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Originally Posted by issybird
Argue away! That's a good part of the fun.
As for your first point, it could be semantics; to me "forbidden" doesn't connote that it's outside of a felt emotion or belief on her part. When she argued about the validity of her marriage with the priest, it's because she in fact did think it would be wrong to leave her marriage, but hoped the priest would overrule her.
I've decided that was the point of the baptism, in fact; her baptism did make her marriage invalid, but no one knew (except her mother, of course, and for whatever reason, she kept her counsel).
Thanks for the reference on when Sarah and Henry stopped sleeping together. For me, that argues the importance of her relationship with Maurice. We know Sarah had engaged in a string of infidelities and that Maurice was the last - that she was weirdly physically faithful to him despite being married and that it was the last, even as she considered a subsequent partner, does tell me it was a deeper relationship than the others.
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Yes, a fair point on the issue of what Sarah felt was ‘forbidden’. She was loyal to her marriage, in her own way, before religion entered the picture. She couldn’t tolerate having Maurice laugh at Henry or demean him in any way.
Good catch that in the eyes of the Catholic Church, the baptism would make her marriage invalid. Probably it had multiple layers of meaning in book. I reacted to it differently, and saw it as an instance where Greene conflates superstition with religious experience. No person can secretly become a Catholic, or a Buddhist or an anything. The person has to ‘know’ / be a participant or it’s without meaning. Otherwise, it just becomes magic.
We can’t know for certain what meaning Greene himself ascribed to the baptism, but he had Maurice ascribe great meaning to it. By the end, he was thoroughly freaked out by the possible miracles, secret baptism, etc ..He was on the run, and likely on the brink of turning around to appease God. But that’s a rather primitive response.
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Originally Posted by issybird
Coming back around to your postscript, I'd say almost the defining characteristic of this group is that our reading preferences are so very different. So perhaps it's not that surprising that we react differently. Certainly it helps me get out of my own tunnel vision.
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I feel that way too. I find myself mulling over what everyone has said, irrespective of whether it accords with my own reading of a book. I find everyones’ perspectives thought provoking. Even if I don’t know what to reply, I learn things from the dialogue. It deepens my appreciation books; especially the ones I didn’t like
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