Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Summary of Part Two Chapter One

Summary:
At the lounge of the hotel, Major Perowne is trying to persuade Sylvia to leave her bedroom door unlocked that night. “He had been saying that Sylvia had ruined his life…for her he might have married some pure young thing” (Ford, 379). As Perowne begs unremittingly, Tietjens walks into the hotel with a fixed face and decides not to embarrass Sylvia by approaching her. “And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog…” (Ford, 381). Christopher’s entrance intimidates Perowne, who has committed adultery with Sylvia. While Perowne continues to whine like an oaf, Sylvia sets her eyes on Christopher’s distant reflection in the mirror. Her mind is now completely occupied by thoughts about Christopher, and how he “would know perfectly well that those petty frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least in her note; so he would know, too, that each of them was just a try-on” (Ford, 384). Although she “had certainly meant their parting to be for good” (Ford, 385) before she went to France with Perowne, Sylvia now sees that she will reunite with her husband. Yet, the existence of Valentine Wannop casts a shadow of fret over her joy. Initially, Sylvia decided to have an affair with Perowne, because she believes that “for your wife to throw you over for an attractive man is naturally humiliating, but that she should leave you publicly for a man of hardly any intelligence at all, you priding yourself on your brains, must be nearly as mortifying a thing as can happen to you” (Ford, 390). She wishes to bring Christopher excruciating agony and pain, but soon regrets. Perowne, a clod that suffered as a child from his mother’s lack of proper care, becomes “fantastically murderous” (Ford, 392) when Sylvia tries to leave him. Moreover, beside Christopher, “other men simply did not seem ever to have grown up” (Ford, 389). Gradually, the pleasure derived from cheating on Christopher wears out. “She beings to miss Christopher” (Ford, 390), and understand how Father Consett had been right. So, with the intent to return to her husband, she writes to her husband and “removes from the letter any possible trace of emotion” (Ford, 393). Now, Sylvia decides that she is “going to investigate” (Ford 397) Christopher’s relationship with Valentine. She imagines that “This whole war was an agapemone….You went to war when you desired to rape innumerable women. It was what war was for….All these men, crowded in this narrow space….” (Ford, 387).
Sylvia’s Desire to Conquer Men:
Sylvia is in love with power rather than sex. With her extraordinary beauty, she is able to conquer men. Paradoxically, the men she had conquered turned out to be not worth conquering. While men become madly in love with her, she begins to despite these men and grow cold towards them. She is “a crule-looking woman with a distant smile…some vampire…La belle Dame sans Merci” (386). She realizes that Christopher is the only men worth conquering. “As beside him, other men simply did not seem ever to have grown up” (Ford, 389). “Men, at any rate, never fulfilled expectations” (Ford, 394). Yet, she can never conquer Christopher, because he will always remain morally superior to her. She tries to bring Tietjens pain by having an affair with “a man of hardly any intelligence at all” (Ford. 390). She “felt the most painful emotion of joyful hatred that had visited her when she had first thought of going off with Perowne” (Ford, 389). Sylvia says, “I swear I’ll make his wooden face wince yet” (Ford, 381). By remaining morally superior to her, Tietjens is waging war against Sylvia. Sex is her weapon, or her means to reach an end.
Freudian universal sexual drive:
“This whole war was an agapemone…you went to war when you desired to rape innumerable women. It was what war was for….All these men, crowded in this narrow space…” (Ford, 397). Ford suggests that there is a sexual drive behind the war. When universal sexual drive initiates a war, there will be destruction leading to the break down of boundaries separating Ego, super-ego, and id.
Sylvia’s Lack of Motherhood:
Sylvia does not care about Michael. Unlike other mothers, she occupies her mind with conquering men rather than her son. She thinks about her child only when she is bored by Perowne’s stupidity. After the long journey across half France by miserable train, she “found herself wanting to see her child, whom she imagined herself to hate, as having been the cause of all her misfortunes…” (Ford, 393). Also, when she finds out that Perowne’s mother “to give him a salutary lesson, had given so much publicity to the affair that he had become afflicted with a permanent bent towards shyness that rendered him by turns very mistrustful of himself or very boastful and, although he repressed manifestations of either tendency towards the outside world, the continual repression rendered him almost in-capable of any vigorous thought or action…” (Ford, 390), she could not careless. It simply is not her business. When she sees a man weak and needs help, instead of showing her motherly virtue inherent in her nature, “she was by no means prepared to readjust other women’s hopeless maternal misfits” (Ford, 390). Nurturing and mothering are not the purpose of her life.
Tietjens’ Toryism:
Tietjens walks into the hotel, and sees Sylvia talking to Perowne. Instead of walking up to Sylvia, Tietjens walks away and decides not to embarrass her. Then, Sylvia says “Damn his chivalry!...Oh, God damn his chivalry!” She knew what was going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it to her to come to him if she wished” (Ford, 381).
Sylvia's Sadistic Nature:
When Tietjens walked into the hotel, “his face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things and created beings, into a world too distant for them to enter. And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog…” (Ford, 381).

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