Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
No doubt our temperaments in part Victoria, and of course whether we enjoy a writer like Greene or not.
Going back to Henry and whether he did love Sarah or not, I think he did love and care for her. The diary entry quoted above implies that it was Sarah who didn’t want a physical relationship with him any more once she got involved with Maurice. He was a gentle man, and wouldn’t have tried to insist on his so-called “conjugal rights”. So he loved her for herself and not for what he could get out of the relationship.
Sarah didn’t want to live and her going out in the rain when she was already sick looks like suicide to me, though no doubt subconscious. She would know it was a sin in the eyes of the church.
ETA: I crossed with you this time issybird, but my iPad must have been on a go slow, looking at the time difference between our posts.
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Sorry, I crossed posts with
gmw and Bookpossum . Signs of a vibrant discussion.
I saw Henry that way too
Bookpossum. I thought Sarah running out into the rain was partly a death wish as well. I also thought she was desperate to escape Maurice’s visit, because she just didn’t have the strength left to resist him again.
The fact he insisted on coming, when she said she was sick and begged him not too, made him partly responsible for her death.
Gmw Thank you - I learn a lot about the craft of writing from your comments. I’ve been pondering what you said earlier about first person narratives being very difficult, because they must tell rather than show, and can come off as self-obsessed. I think that’s very true.
In terms of your current discussion with
Issybird , I’ll just add, quite off topic
, that I think I’m more likely to make an unconscious assumption that the protagonist is revealing things about the author’s personal life, when I read first person narratives. I doubt I’m alone in making that mistake. So, that’s another reason why the format is challenging for an author to pull off. Now back to your previous discussion about author’s independence ....
