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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Miss Lonelyhearts, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religion and Morality in Modern Society
The Illusion of the American Dream
The Limitations of Love
Isolation and Madness
Summary
Analysis
Miss Lonelyhearts and Mr. Doyle return to Mr. Doyle’s home together, where Mrs. Doyle greets them. Although she admonishes her husband for returning drunk, she puts dinner on the table for the two men. During dinner, Mrs. Doyle gets drunk on wine and highballs and starts to openly wink at Miss Lonelyhearts, which disturbs her husband. They begin to argue. Later, Mrs. Doyle walks in on Miss Lonelyhearts and Mr. Doyle again holding hands, and Miss Lonelyhearts tells her to allow her husband to “conquer” her in bed and screams that “Christ is love.” At Mrs. Doyle’s request, Mr. Doyle leaves to get gin from the store. While he’s gone, she makes sexual advances on Miss Lonelyhearts. Miss Lonelyhearts hits her in the face to get her to stop, then hits her again and again and runs away.
Although Miss Lonelyhearts and Mr. Doyle share an unexpected moment of intimate connection, they’re no longer able to explore this connection once they leave the speakeasy and, in a way, return to the “real world.” Miss Lonelyhearts’s New York again proves itself full of violence and abuse as Mrs. Doyle tries to make sexual advances on Miss Lonelyhearts. Unable to resist the continually immoral nature of his environment, Miss Lonelyhearts again succumbs to an erratic madness—although he proclaims his continued love for Jesus, he also tells Mrs. Doyle to submit to her husband in bed and reacts to her sexual advances with unrestrained violence. As such, Miss Lonelyhearts continues to drift further away from living morally.
Themes
