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Part II
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Son’s Veto, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Class vs. Human Flourishing
Family Duty vs. Desire
Freedom vs. Immobility
Regret
Summary
Analysis
After this encounter, Sophy and Sam become friends again, having conversations whenever Sam passes by the house in his wagon. One day, Sam invites her on a ride through the city. They talk together as they used to when they were young, and Sophy tells Sam how lonely she is and how happy she is with him. As she returns home after the ride, Sophy feels for once that she has something to live for besides her son. Although she feels that there was nothing truly wrong in her ride with Sam, she recognizes that, in terms of social convention, there was something quite wrong about it.
For Sophy, her relationship with Sam represents the freedom that has been denied to her throughout her marriage to Mr. Twycott and during the period of her widowhood. Her lack of independence is often linked with her physical immobility (e.g. the fact that she cannot take walks by herself), but this scene shows it is as much, if not more so, a product of social conventions. On Sam’s country vehicle, she is able to experience a sense of freedom and independence that has never been available to her in her London villa. Sophy has, to some extent, internalized the social values that she is subject to, and so at first, she refuses Sam’s invitation and experiences misgivings as she rides with him. But, ultimately, Sophy dismisses these concerns, because her ride with Sam has made her feel a happiness she has not felt in a long time, in sharp contrast to the loneliness she has felt throughout her widowhood. Still, she recognizes that there is something “conventionally quite wrong” in her ride with Sam, even if she does not believe there was anything truly wrong about it. In recognizing that her relationship with Sam has given her “something to live for in addition to her son,” Sophy is recognizing the possibility of doing something that simply gives her happiness, rather than out of duty to others. Ultimately, however, she will be forced to choose between her desire and her duty.
Themes
Despite these misgivings, Sophy gives into the temptation to go on another ride with Sam. He tells her of his plan to become a greengrocer in their home county. But he isn’t sure of the plan, because, as he admits to her, he isn’t sure whether Sophy would join him. He fears that someone like her, who has been a lady for so long, couldn’t be a wife to a man like him. Yet, he tells her hopefully, if they were to marry, she would only have to keep watch over the shop sometimes while he is gone, and he would allow her to live as respectable a life as ever.
Sam’s indirect marriage proposal to Sophy is tempered by both characters’ awareness of the social differences between them. At first, Sophy agrees with Sam’s humble remark that a woman like Sophy, who has been a “lady” for many years, could never marry him—suggesting that she is well aware that it would result in rejection by upper-class society, including perhaps by her own son. Regardless of these barriers, however, Sam is hopeful that Sophy might accept his proposal and gives her a picture of an idyllic life together in the grocery store.
Themes
Sophy responds that if she only had herself to think about, she would marry him, even though it would mean losing everything from her first marriage. But it is her son who is holding her back from re-marrying. She feels that her son isn’t really her own, considering how much more highly educated he is than her. She feels as if she is simply holding him “in trust” for her dead husband, whose son he truly is. Sam assures her that she has the right to remarry, and it is her son who is the child, not her; but Sophy asks him to give her time to think. Sam accepts this, but she remains deeply conflicted.
Although Sophy is well aware of the consequences if she marries Sam—including losing all the wealth and property left to her by Mr. Twycott—this is not truly what holds her back from accepting Sam’s marriage proposal. Rather, she is more concerned with the effects on her relationship with her son, who she knows will disapprove of the remarriage. This shows, again, Sophy’s relative lack of concern for material wealth or social status, and her tendency to value her relationships with other people above all. Now, she is presented with a choice between her relationship to her son, whom she is bound to by duty but who gives her nothing but grief, and her relationship to Sam, who holds out the promise of freedom and happiness. The fact that Sophy does not feel that her son is truly “hers” shows the gulf that has been created between the two characters by the barriers of social class.
Themes
Sophy feels unable to tell her son Randolph of her desire to marry Sam, doubting that he would ever tolerate the idea of the remarriage, or that she could ever defy his wishes. At a cricket match, she tries to work up the courage to tell him, but she loses her nerve—she worries that the contrast between the wealth and spectacle of the game and its audience, and the news she has to tell him, will be too severe. She reflects on how her son has grown to care only about elite society, and she thinks of how happy their life would be if he did not care exclusively about that world.
The scene at the cricket-match demonstrates the distance that Sophy feels between herself and the upper-class society that surrounds her. Randolph belongs to that world much more than she does, while she, a “poor mother,” is excluded from it. She observes how much happier both she and Randolph would be if he had not cared so exclusively about that world of high society. This suggests the damaging effect that these upper-class social values have had on Randolph himself, as well as on the relationship between Sophy and Randolph. The difficulty that Sophy has in telling Randolph of her plans to marry Sam shows the extent of her internal conflict between her sense of duty to her son (and her fear of further rejection by him) and her desire for a happier life with Sam.
Themes
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Later, when they are alone in their house, Sophy tells Randolph that she is thinking of marrying again. She assures him that the marriage would not take place for a while, after he is living independently of her. At first, Randolph thinks of this as a reasonable prospect and asks who she has in mind. Her hesitation stirs a doubt in his mind, and he asks her whether his new father-in-law will be a gentleman. Reluctantly, she tells him that he would not consider her new husband a gentleman; his social status is as hers was before she married Mr. Twycott. Then she tells him the whole story of her relationship with Sam.
Randolph’s initial reaction—accepting the possibility of his mother’s remarriage as a reasonable prospect—shows that the problem, as he sees it, with Sophy’s relationship to Sam is not the mere fact that she is re-marrying after Mr. Twycott’s death, but rather the fact that she would be marrying someone of a lower social class. This, again, demonstrates the superficiality of the social values that Randolph venerates.
Themes
After hearing his mother’s story, Randolph bursts into tears. Sophy tries to comfort him, but he retreats to his room. When Sophy tries to talk to him through the bedroom door, he tells her he is ashamed of her, and that her second marriage would degrade him in the eyes of the entire elite society of England. Distraught by her son’s words, Sophy tells him that she is perhaps in the wrong and will refuse the marriage.
Randolph’s distraught reaction to Sophy’s explanation of Sam’s social class is fundamentally self-centered. He does not care at all about what Sam is like as a person, or about his mother’s happiness, and only worries about the repercussions for his own social ambitions. His reaction also demonstrates the disdain he has for his own mother, whose social class was, after all, the same as Sam’s. Randolph’s identity is closely bound up with his social status as a “gentleman,” and so having a mother as well as a stepfather belonging to a lower social class would be an insurmountable blow to his self-image—this is why he reacts so strongly to his mother’s news. The fact that Sophy insists that she, rather than her son, must be in the wrong shows how much she cares about her son and how pained she is by his distress. It also demonstrates her tendency to subsume her own desires beneath those of other people, in this case her son’s desire for social prestige.
Themes
Soon, Sophy receives a letter from Sam informing her that he has acquired the grocery store and asking if he can visit her. She meets with him, but tells him she cannot yet give him a final answer to his offer.
Sophy continues to put her own happiness, as well as Sam’s, on hold as she tries to reach a resolution with her son.
Themes
Four or five years pass as Sophy tries to persuade Randolph to let her marry Sam. She tells her son that he can obliterate all connections with her once he is ordained as a minister. But Randolph remains adamant, making her swear before a cross not to marry Sam without his consent. He insists that he owes it to his dead father to prevent her from marrying Sam. Sophy swears to obey Randolph, but hopes that one day her son’s heart might soften.
The fact that Sophy is willing to tell her own son that he can “obliterate” her—forget about her and cut all ties—shows how desperate she is for a happier life with Sam, and how close she is to choosing her own desires and happiness above her duty to her son. It also shows how she is perhaps starting to admit to herself that her relationship with her son is damaged beyond saving. Sophy’s decision to comply with her son’s wishes in swearing not to marry Sam shows both her futile hope that somehow her two contradictory desires—for a marriage to Sam, and a good relationship with her son—might still be reconciled, as well as her inability to put her own desires above those of her son’s. In demanding that his mother swear not to marry Sam, Randolph draws upon the authority of religion as well as his duty to his dead father. It is unclear whether Randolph sincerely believes that his refusal to let his mother marry Sam is backed up by religion and family duty, or whether he is simply using these symbols to further manipulate her and shame her into making this promise. Even if he is sincere in his belief that he is simply fulfilling his duty to his father and to religion, he never acknowledges that he might also owe a duty to his mother and her happiness. Unlike Sophy, Randolph only ever recognizes the duties that happen to be convenient for his own desires.
Themes
But Randolph never changes his mind, his social refinement having “ousted his humanity.” Sophy pines away, confined to her house on account of her injured foot, wondering why she shouldn’t marry Sam.
The fact that Randolph never questions his decision to force his mother to swear not to marry Sam shows just how severely the false, petty values of upper-class society have destroyed his capacity for sympathy, including even his love for his own mother. He is as damaged, perhaps even more severely damaged, by this society than Sophy is. Sophy, after all, never truly buys into the false values of this society, even if she is a casualty of her son’s identification with those values. By giving up the possibility of marriage to Sam, Sophy also gives up the possibility of freedom and independence that this relationship had promised, a reality that is expressed symbolically through her worsening foot injury. She feels a regret akin to her earlier regret about marrying Mr. Twycott rather than Sam—although now, instead of an action in the past that she can no longer change, her regret is about a choice in the present that she could change at any moment. It is ultimately not her son’s choice, but her own choice that keeps her from fulfilling her desire for happiness with Sam.
Themes
Four years later, Sophy dies, and Sam, looking on from his grocery store, cries at her funeral procession. From the mourning coach, Randolph, now a priest, looks at Sam with an expression “black as a cloud.”
In this final scene, the narrative perspective shifts, and the narrator describes the characters as if the readers knew nothing about their stories, not even using their names. The narrator never explains the causes of Sophy’s death, but the reader could infer that the stress and sadness from her conflict with her son and her unfulfilled love for Sam were contributing factors. Sam, who looks on from his grocery store, is the only character who displays true grief for Sophy’s passing, showing how sincerely he cared for her. In contrast, Randolph does not seem to be grieving for his mother at all, instead preoccupied by his irrational hatred for Sam. Perhaps Randolph hates Sam for what he sees as his presumption in proposing to marry his mother, and for the inconvenience that Sam has caused to Randolph in his quest for social prestige. Or perhaps Randolph feels an unconscious jealousy of Sam because of Sam’s obvious, openly expressed love for Sophy—a love that Randolph no longer knows how to feel. The ending scene of Sophy’s funeral procession is especially tragic in what it suggests about all the unfulfilled possibilities of Sophy’s life—possibilities that, we now know, will never be achieved.
Themes
