I didn’t think I could love a novel more than I loved The Priory by Dorothy Whipple, which I enthused about here. But then I read Someone at a Distance
(also by Dorothy Whipple), and I found I loved it even more. Although its end papers are not quite so pretty as The Priory. No matter. At this point it’s hard to know who I love more: Dorothy Whipple for writing such enthralling novels, Persephone Books for dragging them out of obscurity and publishing them or Bee for recommending them. Whichever way I am awarding Extra Cake to Bee since every novel and every film she recommends to me is a total winner. I’m going to give up any notion of freewill and just copy her reading/watching habits. It’s just easier in the long run. Although I am resisting Glee. I am totally unconvinced on that score (admittedly on the basis of a 10 second clip).
I digress…
Back to Someone at a Distance which is the tale of the rapid and unexpected decline of a long, happy and strong marriage. It’s shocking and tragic in equal measures, beautifully constructed and elegantly written. It’s shorter than The Priory and I made a real effort to slow down and appreciate the writing, rather than just gallop through it. It was quite a test to do so as the story is so deliciously gripping, I needed to get through it to find out what happened in the end. I won’t spoil it for you.
But, whilst attempting to rein myself in, one passage kind of smacked me between the eyes. I read it. I re-read it. I puzzled over it and eventually I marked the page and moved on. But I have kept coming back to it and I’ve still not really got the measure of it. So what do you think?
“A happily married woman acquires the habit of referring everything to, discussing everything with, her husband. Even the smallest of things. Like bad coal, for instance. To be able to say, sitting across the hearth from him in the evening: “Isn’t this coal bad?” and to hear him say, looking up from his book at the fire: “Awful. Sheer slate,” is to have something comfortable made out of bad coal.
A loved husband is the companion of companions, the supreme sharer, and a happy wife often sounds trivial when she is really sampling and enjoying their mutual and unique confidence. But in doing it, she largely loses her power of independent decision and action. She either brings her husband round to her way of thinking or goes over to his, and mostly she doesn’t know or care which it is.”
So, first paragraph is fine…fairly well trodden ground…the ease of familiarity, the comfort of shared history…nothing new or remarkable there. But the second paragraph is quite a kick in the teeth for equality and emancipation, surely? I keep picking over it: it’s a ‘loved husband’, not a loving husband…’mostly she doesn’t know or care which it is’…I think it’s the ‘doesn’t know’ part that bothers me, the implication that the wife is as stupid as she is subjugated. Juxtapose that against, ‘sounds trivial when she is really…enjoying their mutual and unique confidence’…it’s quite a contrast. I really can’t get comfortable with it because Whipple’s use of the third person makes this paragraph about ALL women, not just the wife at the centre of the drama. It’s quite a damning statement, or am I missing some subtlety? The novel was written in 1953 and is set in, at a guess, the 30s.
I haven’t got any answers, I’m just sharing the sense of unease that this passage has left me with – and a hope that someone else can shed some light. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, but that paragraph is still niggling at me.
All of which got me thinking about marriage generally and, naturally, about my marriage. There we are, up there in that photo, me and MrSpud on our wedding day. Some of us are thinner than we are now, others are considerably chubbier (ahem that’s YOU MrSpud with your pre-wedding comfort eating…although what’s with the nose? Did your nose comfort eat too? How puzzling…).
Initially I chewed over the ‘comfortable’ element of any long relationship…tick, that is present and I see that as a good thing now. I’m all done with that “giddy” stuff. Intoxicating at first but really very tiresome for an extended period since it spells ‘temporary’ to me. Giddy is out…comfortable is in.
But ‘losing power and independent thought’ and being a ‘happy wife’. Oh no. No no no. I am not at all comfortable with that..not one bit. I’d rather be giddy than a ‘happy wife’. In my unrest, I even sought out our wedding vows to see what I’d signed up for. And I did, literally, sign up for them since I wrote them. Presumably MrSpud must have glanced at them at some point before whimpering in agreement to them during the torture session ceremony?
Here’s a few bits:
“Marriage is not an easy path. It requires devotion, the ability to listen, the wisdom to know when we are wrong, and the strength to put things right. Above all, it requires unending love, a willingness by both partners to share themselves and their experiences with each other, and a willingness to accept each other for who they are.
Marriage requires closeness and distance – enough closeness for a couple to grow together, and enough distance to allow each partner to be an individual. A good partner in such a marriage will be loving, caring and, above all, a best friend.
Spud and MrSpud, will you seek to have a loving marriage, allowing it and each other to change and develop, supporting each other in happiness and sorrow, sickness and in health and remaining true to each other for the rest of your days? (We will)
Will you seek to live together as equal and different individuals, and to recognise and accept each others’ strengths and weaknesses? (We will)
Will to seek to trust the ebbs and flows of your love, to offer your love without conditions, having faith that it will always return, and understanding that its nature may change? (We will)
Will you seek always to learn from your shared experiences, and to build from them a full and caring friendship based on trust and on respect? (We will)”
Re-reading the above, I’m a little bit taken aback to be honest. Five years in to our marriage I think my our stance was very sensible…with an emphasis on the changing nature of love and relationships, of the need for us to be individuals before can be a partners and the fundamental importance of our friendship as a basis for a happy marriage. All these elements seem very wise at this point, but must have seemed a bit gloomy to our wedding guests? Although many of them had been present at my first marriage (cough cough) so perhaps they were reassured that I’d taken a more pragmatic approach second time around.
I agree that a ‘loved husband is the companion of companions’ but would add that surely a ‘loved wife’ is just the same? But I hope and pray that neither me, nor MrSpud, have lost our ‘independent power of action or decision’ since that’s what keeps us who we are, and protects that which brought us together in the first place (well, that and the power of internet dating). We are together because of who we are, not just what we have become. What we have become, and the children we have brought along for the ride, are a very happy product of us as individuals. Together we are strong, and our children bind us together even further.But we are only together because of who we were, are still are, in the first place.
Here endeth the lesson on marriage. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dorothy Whipple!
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