Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
Yet neither of them was quite satisfied. He felt, somewhere, that she
did not respect him. She only respected him as far as he was related to
herself. For what he was, beyond her, she had no care. She did not care
for what he represented in himself. It is true, he did not know himself
what he represented. But whatever it was she did not really honour it.
She did no service to his work as a lace-designer, nor to himself as
bread-winner. Because he went down to the office and worked every
day—that entitled him to no respect or regard from her, he knew. Rather
she despised him for it. And he almost loved her for this, though at
first it maddened him like an insult.
What was much deeper, she soon came to combat his deepest feelings.
What he thought about life and about society and mankind did not matter
very much to her: he was right enough to be insignificant. This was
again galling to him. She would judge beyond him on these things. But
at length he came to accept her judgments, discovering them as if they
were his own. It was not here the deep trouble lay. The deep root of
his enmity lay in the fact that she jeered at his soul. He was
inarticulate and stupid in thought. But to some things he clung
passionately. He loved the Church. If she tried to get out of him, what
he _believed_, then they were both soon in a white rage.
Did he believe the water turned to wine at Cana? She would drive him to
the thing as a historical fact: so much rain-water—look at it—can it
become grape-juice, wine? For an instant, he saw with the clear eyes of
the mind and said no, his clear mind, answering her for a moment,
rejected the idea. And immediately his whole soul was crying in a mad,
inchoate hatred against this violation of himself. It was true for him.
His mind was extinguished again at once, his blood was up. In his blood
and bones, he wanted the scene, the wedding, the water brought forward
from the firkins as red wine: and Christ saying to His mother: “Woman,
what have I to do with thee?—mine hour is not yet come.”
And then:
“His mother saith unto the servants, ‘Whatsoever he saith unto you, do
it.’”
Brangwen loved it, with his bones and blood he loved it, he could not
let it go. Yet she forced him to let it go. She hated his blind
attachments.
Water, natural water, could it suddenly and unnaturally turn into wine,
depart from its being and at haphazard take on another being? Ah no, he
knew it was wrong.
She became again the palpitating, hostile child, hateful, putting
things to destruction. He became mute and dead. His own being gave him
the lie. He knew it was so: wine was wine, water was water, for ever:
the water had not become wine. The miracle was not a real fact. She
seemed to be destroying him. He went out, dark and destroyed, his soul
running its blood. And he tasted of death. Because his life was formed
in these unquestioned concepts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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