I'm through ch 13, and there's way too much to comment on. So I think I'll note a few places where I've seen Mark and Jane mirroring each others reactions or responses to their different situations. While we tend to "side" with Jane, neither character is really in the right; both are still "young" as the narrator tells us numerous times.
Of course we've seen their struggles in regard to joining a community: Mark trying desperately to get into the inner circle at Belbury, and losing any moral compass he may have had, and Jane repelled at first from St. Anne's because of her desire for autonomy. Even when she is nearly "in," she responds out of wrong desires, and Ransom must sharply tell her to stop. It is not for the sake of obedience or submission itself that she must join but for love and reverence toward Maleldil. When she is not capable of this, Ransom tells her she will be allowed to join because of her regard for him--at least for a time.
Jane, at first, hesitates to try to bring Mark to St. Anne's, because she still sees him as completely separate from herself and she can't imagine him wanting to be there; later she comes to pity him and, finally, she can draw him in with love. Mark can't imagine Jane at Belbury; when he thinks of her he recognizes the coarseness of the workings there, but when he is arrested, he has a moment of complete self-absorption in which he imagines her submission to his grandiose ideas; he sees her as the ultimate trophy wife, a hostess who will smooth the way to his success.
They have,too, similar responses to religion, and both experience a sort of conversion when confronted with the reality of death. Jane is put off by the trappings of religion--by church, yet she is drawn to the beauty and intensity of what I can only call Faith--as exhibited by Ransom's relationship with the eldila and Maleldil. Jane thinks, "Maleldil might be, quite simply and crudely, God. There might be a life after death: a Heaven: a Hell. The thought glowed in her mind for a second like a spark that has fallen on shavings, and then a second later, like those shavings, her whole mind was in a blaze . . ." (231)
Mark identifies himself as an atheist and has no sympathy for superstition, yet he undergoes a transformation while he is under arrest at Belbury. First we learn that Wither and Frost want to condition him to have a "change of heart"; Frost will tell him about the real Masters of the inner circle, the real intelligences behind the speaking head. But by the time Frost gets to him, Mark has already recognized his own folly in all his life seeking to get "in," to be admired, and though he realizes that he can't even determine to resist, he is in a sense humbled. At the brink of submission to reality, and thereby to God himself, he, too, experiences an almost lunatic temptation, as Jane had in the Director's room. He feels, first "a strange sense of liberation . . . . The relief of no longer trying to win these men's confidence" (264), and then "desire . . . took him by the throat" (265) and he is drawn by the "infinite attraction of this dark thing" (265) into a perverted fascination with the Darkness itself; he even feels a sort of kinship with Wither! He finally comes to himself and realizes he has been under some kind of attack--something like Lewis felt in the beginning of Perelandra--by the dark eldila. On the next page he experiences "a sort of peace," and we're told: "He wanted Jane; he wanted Mrs. Dimble, he wanted Denniston. He wanted somebody or something" (267). Rejecting the Dark and desiring the Good, he falls asleep.
It's interesting that though their paths appear so different, both Jane and Mark are growing into the Truth. Both have to give up their false assumptions about themselves in order to become their true selves and find true freedom and admiration.
Well, I haven't even mentioned Merlin and the tramp--one of Lewis's most brilliant pieces of story-telling I think. I'm thankful for the humorous element at this part of the book which is so intense!
No comments:
Post a Comment