[spellbanisher]

I loved this line near the end of chapter 19: "He gave her a sense of deities reconciled, a feeling that, in gaining the man she loved, she would gain something for the whole world." This especially jumped out at me considering how much Mr. Emerson seemed invested in Lucy's relationship with George, how Mr. Emerson seemed to be living vicariously through them, as if them getting together would right something or alleviate some regret in his own life. George and Lucy getting together is a victory for humanity, a breaking free of social conventions, a declaration that it is good and right for people to go after what they desire, for people to connect to each other as individuals and not as representatives of an institution, community, or ideal. By getting together they had transcended artificial barriers and had become gods themselves.

The next line I thought was also quite powerful: "He had robbed the body of its taint, the world's taunts of their sting; he had shown her the holiness of direct desire." It is fitting after this line that the next chapter would be called "The End of the Middle Ages." It seems to indicate something very important about Forster's concept of humanity, time, and history. Despite all the material advances of civilization, humanity still had not advanced. People were still oppressed, if not by poverty then by shame, social convention, and useless self-denial. The Middle Ages was an era where the individual was repressed, where the body was considered the source of all evil, the embodiment of depravity and fallenness. Technology had not changed this mindset; in fact, the wealthier people became, the more they had to lose. People had to marry for class, or status, for wealth, but not for love, but not who they really wanted to. They had to act according to etiquette or social propriety, talk certain ways, dress certain ways, belief certain things, do anything but what they themselves wanted to do. What mattered was the rules, the status quo. History thus is not a continual line upwards into the future. It is a condition of fallenness and redemption, but the fallenness is not sin and the redemption is not religion.

The Ancient Greeks, at least in the minds of the modern man, were a passionate people, a people who embraced the pleasures and desires of the flesh. The Middle Ages had been a great fall from this condition, and material advancement had failed to redeem the soul. The middle ages does not end with communities or states or families; the middle ends only in the hearts of individuals, individuals who decide to love other because, as Mr. Emerson says, "love is eternal." All else was a muddle as Mr. Emerson put it, or a waste, as Lucy put it, "Wasted plans, wasted money, wasted love." History, progress, is not a forward march; it is a return to the mythological past, a past not consisting of invention, but of passion and human feeling unencumbered by the baggage of time.