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Part 4, Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Razor’s Edge, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wisdom and the Meaning of Life
Social Norms and Conformity
Trauma and Self-Destruction
Snobbishness, Social Status, and Cosmopolitanism
Truth and the Problem of Evil
Summary
Analysis
Larry begins coming to the apartment almost every day and meeting Gray for a half hour in a closed room. Larry is trying, he says, to persuade Gray out of having his headaches. One day, Isabel and Somerset discuss Larry. Somerset says that Larry seems somewhat detached when he’s with the group. Isabel asks what might set Larry apart, and Somerset says it might be something as simple as “goodness.” Somerset asks Isabel if she’s still in love with Larry, and Isabel says she’s never loved anyone else in her life. Somerset asks why she married Gray then. “I had to marry somebody,” Isabel says. She says she would never divorce Gray, though. He’s dependent on her and besides, she says, “He’s wonderful in bed.” Somerset and Isabel then talk about how sex and desire play into Isabel’s marriage.
Isabel says straightforwardly that she does not love Gray and that she has only ever loved Larry. When Somerset asks why she married Gray, then, Isabel’s response that she “had to marry somebody” shows how significantly social expectations and conformity influenced her decisions; in some ways, it seems that she chose to be married first and foremost because there was a social expectation that she would be. Her marriage with Gray isn’t without feeling or certain benefits, Isabel explains, but the novel will later argue that Isabel’s lack of love for Gray (and her continued love for Larry) will lead her to harm others.
Themes
