Adrian Mole

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Adrian Albert Mole (born April 2, 1967) is the fictional protagonist in a series of books by Sue Townsend. The character first appeared in a BBC Radio 4 single play in 1982. All of the books in the series are written in the first person in the form of a diary.

Contents

[edit] Themes

The books contain two main themes. The first are personal to Adrian: they revolve around his desires and ambitions in life (to marry Pandora, become a published writer of poetry and novels, attain financial security), and his complete failure to achieve them. In many ways, the books are extremely accurate satires of human pretensions (and teenage pretensions in particular in the early books).

The second theme is to hold a mirror up to the social and political situation in Britain, with particular reference to left-wing politics in the 1980s for the first three books. For example, Adrian's parents got divorced at a time when that was comparatively rare in Britain. His mother became feminist and briefly joined the Greenham Common campaigners. Pandora and her parents were part of an intellectualised and left-wing middle-class that attempted to embrace the working class, and which was only just becoming apparent at the time.

All of this was made absurd, and therefore humorous, because it was set in the context of a very ordinary working-class household in the middle of Britain (quite literally middle Britain).

The two most recent books are slightly different from the first three "classic" books, because they show Adrian as an adult in a different environment. They are more focussed on political satire, mainly examining New Labour, and in particular the Iraq war.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Biography

Adrian Albert Mole was born on 2 April 1967 to George Alfred Mole and Pauline Monica Mole. They share their house in Leicester (they later move to Ashby-de-la-Zouch) with their dog, only ever referred to as "the dog" (and, when eventually replaced, "the new dog"), and later with Adrian's sister, Rosie Germaine Mole, who was born on November 11th 1982. Adrian's paternal grandmother Edna May Mole (referred to simply as Grandma) is also prominent in many of his diary entries.

[edit] Family

Adrian's parents Pauline and George are somewhat dysfunctional. Both are working class characters with limited scope who drink and smoke a lot. They are both perpetually unemployed, and have separated, divorced and remarried multiple times. He has a sister called Rosie Mole who is very rebellious and "street", in total contrast to Adrian. Although their personalities are practically opposite to each other, Rosie and Adrian enjoy a close relationship as siblings, and Adrian often feels that she is the only member of the Mole family who truly understands him.

Pauline first leaves George for their neighbour, Mr. Lucas; George fathers a second son named Brett by a lover called Doreen Slater; both are soon forgotten. Pauline temporarily marries her much younger lodger Martin Muffet, who eventually leaves her for Adrian's girlfriend Bianca Dartington, giving Adrian and his mother a shared heartbreak. Later, George and Pauline effect a partner swap with Ivan and Tania Braithwaite, only to reunite after Ivan's untimely death.

In the course of his life, Adrian fathers three children.

  • Glenn Bott-Mole, son of Sharon Bott, once a voluptuous school friend Adrian fancied, but who developed into an intellectually challenged woman.
  • William (Wole) Mole, the son of his first wife JoJo, from Nigeria. In the most recent book Glenn is fighting in the Iraq war and William has gone back to Nigeria to live with his mother, whom Adrian divorced due to his intolerance of her 'exhibitionist' sneezing and claims of her inability to cook (although she is said to cook Nigerian food superbly), and also the fact that she was taller than him. He has also changed his Christian name from William to Wole to make it sound more African. (When he tells Adrian about this, he concludes his son is going to tire soon of his new name, Wole Mole. This is purely a visual joke, as Wole and Mole do not rhyme; Wole is pronounced wol-eh.)
  • Gracie Mole, the daughter of his current partner Daisy Flowers, a smart, good-looking woman with whom he enjoys great mutual attraction.

[edit] Friends

  • Pandora Braithwaite is the love of Adrian's life. She is beautiful and intelligent, and in the first books they are happy together. In the later books she shuns Adrian in favour of, by turns, physically and intellectually powerful men, though he remains attached to her. Adrian tends to devote a lot of his diary space to her, whomever she is currently dating (and his various faults and flaws), and pining for their lost love. The smart, polyglot and extremely attractive Pandora becomes a rising star in New Labour under Tony Blair.
  • Bertram 'Bert' Baxter, an old-age pensioner Adrian looks after. Despite the fact that Baxter is filthy, rude, a communist, and has a vicious alsatian, Adrian becomes very fond of him. Bert later marries another pensioner named Queenie, who died in 1982. Bert himself died in 1997, at the grand old age of 105.
  • Nigel Hetherington is Adrian's on-and-off best chum who has a somewhat bohemian lifestyle. He is homosexual and becomes blind in the last novel, at least partly reflecting Townsend's own blindness.
  • Barry Kent is a skinhead who initially bullied Adrian and later became a "bad influence" upon him in his teen years. Despite previous racism, at the age of 16 he became a rabid anti-racist. At some point, Adrian discovered that Barry had a natural gift for poetry, which he encouraged him to develop. However, he bitterly regretted this when Barry became not only a successful poet, but author of a hit novel Dork's Diary which revolved around a loser called Aiden Vole (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Adrian Mole books themselves). A lot of humour comes from the fact that Barry Kent, although seemingly ill-educated and rough-natured, succeeds on natural talent, which Adrian Mole clearly lacks.

[edit] Ending

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Townsend has announced that Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction will be the last book of the series due to her poor health. The Adrian Mole universe ends in the following way:

  • Adrian emotionally melts down after the death of Robert Stainforth (Glenn's best friend) in the Iraq War, realizing that the war (which he had supported passionately) was led for bogus reasons, and facing financial ruin. He realizes that he has lived in a dream world and faces the reality.
  • After narrowly escaping bankruptcy, Adrian has a steady job in a bookstore run by Mr. Carlton-Hayes, probably the first employer to make Adrian work efficiently. Although he faces a lifetime of debt service, the job is well-paid enough so that Adrian can pay his creditors and still make an honest living. Carlton-Hayes also strongly hints that he wants him to run the shop after he has retired.
  • Adrian begins a serious relationship (eventually leading to marriage, although the actual wedding is not chronicled) with Daisy Flowers, his secret love of most of the book, and fathers a daughter called Gracie. They enjoy a happy, fulfilling relationship.
  • His father, who has become wheelchair-bound, his mother and Animal (his real name), who has assisted them in converting two pigsties into living quarters (one of which Adrian, Daisy and Gracie live in at the end of the book) live together in a consensual menage a trois.
  • Pandora continues working as a (albeit blackballed) politician, and says that despite their insurmountable differences, she still likes Adrian very much. After all these years, he is the only person she can talk to freely. In her biography Out of the Box, she describes him as her first romantic interest and gives him an unflattering, but honest account on his shortcomings.
  • In the last entry, Adrian concludes that keeping a diary is only for unhappy people.

As the diary ends, the whole decades-spanning Mole Saga comes to an imperfect, but optimistic conclusion.

[edit] List of books featuring Adrian Mole

NOTE: 'Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians' was published as a bonus in 'Adrian Mole: The Lost Years'.

NOTE: Most publications of the Adrian Mole series are now released in compilations. Ex: 1 & 2 are now joined in one book. Ex2: 'Adrian Mole: The Lost Years' is a compilation of The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole and Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years. Ex3: 'Adrian Mole From Minor to Major' is a compilation of the first three books.

[edit] Adrian Mole in other media

  • The books spawned two TV series, originally between 1985 and 1987 with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ that was made by Thames Television for the ITV network and had Gian Sammarco as Adrian Mole with Julie Walters and latterly Lulu playing his mother Pauline Mole in the 1985 and 1987 series respectively. More recently in 2001 "Adrian Mole: the Cappuccino Years" starring Stephen Mangan as Adrian Mole, Alison Steadman as Pauline Mole and Helen Baxendale as Pandora Braithwaite was shown on BBC One.
  • The character also featured in several radio series, such as Pirate Radio Four.
  • A play was written by Sue Townsend of the first book - 'The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾'. The play included songs by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley.
  • The first two books were also adapted into computer adventure games by Level 9 Computing in the 1980s.
  • Fortress Entertainment producers Brett Forbes and Patrick Rizzotti and Ruby Films producer Alison Owen have partnered to produce the feature film entitled The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole based on the first books in the series.
  • Guardian Archive, entitled Diary of a Provincial Man. A less well-known chapter of Adrian's life was chronicled in a weekly column of The Guardian newspaper, which ran from December 1999[1] to November 2001[2]. Set contemporarily at the time, it fills in two of the gap years between Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years and Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Adrian spends this period living on a crime-ridden council estate with his sons Glenn and William, has an on-off romance with a woman named Pamela Pigg, and temporarily works in a lay-by trailer cafe. He befriends yet another pensioner who subsequently dies, and has a brief infatuation with his male therapist (which he insists is wholly spiritual, not homosexual). The series includes comment on the petrol crisis of 2000[[3]], the 9/11 bombings[[4]] and the War on Terrorism. Adrian's illegitimate half-brother Brett Mole, born on 5 August 1982, is reintroduced as a 19 year-old; he is an athletic, popular, confident, promiscuous, super-intelligent Oxford undergraduate, already a published poet and TV documentarian - in short, the person Adrian always wanted to be. Brett's mediocre older sibling soon comes to regard him with envious loathing.

Although the period on a sink council estate is referred to briefly in The Cappuccino Years, the events of Diary of a Provincial Man are perhaps not strictly canonical. For example, Adrian later states that he can count the women he has had carnal knowledge of "on the fingers of one hand" [also in The Cappuccino Years]. Those women would be: Sharon Bott, Bianca Dartington, JoJo Mole and Marigold and Daisy Flowers. Inserting Pamela Pigg into this list makes six - more than the fingers of one hand, unless Adrian has a polydactyl deformity. The third wedding of Adrian's parents is described, but no mention is made of Ivan Braithwaite dying. Also, Adrian's ex-wife JoJo e-mails him from Nigeria and names her new husband as one Colonel Ephat Mapfumo. In The Cappuccino Years, her husband's name is Wole; and Brett is again forgotten.

At least 90 intallments of Diary of a Provincial Man have been made available online in the Guardian Archive website. These installments, however, are not indexed or linked together; a comprehensive web search is needed to locate them all. Hopefully, the whole of this Guardian column series will yet be collected and published in novel form.

[edit] Chronological Inconsistencies

There are two major temporal contradictions running through the life of Adrian Mole. The first regards his own age.

The original novel, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, has his 14th birthday as April 2, 1981, placing his birth in 1967. This is confirmed in the second novel, Growing Pains, which has Adrian's 16th birthday 2 months before the general election of June 9, 1983. The collection From Minor to Major, stated to chronicle the first 10 years of his diaries, ends on January 1st 1991: thus confirming the start of the first book as January 1, 1981 and Adrian's year of birth as 1967. Howevever, the intermediate book True Confessions begins at Christmas 1984, when Adrian states he is 16 years and 8 months old - which would mean he was born in 1968, not 67. In a following chapter set in June 1988, his age is 20 years, 2 months (and he is having his first sexual relationship, with Sharon Botts - later renamed Bott), also consistent with a 1968 birth.

The Wilderness Years, immediately following From Minor to Major, has Adrian's 24th birthday in 1991 - so it seems that he was, after all, born in 1967! The next novel, The Cappuccino Years, is consistent with this, beginning at the 1997 general election and giving Adrian's age as 30. Likewise, in the weekly newspaper serial Diary of a Provincial Man, Adrian has his 33rd birthday in the year 2000.

BUT!! The final novel, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, begins in late 2002 and makes our hero only 34! In fact, on his birthday in 2003, he pointedly bemoans his turning 35 as the beginning of middle age... so, somehow, he was once again born in 1968.

The second, more glaring error is the age of Adrian's older son, Glenn Bott-Mole. According to the final chapter of From Minor to Major, Glenn's mother, Sharon Bott (not Botts), was 3 months pregnant with him in July 1989. The baby should, therefore, be born around January 1990. On Christmas Eve 1990 Adrian meets Glenn for the first time, describing him as "a strange-looking moon-headed toddler."

The boy is not medically confirmed as Adrian's son until The Cappuccino Years, set in 1997... yet he is now, amazingly, 12 years old! Surely, he should only be 7? Those 5 years of premature ageing would require that Adrian's relationship with Sharon be retconned back four years to 1984! This would make Adrian and Sharon 17 when they conceived Glenn (they were in the same year at school so are the same age). Not only that, but Glenn's 13th birthday falls in April of 1998, not January. The final word comes from The Weapons of Mass Destruction, where Glenn is 17 and has just joined the Army in 2002. This concurs with his age in the previous book — although his father's age has been quietly reduced by a year.

Needless to say, the Adrian Mole universe is not exactly the same universe we readers inhabit. In our real world there is no Pandora Braithwaite MP, no famous poet and novelist named Barry Kent, no Nigerian tribal princess named JoJo. The inconsistencies could therefore be explained by placing the various Mole books in slightly different universes from each other: an excuse originated by Arthur C. Clarke in his preface for 2061: Odyssey Three, to explain multiple discontinuities with previous books in the same series.

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