Summer, Part Two

Wow, the second half of this book was definitely more interesting than the first. Before I finished it tonight I didn't think I would really connect with the characters/plot in this book like I did with Sula, but I guess they're somewhat comparable now that I've finished this one. Anyway, the first passage that struck me was this:

"As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longer listening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionate absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling."

Personally, I don't find anything endearing about my boyfriend staring blankly at me while I'm trying to communicate something to him. Yes, I recognize the "romantic" tone that could be associated with this, and Charity goes on to explain it rather well by saying something to the extent of, 'when they're together--- nothing/nobody else mattered'. Which would've been fine and everything, except for his affair with Annabel and everything else he deceived her about. I don't think she knew him long enough to trust this "vacant-but-loving" blankness to his face and take it for true love's spell or whatever. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but the point is, I think this is the first of many instances where Charity begins making excuses for Harney's behavior. Examples:

"It was not that she felt in him any ascendancy of character---there were moments already when she knew she was the stronger---but that all the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim about the central glory of their passion."

"She hardly heard his excuses for being late: in his absence a thousand doubts tormented her, but as soon as he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had come from."

"I want you should marry Annabel Balch if you promised to. I think maybe you were afraid I'd feel too bad about it. I feel I'd rather you acted right."

"He was not trying to evade an importunate claim; he was honestly and contritely struggling between opposing duties."

"Harney had written that she had made it easier for him, and she was glad it was so; she did not want to make things hard."

And on and on... you get the idea. This illustrates that idea of "personal perception" that we discussed in class today; how people twist events and others' personalities in their mind to fit their own idea of the world and how it relates back to them, or how they want it to be. Obviously, we find that Harney was not the person she thought he was by the end of this book, and conversely, neither was Mr. Royall. While Royall played the "villain" and Harney played the "knight in shining armor" throughout this book, I think we come to realize that neither fit very nicely into those categories; both their actions were good and bad, on and off-- just like regular people. I think this also highlights a main point in Sula, where the characters get entangled in their ideas of "right and wrong, black and white", and the solution comes only when they're free of those shackles and free to think in the gray area.

Since I feel like this book focuses on two main relationships (between Charity and Harney, and Charity and Mr. Royall) I chose some passages relating to the second one. There were several instances where Mr. Royall bursts into the story unexpectedly. First:

"There was a fumbling at the padlock and she called out: "Have you slipped the chain?" The door opened, and Mr. Royall walked into the room."

And then when he picked her up as she was coming back from the Mountain, and again when he appears in their hotel room in the middle of the night seated across the room in a chair. Every time this happened, I was filled with fear. Yet every time, he ended up not acting like the monster that I expected him to be. I would cringe each time expecting some kind of highly uncomfortable, incestuous scene about to unfold-- and it never did. Especially in the hotel room after they were married, I was scared to read ahead and find that he would try to "consummate" their marriage later that night. But he never did. He knew what she needed and when, and never failed to provide it; both materialistically and emotionally. While I don't think this makes him the perfect husband, I do think it helped instill a sense of security in Charity. I don't think Mr. Royall or Harney were any kind of perfect, typical "soul mate" match for Charity--- but maybe seeking out that perfection leads us right back to where we started, and maybe it helps us to terms with what we ultimately need-- support, and understanding.

I haven't even mentioned the pregnancy yet. Wow! I kept waiting for her to tell Harney, or Mr. Royall-- somebody--- but she never did. I wonder how that played out? I pictured her coming up with some kind of story to tell Mr. Royall (maybe even eventually try to convince him it was his, if they ever ended up getting intimate shortly after their wedding), but I realized that a main factor of their relationship was that they had grown beyond lying to each other. By the end, I could just as easily picture her admitting the truth about her pregnancy, and Mr. Royall accepting it dutifully, without judgement, just like he had with most everything else. The interesting thing about this story is that she sort of became the girls she looked up to (in Annbel's case) and the girls that she looked down upon (in Julia's case). More evidence that her life didn't turn out perfect or disastrous (black or white) like she expected... but a little bit of both.

And Dr. Merkle is the devil. I never knew privatized health care was this much of a problem even way back when.