What did you make of their affair, and what was David's culpability, if you will? I harbored an idea that he really actually loved her but that he was passive in his own right (the family commitments and whatnot), so the understanding that this could only be an affair was sort of how he proceeded. But I might have felt the romance from Edith's point of view and missed the more objective clues.
The scene where she recounts how she watches him interact with his wife and her realization they would make love that night was, I thought, one of the more poignant moments. The emotional pain of being the other woman seemed palpable.
And what of her sending him a telegram at the end that she's coming back. A happy ending? A fool's paradise?
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I didn't think he loved her, really. It seemed more like a thrill to him, like it was primarily sexy because it was "illicit" and because she adored him so much. He just seemed like one of those guys who love their wives and their home lives but whose egos can't resign themselves to monogamy. He liked that she looked after him and cooked for him and all that. I'm sure it was all very satisfying to his ego. He could have his pick of women. Didn't Edith even speculate at one point that she was maybe not his only thing on the side?
I didn't see her attraction to him. I kept thinking something awesome about him would be revealed to make me get on board, but it never was!
Oh, kc. That makes me sad. I need her to be too smart for that kind of guy. No, when she had him feel her ring from Geoffrey, that he had gone away on her wedding day, assuming she had gone through with it -- I thought the guy had some soul. But yeah, the cooking of his favorite foods and whatnot was a little hard to stomach. Or later her recollections that he only came by weeks at a time. Her final letter to him (the one she was really going to mail) seemed the most forthright, finally.
I figured she wasn't sending the previous letters, but it would be enlightening to go back and read them all now, and see how she changed. (Like her realizing she was making up stories about strangers, or that gossiping about them was a new trait she was picking up in her new surroundings.)
I think, too, of how self-imposed her rules were. This understood business of not making claims on him and so on, that there was an understanding, when so often with people there IS no damned understanding, you know? Not anything agreed upon! I like to think since she sent word she was going back, which I confess pleased me, I hoped there would be new terms and they would be hers to set.
She is too smart for that kind of guy! But she's also totally in love with him.
I love your point about the self-imposed rules, how she thought it was her role to be kind of self-effacing and nondemanding and dependable, even though he was none of those things. I think she was being tortoise-like. And, yeah, maybe she figured she'd go back and see how he liked some new terms.
Maybe she'll pull a Camilla Parker Bowles on him! (I always kind of liked Charles for sticking with that age-old affair from his youth. I mean, he was a cad to Diana, but, in the end, he didn't want the fresh, virginal, beautiful princess that everyone slobbered over and foisted on him as a "suitable" match. He wanted the older, not very pretty but witty and highly unsuitable married lady who made his heart flutter with joy. They were still writing silly loves note to each other almost 30 years after they met!)
Unfortunately, I also figured David to be a cad, not really in love with Edith but excited to be having an illicit affair where he was the fawned-upon star.
Good question about the ending. What did the "returning" message mean? Back to the status quo? Will David still be interested? Or will Edith propose her own new terms? Has she really changed? (I'm sort of dubious.)
Love that point about Charles, kc. It kind of impressed and touched me, too, how he stuck with Camilla all these years.
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