Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
...A related issue is the physical nature of her marriage to Henry. When reading it, I thought it was merely that she was unfulfilled physically; however, I saw in some brief plot description that Henry was in fact impotent. Did I miss that? Because of course if the marriage hadn't been consummated, it was invalid on that basis, also.
|
Just going back to your question about impotence, the plot description was incorrect. But they hadn’t been intimate since Sarah met Maurice, seven years before. Just before she dies, Sarah writes to Maurice in her diary, recounting a discussion she had with the Priest:
”I’m not really married to Henry any more. We don’t sleep together - not since the first year with you. And it wasn’t really a marriage, I said (to the Priest), you couldn’t call a registry office a wedding. I asked him couldn’t I be a Catholic and marry you?.....Every time I asked him a question I had such hope........No,no,no, he said, I couldn’t marry you, I couldn’t go on seeing you, not if I was going to be a Catholic.”
And to my earlier point about sacrifice and suffering, Sarah says in a bit later in the same passage, after storming out of her meeting with the Priest:
”I slammed the door to show what I thought of priests. They are between us and God, I thought; God has more mercy, and then I came out of the church and saw the crucifix they have there, and I thought, of course he’s got mercy, only it’s such an odd sort of mercy, it sometimes looks like punishment. ...I wish I wasn’t as strong as a horse. I don’t want to live without you.......But what’s the good, Maurice? I believe there’s a God.......I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell in love. I’ve never loved before as I love you, and I’ve never believed in anything before as I believe now.......When you came in at the door with blood on your face, I became sure. Once and for all. ....I fought belief for longer than I fought love, but I haven’t any fight left........I pray to God He won’t keep me alive like this”
That was the end of the diary - she died. She doesn’t leave Maurice because she no longer needs him, or feels internally that it isn’t right; only that it’s forbidden. So her belief didn’t provide her with any comfort at the end; she felt she was in an impossible situation and maybe gave up.
I think Green makes her religious experience sound like a fatal affliction. Who knows, maybe he felt their suffering was a just response to the sin of their affair? Or maybe the organizing principle of Greene’s theology is suffering and sacrifice.
PS. I hope this doesn’t sound argumentative; I’m partly just puzzling it out for myself. But it is interesting that as a group, we can experience the same book so differently. I wonder if it’s just down to differences in our temperaments?