Arcadia

Arcadia Summary | Act 1, Scene 1, Part 1 Summary

It's 1809. Thirteen year-old Thomasina and her twenty two year old tutor Septimus sit at a large table in a room overlooking the expansive gardens of Thomasina's family estate. Septimus is reading a poem, "The Couch of Eros," to himself. Thomasina is supposed to be studying mathematics, but instead she asks Septimus what the phrase "carnal embrace" means. At first, he tells her that it means embracing a large piece of meat (carnal, from the latin carnis, or meat). But when Thomasina tells him that Mrs. Chater, the wife of the man who wrote the poem Septimus is reading, was seen in a carnal embrace with Mr. Noakes, the landscape gardener, Septimus explains that "carnal embrace" is another way of saying "sexual intercourse,." He describes intercourse in the same sort of clinical way he describes the theorem that Thomasina is supposed to be studying. Thomasina is disgusted, and says that when she's older she'll never be able to participate in "carnal embrace" without thinking of him.

Jellaby, the butler, arrives with a note for Septimus from Chater, the poet, and waits for a reply. Septimus tells him to tell Chater that he'll meet him in the gunroom when he's finished teaching. As Jellaby leaves, Thomasina asks him what's for lunch, and he tells her ham and cabbage, with rice pudding for dessert. Meanwhile, Septimus folds the letter and puts it between the pages of "The Couch of Eros."

Thomasina and Septimus discuss what happens when jam is stirred into rice pudding. Apparently, it comes apart, colors the pudding pink and can't be stirred back into itself again. This leads to a discussion of time, and how the creation of disorder, such as the breaking apart of jam in a rice pudding, can only go forward through time until a new order is created, only to be disordered again. This leads to a discussion of Newtonian atomic theory and Thomasina's explanation of her theory that it's possible to project every possible moment in the future from studying and calculating the movement of atoms. Septimus doesn't quite know how to take this, and talks instead about Fermat, the creator of the theorem that Thomasina is supposed to be studying. Fermat discovered a proof for his theorem but died before he could write it down.