In Scene Seven of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Chloe states “the universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean, it’s trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren’t supposed to be in that part of the plan” (Stoppard 78). Even though in the world of Arcadia, sex often brings about chaos and conflict, and even ultimately leads to Thomasina’s death, the text also connects sex—carnal knowing—to intellectual knowledge and discovery, suggesting that despite the tendency of sex to create entropy, it can also make meaning, and that meaning persists even in the chaos sexual attraction can foster.
Throughout the text, which concerns itself with chaos theory and ideas of entropy in multiple ways, sex consistently causes conflict (such as in the case of Septimus’s affair with Mrs. Chater) or creates complications (Septimus’s attractions to Lady Croom and later Thomasina, Bernard’s dalliances with Chloe, Bernard’s proposition to Hannah). In fact, very few—if any—plot lines or characters in Arcadia do not involve sex, or at least some degree of romantic attraction, and by opening the play with Thomasina’s question “Septimus, what is carnal embrace?” (Stoppard 5), Stoppard clearly gives sex a measure of centrality in the text. When it comes to the characters themselves, sex does generally create disorder and entropy, as opposed to order. Arguably, one could see Mrs. Chater’s affair with Septimus, which led to Ezra Chater’s subsequent letters challenging Septimus to a duel, as the partial genesis of the unspooling of Bernard’s academic reputation, as Chater’s notes led to Bernard jumping to conclusions about Byron and publishing his research without conclusive proof. Although Bernard’s own actions and foolhardy temperament no doubt bear most of the blame for his mistakes, the origin of his interest in Sidley Park lies first, in his mistaken belief that Byron slept with Mrs. Chater, and second, in the reality that Septimus did. Even if one does not directly account Bernard’s academic embarrassment to the affairs of the past, one cannot deny that the content of his publication revolves around a proposed sexual encounter. Furthermore, Bernard’s expulsion/flight from Sidley Park can be definitively traced to the fallout of his sexual relationship with Chloe, and Bernard himself is obsessed with sex; as Hannah says, his conversation “doesn’t have many places to go. Like two marbles rolling around in a pudding basin. One of them is always sex” (Stoppard 67). The falling-apart of Bernard’s academic discovery and his standing with the rest of the characters could be traced back, in both cases, to sex, supporting Chloe’s proposition that the ordered, deterministic universe is continually and repeatedly undone by sexual attraction, particularly sexual attraction towards the wrong people.
Moreover, sex ultimately leads to Thomasina’s death, as her waiting up for Septimus leads to her candle starting a fire in her room, which causes her premature demise. Thomasina’s growing sexual and romantic feelings for her tutor arguably lead to her work and genius becoming lost to history, much like the Library of Alexandria that she mourns so poignantly. For Thomasina, sex—or at least the desire for it—induces not only chaos, but also death. The charged interaction between Thomasina and Septimus that occurs at the end of the play cannot be undone, just, as Septimus says “you cannot stir things apart” (Stoppard 9). Notably, Stoppard parallels Thomasina’s realization of the deterministic universe to Chloe’s assertion of sex as the primary entropic force in the universe, giving Thomasina the line “Am I the first person to have thought of this?” (Stoppard 9), regarding an equation for a deterministic universe, and Chloe the line “Do you think I’m the first person to think of this?” (Stoppard 77), regarding her theory that sex undoes an otherwise deterministic universe. Through this parallelism, Stoppard links the deterministic universe and the “attraction that Newton left out” (Stoppard 78). In this reading, sex acts as the ‘spoon’ stirring jam and pudding together, a fittingly phallic image of the universe becoming further intertwined, mixed-up, and chaotic. No sexual relationships in the play lead to any kind of ordered or generative outcome: Septimus and Mrs. Chater’s affair leads to the threat of violence, Mrs. Chater and Captain Brice’s to the embarrassment of Lady Croom, Septimus and Lady Croom’s to a further complicating of their relationship and the relationship between Septimus and Thomasina, Septimus and Thomasina’s to her death and his becoming a hermit, and Bernard’s and Chloe’s to Bernard’s expulsion from Sidley Park.
Intriguingly, Valentine responds to Chloe’s theory with the reply “all the way back to the apple in the garden” (Stoppard 78), an allusion to the Fall in Genesis, tying sexual attraction to both sin and knowledge. The fruit in the Garden of Eden, after all, came from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and this equation of sex to knowledge dovetails with Thomasina’s initial question to Septimus, as well as Augustus’s roundabout questioning of Septimus concerning sex, after which Septimus “puts [Augustus] straight” (Stoppard 92) regarding carnal embrace. The search for sexual knowledge manifests in both of the young Crooms, although it arguably only leads to chaos for Thomasina. Augustus, often double cast with Gus, almost seems to endure through both of Arcadia’s temporal settings, to the point where the stage directions for the final moments of the play read “Gus appears in the doorway. It takes a moment to realize that he is not Lord Augustus” (Stoppard 100). While knowledge of sex and the desire for it bring about Thomasina’s untimely death on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Augustus seems to somehow persist through, or outside of, or beyond time, despite his knowledge of sexual intercourse acquired in the final scene, setting up a strong contrast between the temporal status of the Croom siblings.
Perhaps this difference in fates subtly reflects the gendered disparity in the ways that society treats sexual desire, permitting men to have sexual desire while punishing women for it. However, the text seems to resist this interpretation, as it depicts Lady Croom’s desire for sex and Hannah’s aversion to it with similar respect, only passing definitive judgment or mockery upon the lascivious Mrs. Chater. On the other hand, the text seems to hold up Hannah’s Neoclassical rationality, particularly in juxtaposition to Bernard’s Romantic flamboyance, and Hannah seems to have a point when she weighs “available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed” (Stoppard 67), perhaps suggesting a greater textual sympathy towards resisting the urge to act on sexual impulses. To support this viewpoint, sex-obsessed Chloe, while coming off better than Mrs. Chater, does not hold authority or the viewer’s sympathies in the way that Hannah does. However, when it comes to the men in the text, the flirtatious Bernard does not come off all that well, whereas Septimus, who has affairs with both Mrs. Chater and Lady Croom, comes across as intelligent, feeling, and sympathetic. Therefore, gender does not seem to fully determine the differing destinies of Thomasina and Augustus. Potentially Thomasina’s genius accounts for the contrast in the impact sexual knowledge has on their lives, or perhaps they diverge because her sexual knowledge has an object to attach itself to, as opposed to Augustus. Regardless, he seems to evade the tragic end that befalls his genius sister, and she is lost to time until Hannah and Valentine ‘uncover’ her, recovering her discoveries and work just as Septimus asserts that everything lost in Thomasina’s beloved Library of Alexandria will “turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language” (Stoppard 42).
However, one could alternatively argue that it is not Thomasina’s desire for sex that leads to chaos, but rather Septimus’s refusal to fulfill his. Theoretically, if Septimus had gone to Thomasina’s room, she would not have fallen asleep with her candle unattended, and would not have caused a fire, and would not have died. Regardless, any intercourse between Septimus and Thomasina would undoubtedly cause disorder, if not death, particularly in regards to Septimus’s relationship with Lady Croom, and one could posit that the fear of this chaos deters Septimus from going to Thomasina’s bedroom. The play’s final image, of Septimus and Thomasina dancing around the table with its accumulated objects—one of the play’s preeminent images of entropy—echoes the image of the spoon swirling jam into pudding, as well as the galaxy swirling in motion towards its own heat death, everything spinning towards a gradual chaos and cooling. Septimus and Thomasina’s dance, in its reflection of these images, physicalizes the ways in which their relationship becomes complicated by Thomasina’s attraction to Septimus. Nevertheless, in the world of Arcadia, this chaos is not without hope, or at the very least beauty and meaning. Despite the fact that existentially, Septimus and Thomasina and all of humanity “will be alone, on an empty shore,” Thomasina asserts that “then we will dance” (Stoppard 98), finding a degree of joy, beauty, and meaning even in the swirling waltz towards chaos.
Near the end of Arcadia, Hannah declares “the wanting to know makes us matter” (Stoppard 80), a statement fraught with layers of meaning. Her statement not only suggests that desire for understanding gives our lives meaning; it also implies that the desire to know each other carnally gives rise to our physical bodies. In the association of sex and knowledge, of knowing and knowing, Stoppard suggests that although sex and attraction may move the universe towards greater chaos, that chaos is not without meaning, and within it, we matter.