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Posted by Cassia on November 04, 1997 at 15:35:32:


In response to Quiet, written by Karen R on November 03, 1997 at 15:01:37

]

Having conversation, real conversation, that people like Christabel and Randolph and Roland and Maud embark upon, is frightening to them because it represents the real, the physical--not the romantic idealization of love. ("Maud and Roland...were nervous of real conversation." p. 264) When they spend their day at the Boggle Hole, "the moment had come for a personal conversation. Both felt this; both were mostly willing, but inhibited." (p.293) Forgive me, but it will expose the core of their beings and encroach upon their private space--their freedom.


They were also fighting there preconception of each other. For Roland people like Maud aren't quite real despite their noisy hunting and landscape doniatiing houses. Maud has a similar problem in that she's made her world so small that Roland, a semi-employed postgrad, has no place in it. To speak would ruin their mutual image of wanting and having nothing. The clean, white beds, unruffled by want or need, serene in a clean, white room. To dream the impossible dream. To converse is to exchange, to express, reinforce wants and needs. No wonder these two idealists couldn't find anything to say beyond non-sequetors, the place keepers of dialougue.


] Interesting point though, when their relationship is about to take a giant step in the direction of intimacy, it doesn't and it doesn't, with parallel references to Christabel and Ash. Maud asks if he will be sorry to go back. Roland doesn't answer, but asks if she will. Her response is "This is very good bread (avoiding subject), but then "I have the impression both of us will be sorry." Christabel says the same to Ash on their way up to Yorkshire, but after her first night with him, says that she can't regret it because this is where fate was leading her. It is the "midpoint" of her life a (B.C./A.D. view)

I love that Byatt kept the passion with the Victorians. I think she may feel that they in their relative innocence were much more cpable of passion than we are. Passion had become a tired, dingy emotion with unpleasant associations for Maud and Roland. Can they ever get back the purity? Byatt doesn't tell us.


It may be that the clean beds represent the private spaces we all create for ourselves. The one area where no one can encrouch. Here we can be still because there is nothing to need or want or do. One can be and being is enough. Repite called from deep within the mind.

There Karen, fait accompli.



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