While Bertie Wooster is threatened with marriage in some of the earlier short stories in which he appears, he also faces other kinds of disaster which Jeeves helps him avoid. The emphasis of the plot shifts in "Thank You, Jeeves". Beginning with this novel, Bertie's efforts to avoid marriage become the mainspring of the plot. This essential situation occurs in each of the following Jeeves novels. Bertie's language becomes considerably more formal starting in "Thank You, Jeeves"; this is acknowledged in chapter 4, when Bertie states that his vocabulary has improved due to Jeeves's influence. Another shift starting with "Thank You, Jeeves" is that, unlike many of the short stories, each Jeeves novel is set principally at a country house and the nearby surrounding area, allowing Wodehouse to bring more characters together to create longer, more complex stories.