I love the scene in the book where Henry's mom tells him she's ashamed of him for "thinking like that," that is, for only thinking of Miss Channing and Mr. Reed and their romance and never once wondering where Mrs. Reed was as they were happily strolling on the beach. At that moment, Henry realizes that his mother has seen the whole story from Mrs. Reed's perspective, and it's an absolute shock to him because he was convinced that there was only one reading of the situation. He whispers, in what struck me as the emotional high point of the book,"I'm sorry, Mother."
Then he writes:
What she did next stunned me with its uncompromising force. "You're all alike, Henry, all you men."
(Honestly, I had a flicker of respect for her just then, bitter as she was, just because most mothers seem to think their sons are the exception and easily excuse their sexist mentality instead of calling them to the mat on it! Not that I think Henry was sexist per se, but it's good for all people to be forced into an awareness of this is how the other half lives).
She stared at me for one long, ghastly moment, then turned and walked away, leaving me in a world that had begun to move again, though differently than it had before, filled with greater complications, a weave of consequences and relations that seemed larger than romance, deeper and more enduring, though still distant from my understanding, a world I'd only just briefly glimpsed, as it were, through my mother's eyes.
It's his moment of maturity, of compassion, of realizing, to paraphrase Hamlet, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
And later, this notion is reinforced when he asks Sarah why Miss Channing and Mr. Reed are such cowards, why they don't just do what they want. And Sarah says, "They aren't cowards" (presumably because it's harder to not give in to personal urges than to let them hold sway).
Then Henry ruminates:
... we have never discovered why, given the brevity of life and the depth of our need and the force of our passions, we do not pursue our own individual happiness with an annihilating zeal, throwing all else to the wind. We only know that we don't, and that all our goodness, our only claim to glory, resides in this inexplicable devotion to things other than ourselves.
So he develops this sense of empathy and the belief that you must consult things other than your own passions as you move through life, which is good, but where did that get him? He gets this advice, makes these discoveries, and what is he left with? Does he abandon passion and romance, in that black-and-white mentality Erin noted? His father instills in him a sense of responsibility that is compassionate but stern, and his mother instills in him a sense more harsh than loving, and he's surrounded by adults in loveless relationships, who seem only in them because of a vow they made ages ago ... What is he supposed to think? That once you commit to someone, even if it turns out to be a bad choice, that you are duty-bound to stay your whole life? That that's what being a "good man" is? And yet it's terrible to be self-centered, too. I can see why he felt paralyzed and afraid to live! There were no role models for him of people who successfully incorporated romance and duty into their lives.
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I was sort of disappointed in Henry's mother then. Like I think a young man with a close but appropriate relationship to "the other woman" might not deserve to be lumped in with all the evils of the male sex. But I would be more inclined to agree that, even if she was a little hard on him, better that than enable him.
"There were no role models for him of people who successfully incorporated romance and duty into their lives."
I'm glad you wrote that, because I think that gets to the bottom of why he clammed up and lived his life out so underwhelmingly. The best choice, from what he learned in traumatic circumstances, was that life would be most successfully navigated by not fully participating.
Yeah, that was a pivotal scene. I thought maybe Henry's mom was a bit hard on him, that she could have used it as more of a teaching moment. But I suppose he learned a lesson anyway.
It was kind of funny to me how invisible his mother was in his life. She seemed pretty unimportant, except as a defender of Mrs. Reed and troublemaker for Miss Channing.
Good point about there being no good role models for Henry. The idea that to be a "good man" you have to honor your commitments until death regardless of your happiness is pretty depressing. Maybe that's a reflection of the time period, too.
I agree with both of you that she was too hard on him, that she could have gently conveyed the same message minus the shame. But she wasn't a gentle person, and shame seemed to be her weapon of choice, whether she was dealing with her teenage son, her husband or another woman.
Still, she was an intriguing character (and — wow! — the mother in our next book has more than a few things in common with her).
What made her so bitter? What made her elevate duty and uprightness so extremely far above joy and romance? I wondered whether she made a cult of duty because in her heart she knew that it was the only thing that bound her husband to her (and, similarly, Mr. Reed to Mrs. Reed). There was no passion, no ardor of any kind. At times it didn't even seem like there was respect or simple friendship. The only thing she could truly lean on was the fact that her husband's sense of duty bound him eternally to her. A sense of shame kept him at her side. That was all. She knew that and exploited it, and someone like Miss Channing, who could hold a lover through many other means besides petty guilt, was her natural enemy in life.
Oh, also interesting that you mentioned the time period.
For some reason, I kept forgetting that this took place in the 1920s! It seemed more like the 1950s to me, with that special brand of moralizing. My mental picture of the car Mrs. Reed would have been driving was of some big boat with tail fins, not some Model T or whatever the heck one would have driven in the mid-1920s!
Did anyone else have the same impression?
I did! I pictured the '50s throughout the book. I had to keep reminding myself it was the '20s. It didn't feel like the '20s at all to me.
I think you're right on about Henry's mom. She clearly had no love or joy in her life. All she had was duty. (Some mothers in loveless marriages become obsessed with their children. She obviously didn't go that route.)
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