaux mocks Gracie’s objections to a candidate; a spiral notebook catches him in the face and punctures his nostril. The encounter makes their antagonism bodily, but not conclusive: later messages and a warning from Gracie’s husband suggest that the conflict remains active after the injury.

Departmental Rivalry and the Hiring Debate

The feud plays out against a department already divided by personnel politics. The search committee has reduced its field to three applicants, though its members have lost sight of what originally recommended them. Devereaux’s narration suggests that they have discarded candidates who might make the faculty feel professionally inadequate, then explained their choices through concerns about retaining strong applicants. The hiring discussion is therefore not a neutral assessment of merit: anxiety about status and departmental power shapes what the committee considers acceptable.

Gracie presses to eliminate Professor Threlkind, pointing to three objections: the department is already overstaffed in Twentieth Century, has no demonstrated need for another poet, and should not add another white male. Those arguments also touch her own professional territory. Her field is Twentieth-Century British literature; she has recently published a second volume of poetry; and she regards the relevant courses as her private stock. If Threlkind were hired, she would have to share courses in both areas. Her opposition thus combines claims about staffing and representation with a clear concern about protecting her teaching and standing.

Her opportunity to remove Threlkind earlier had passed because she was ill with the flu and missed the meeting at which the candidate might have been dismissed from consideration. At the current meeting, she consults notes in a large spiral notebook whose coil has been pulled apart. The exposed hooked end gives the notebook a vivid physical presence before it becomes the instrument of Devereaux’s injury. The committee debate, in other words, is already materialized in an object Gracie handles while making her case.

Devereaux’s Provocation and the Injury

Devereaux asks whether the department already has a poet, feigning innocence about a question that cuts directly into Gracie’s argument. Teddy Barnes and June Barnes look down at their hands, their restrained smiles signaling that they recognize the provocation. They have a long list of political enemies, and Gracie is near its top because she belonged to the coalition that helped remove Teddy from the chairmanship. Devereaux’s jab therefore lands within an existing history of departmental retaliation, not simply a disagreement over one applicant.

When Gracie specifies that she objects only to Threlkind, Devereaux asks who the department’s first poet is. Teddy anticipates that Devereaux will provoke her again, and the prediction proves apt. The notebook strikes Devereaux full in the face. As Gracie tries to retrieve it, the sharp end of its spiral ring hooks and punctures his right nostril. The resulting tableau is at once painful and absurd: Devereaux is bent over the table toward Gracie, with the notebook still in front of his face, while each tentative tug sends pain through his forehead. He compares his predicament to being gigged like a frog and appearing to lean toward her like an awkward suitor.

The episode does not establish that Gracie set out to injure him. The danger comes from the notebook’s exposed metal end and the struggle to retrieve it; the scene’s comedy depends on the mismatch between a heated faculty dispute and the grotesque accident that follows. Gracie lets go when she realizes what has happened, while Orshee repeats that the situation is crazy. The injury interrupts the argument but does not produce an apology or reconcile the antagonists.

The Feud After the Meeting

The dispute continues in the aftermath through the expectations other people have of both of them. Devereaux’s wife predicts that he called for a vote, and Teddy confirms that Devereaux said it was time to vote. His wife is less surprised by the procedural move than disappointed by his familiar pattern of needling Gracie, whose sensitivity about her poetry she knows. Devereaux admits that he had not set out to belittle Gracie, but that once he began, the mockery felt natural. He says his irritation is less apparent when they are apart and becomes acute when she is close enough to strike. He generalizes that several colleagues affect him this way, though he does not object to them in the abstract.

That self-description makes the feud more than a contest of arguments: proximity itself becomes a trigger for Devereaux’s aggressive humor. It also exposes the distance between his stated lack of settled dislike and the impulse to provoke someone within reach. His account does not excuse the behavior; it records how quickly he converts an idea into an interpersonal affront. The earlier injury supplies an ugly comic consequence to that habitual escalation.

Gracie’s husband, Mike Law, later encounters Devereaux on campus. The two men stand sheepishly facing one another, each apparently feeling that he owes the other an apology, although Devereaux recognizes that Mike is not responsible for his wife’s actions. Mike says that he has also been told Devereaux had it coming, then advises him to keep his guard up because Gracie is not finished. They shake hands despite the unclear grounds for doing so. Mike’s warning keeps the encounter from reading as a closed incident, while his awkward solidarity with Devereaux reflects the collateral strain the feud creates.

Interim Chairmanship and Unresolved Conflict

The institutional conflict persists as Devereaux serves as interim chair. Rachel Williams gives him a message from Gracie requesting a meeting that afternoon; the request contains no apology or expression of regret for having mutilated the chairman. A second message comes from Herbert Schonberg, the faculty union representative, who has been seeking a meeting about Devereaux’s conduct as interim chair. The juxtaposition places the personal rupture inside his administrative responsibilities: Gracie is not only his adversary in committee but also a colleague who can demand his attention in his official role.

Devereaux’s appointment had been treated as a compromise because his colleagues considered him procedurally inept, politically unskilled, inattentive to maneuvering, and prone to memory failures. They thought his weaknesses made him unlikely to cause much harm during a temporary term. His account complicates that assumption: Rachel’s competence helps him locate and complete the procedures others expected him to mishandle. Against this background, Gracie’s requested meeting is not merely an extension of a private quarrel. It belongs to an unsettled department in which authority, procedure, and old political alliances continue to shape daily encounters. The feud remains unresolved, suspended between a request for a meeting, the absence of an apology, and Mike’s warning that another confrontation may come.