Quote:
Originally Posted by Victoria
Playing Devil’s Advocate to deliberately undermine religious experience is an interesting perspective - I need to try it on for a while. But deliberate or just misguided, to me Greene sells religious experience woefully short by reducing it, like all the relationships in the book, to just a series of transactions. All sacrifice, no enrichment, no joy. Just tick the right boxes and you’re saved, but from what and to what?
In the same way, he equates sex with love - as though that’s all love is. Maurice didn’t love Sarah; he wanted to possess her. No tenderness, no attentiveness. He didn’t even notice that she was ill. To me, there was very little heartfelt depth in the book. And perhaps you’re right - that’s exactly what Greene wanted to portray. If so what was the point of the book - lives of quiet desperation?
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You've given me a lot to think about here. This wasn't my reaction, not at all, but I also can't say you're wrong in your interpretation, either. I'll have to come back to this.
But off the top, I will say that while I thought Maurice was explicitly trying to reduce the value and integrity of religious experience, I didn't feel as if it were joyless for Sarah. My sense was that it made her life richer and deeper, that she gave up on her love with Maurice in exchange for a greater love, a greater experience. Certainly it was worth it to her. There was no sense that she was just in it for her eternal salvation, or at least I didn't get that sense. It made her life more intensely realized in the present.