Doomed Love Theme Analysis

She seems very young in the picture, too young, though she hadn’t considered herself too young at the time. He’s smiling too—the whiteness of his teeth shows up like a scratched match flaring—but he’s holding up his hand, as if to fend off in play, or else to protect himself from the camera, from the person who must be there, taking the picture; or else to protect himself from those in the future who might be looking at him, who might be looking at him though the square, lighted window of glazed paper. As if to protect himself from her. As if to protect her.

I tell you the stories I’m good at, he says. Also the ones you’ll believe. You wouldn’t believe sweet nothings, would you?

No. I wouldn’t believe them.

She wasn’t married, she was married off, said Reenie, rolling out the gingersnaps. The family arranged it. That’s what was done in such families, and who’s to say it was any worse or better than choosing for yourself? In any case, Adelia Montfort did her duty, and lucky to have the chance, as she was getting long in the tooth—she must have been twenty-three, which was counted as over the hill in those days.

When I was the age for it—thirteen, fourteen—I used to romanticize Adelia. I would gaze out of my window at night, over the lawns and the moon-silvered beds of ornamentals, and see her trailing wistfully through the grounds in a white lace tea gown. I gave her a languorous, world-weary, faintly mocking smile. Soon I added a lover. She would meet this lover outside the conservatory, which by that time was neglected—my father had no interested in steam-heated orange trees—but I restored it in my mind, and it supplied it with hothouse flowers […]

In reality the chances of Adelia having had a lover were nil. The town was too small, its morals too provincial, she had too far to fall. She wasn’t a fool. Also she had no money of her own.

And then, after the wedding, there was the war. Love, then marriage, then catastrophe. In Reenie’s version, it seemed inevitable.

What would that be like—to long, to yearn for one who is right there before your eyes, day in and day out? I’ll never know.

Like many peoples, ancient and modern, the Zycronians are afraid of virgins, dead ones especially. Women betrayed in love who have died unmarried are driven to seek in death what they’ve so unfortunately missed out on in life.

I feel sorry for him. I think he’s only doing the best he can.

I think we need another drink. How about it?

I bet you’re going to kill him off. You have that glint.

In all justice he’d deserve it. I think he’s a bastard, myself. But kings have to be, don’t they? Survival of the fittest and so forth. Weak to the wall.

You don’t really believe that.

You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn’t he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn’t know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they’re infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven’t said he didn’t kill her afterwards. As I’ve pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested.

But it’s too good to be true, said Will. It must be a trap. It may even be some devilish mind-device of the Xenorians, to keep us from being in the war. It’s Paradise, but we can’t get out of it. And anything you can’t get out of is Hell.

But this isn’t Hell. It’s happiness, said one of the Peach Women who was materializing from the branch of a nearby tree. There’s nowhere to go from here. Relax. Enjoy yourselves. You’ll get used to it.

And that’s the end of the story.

That’s it? She says. You’re going to keep those two men cooped up in there forever?

I did what you wanted. You wanted happiness.

Laura herself didn’t know it, of course. She had no thought of playing the romantic heroine. She became that only later, in the frame of her own outcome and thus in the minds of her admirers. In the course of daily life she was frequently irritating, like anyone. Or dull. Or joyful, she could be that as well: given the right conditions, the secret of which was known only to her, she could drift off into a kind of rapture.

Following the death of Norval, Laura has (reluctantly) been living with Richard, Winifred, and Iris in Toronto, where she has caused a great deal of trouble. Recently, Winifred has complained to Iris that Laura has been expressing outlandish ideas, such as saying that love is more important than marriage. When Iris confronts Laura about this in private, Laura replies with this quotation. From a contemporary perspective, it may seem obvious that Laura’s argument is at least partly correct. These days, many would argue that love is self-evidently more important than marriage. Furthermore, Laura’s argument about marriage being an “outworn institution” that is more an economic transaction than a sacred bond foreshadows the feminist claims that became popular later in the 20th century.

Significantly, Laura frames her critique of marriage not in a progressive feminist light, but rather in a Christian one. Following Jesus’s tradition of focusing on the principles behind rules rather than the rules themselves, Laura argues that love is what’s important, not marriage. One could argue that Laura’s need to draw on Christianity in order to justify this claim is evidence of the restrictions placed on women and their thought during this era. At the same time, it also obvious that Laura’s faith intensely informs the way she approaches the world—it isn’t just a cover for subversive views.

I was relieved: all might yet be well. Laura was still in town. She would talk to me later.

She has, too, though she tends to repeat herself, as the dead have a habit of doing. They say all the things they said to you in life; but they rarely say anything new.

As for the book, Laura didn’t write a word of it. But you must have known for some time. I wrote it myself, during my long evenings alone, when I was waiting for Alex to come back, and then afterwards, once I knew he wouldn’t. I didn’t think of what I was doing as writing—just writing down. What I remembered, and also what I imagined, which is also the truth.

It was no great leap from that to naming Laura as the author. You might decide it was cowardice that inspired me, or a failure of nerve—I’ve never been fond of spotlights. Or simple prudence: my own name would have guaranteed the loss of Aimee, whom I lost in any case. But on second thought it was merely doing justice, because I can’t say Laura didn’t write a word. Technically that’s accurate, but in another sense—what Laura would have called the spiritual sense—you could say she was my collaborator. The real author was neither one of us: a fist is more than the sum of its fingers.

The photo has been cut; a third of it has been cut off. In the lower left corner there’s a hand, scissored off at the wrist, resting on the grass. It’s the hand of the other one, the one who is always in the picture whether seen or not. The hand that will set things down.