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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
ETA: Sorry gmw, this crossed with your post, and wasn't meant to be a response to it!
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No problem, we're just keeping the readers of the thread on their toes, just like this book did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
[...] We are dealing here with a man who feels inferior to Sarah, because she is both beautiful and intelligent. He tells us this near the beginning of the book:
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But he obviously did feel desire for Sarah, and so the implication of those quotes is that he felt superior to her, at least at the start. Exactly how he felt later is harder to discern over his own self-obsession - because it seems to me that Maurice gets to the point where Sarah simply isn't relevant to what is going on in his own head; she is a symbol only, as a person she doesn't matter.
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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
His own deep inadequacy leads him to abuse and ill-treat the woman he professes to love. She in turn does not believe herself to be worthy of love - it's the perfect recipe for domestic violence.
Then comes the struggle with belief after the seeming miracle of Maurice's survival. It doesn't matter whether we believe in miracles or not: what matters is how Sarah struggled with the need to keep the vow that she made when she prayed for him to survive.
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Yes, I agree that it doesn't matter whether the miracle was real or not. I also agree that Sarah seemed in great danger of entering a potentially violent or otherwise abusive relationship - and submitting herself fairly willingly to it. (In some respects I see her submission to God as quite similar ... and I think she did too, but obviously with a different interpretation of what is appropriate..)