Marriages Real and Virtual in Some
Tame Gazelle
by Charles Hansmann
I will be
discussing “Marriages
Real and Virtual in Some Tame Gazelle.”
This first published Pym novel is about the
need for “something to love” and how this need gives our lives meaning
and a
sense of (at least local and temporary) importance. “[S]omething
to love, that was the point,” we are told, and
although an object of
love can, according to the poetry cited, be found in a “tame gazelle,”
a
“gentle dove,” even a “poodle dog,” it is not found, in this novel, in
the
institution of marriage. We are shown
one long-term marriage (which seems to have failed), three proposals of
marriage (one of which is serial, all of which are declined), one
thwarted
marriage (a disappointment going back some thirty years), and at the
end of the
novel two hasty marriages (perhaps ill-advised). Throughout
the novel, marriage holds little
hope for love and happiness. And yet the
characters in Pym’s unnamed little village are so eccentric in their
behavior
and emotions that perhaps Pym is not faulting marriage per se, but
simply
showing us a selection of people who are more suited to find love and
happiness
somewhere else.
The technique of comparison and
contrast is a standard literary device for examining different kinds of
couples
– we see this throughout Shakespeare, for example.
But in Some
Tame Gazelle, Pym has put a wry twist on this time-honored scheme:
instead
of presenting two separate couples, she shows us the interplay of two
women,
Agatha and Belinda, vis-à-vis one man, Henry – she positions a
marriage that exists
in the “real world” of the novel versus one that exists on a different
level.
Henry
and Agatha Hoccleve are in
their late 50s and have been married since their mid 20s.
They are both well-educated in arcane
subjects (Agatha has studied Old English and can speak Anglo Saxon and
Old High
German; Henry can quote from the most obscure text and make the most
elusive of
allusions). They are most compatible in
their
common preference for the domestic discomfort of drab furniture, dim
lighting
and a poorly-laid table. In almost all
other matters, and certainly in their temperaments, they are a
mismatch, and we
find them often “rather snappy with each other.”
Belinda
Bede is also in the late
50s and has loved Henry “faithfully for over 30 years.”
She fell in love with him at the age of 20,
when they were “students together,” and had her “heart broken” at the
age of
25. She too has married
Henry. But it’s a
figurative marriage. Belinda has never
“found anyone to replace” Henry in her heart; she devotes much thought
toward
an adoration of her beloved. This
devotional aspect of her love for Henry is, at times, almost
reverential and bears
some resemblance to a member of a religious order who considers herself
a
figurative bride of the Lord. Belinda
has promised herself to Henry, and therefore can have no other.
With
this set-up of couples – this
real and this virtual marriage – the novel gives us the rare
opportunity to
compare and contrast two marriages, contemporary to each other, and
both
involving the same man. It’s a kind of
civilized polygamy of interwoven emotions and is a tantalizing parallel
to Pym’s
running joke in subsequent novels about polygamy in “primitive
cultures.”
Agatha
is ambitious. She married Henry because
she knew that with
her “scheming” Henry could attain a certain status in the church, and
indeed he
has become an archdeacon. It was a
marriage of practicality, the best means by which Agatha, the daughter
of a
bishop, could duplicate the life she knew as a girl.
This urge for practicality extends even to
her preference in landscaping: she likes “neat borders and smooth
lawns.” Of course, a practical marriage
does not
necessarily mean there is consensual practicality.
Henry’s landscaping preference would have included
“a ruined temple” and “gloomily overhanging trees.”
He is a brooder with a penchant for
melancholy posing; he sleeps late, won’t pitch in with the work at
church
fund-raisers, is ill-prepared when called upon to deliver a proper
prayer, and
tends to break out into long poetical recitations at the most inapt
moments. But to some extent it is true, as
Belinda
observes, that “husbands and wives grow to be like each other.” Away on a recuperative holiday, Agatha sends
Henry a letter that is “admirably practical” filled with “a long list
of things
he must not forget to do,” a letter so “unromantic” that he can show it
to others
and invite them to read it. Henry
reciprocates this practicality upon her return, greeting Agatha, after
not
having seen her for a month, with a reproach for riding first class
instead of
in a more practical cheaper carriage. He
kisses her, but “not very affectionately.”
And
that brings us to the question
of passion – in the sense of physical sexual attraction, with or
without the
action. As is usual with Pym, we’re
given only the subtlest of clues.
In
an earlier scene we read that
Henry “kissed Agatha in a hasty, husbandly way.” Seemingly
no passion there. But this is a public
display, and it’s in
front of Belinda, whose unabated crush on Henry is not exactly a secret. In fact, Belinda is actually “rather
surprised” because she “had not thought that any outward signs of
affection ever
passed between them.” While this husbandly
peck is hardly an indication of intimate sexual passion, perhaps Pym is
telling
us that there is more to this marriage than meets the public eye. For a moment later the notion of sexuality
again comes to the fore. Trying to
justify why the beloved curate and Reverend Plowman receive gifts (such
as
plums and homemade cakes and jellies) from the parishioners while his
own
unlovable self does not, Henry retains his needed sense of superiority
by
saying, dismissively, “I suppose it has something to do with celibacy,”
implying
that the curate and Plowman require these favors because they are not
being
satisfied in another, more manly way. This
comment is uttered in the midst of a rare “cozy, domestic scene” with
the
Hoccleves, where they are unusually companionable and affectionate, and
in
supportive response to his remark: “Agatha smiled complacently. ‘Well, dear, people know that you are not in
need of these things.’” Certainly not
overt, but, at least arguably, the sexual innuendo is there.
Of
course, the relative heat of the
Hoccleve relationship is often in the eye or mind of the observer. The Bede sisters witness another kiss, or
lack of a kiss, when Agatha leaves on holiday, and while Harriet thinks
Henry
is “pleased as Punch” to be rid of Agatha, Belinda, perhaps remembering
the
earlier kiss, suggests that “they said their real goodbyes in the
house.”
Or
is this just a fancy? The novel is most
certainly replete with
strong evidence that the passion between Henry and Agatha has morphed
into a kind
of perversion, the kind of passion that prefers suffering to sensuality. Belinda observes that Henry and Agatha
“wished to outdo each other in self-denial”; they vie for bragging
rights about
skipping lunch. Belinda notes that “it
was Agatha who suffered most,” and while Henry complains that Agatha
makes “a
martyr of herself,” Belinda believes that Agatha has developed
rheumatism “out
of self-defense.” Henry too advertises
his suffering. He is very much the idler
and yet he claims fatigue and sleeplessness from being over-worked and
he pouts
about being under-appreciated.
As
for Belinda, her passion has
“mellowed into a comfortable feeling, more like the coziness of a
winter
evening by the fire than the uncertain rapture of a spring morning.” Belinda’s passion has ebbed, but
interestingly, marriage is not the culprit – those years of physical
familiarity that are sometimes blamed for the loss of passion did not
exist for
her, and therefore played no part in it.
For Belinda it’s a question of age, or perhaps a self-perception
of age.
Belinda considered herself to have been in
her prime at the age of 25, but now “the fine madness of her youth had
gone.” Her passion was spent “before she
was thirty” and has atrophied for want of exercise.
Her love is now “like a warm, comfortable
garment, bedsocks, perhaps, or even woolen combinations; certainly
something
without glamour or romance.” Ever
contemplating the lyrics of certain hymns, Belinda believes that “we
shall be
purged of all earthly passions in that other
life.” In this regard, Belinda has
attained a kind of heaven here on earth, for this purging of passion
has
already happened to her.
If
not passion itself, Belinda has
at least a passionate imagination. Even
when she sees Henry at his worst, in his tirade about the moth damage
to his
suit, Belinda thinks, “he looked so handsome in his dark green
dressing-gown
with his hair all ruffled. The years had
dealt kindly with him and he had grown neither bald nor fat.” His image is a constant delight to her
eye. When she sees him “against a
background of Victorian stained glass,” she thinks “he looked splendid,
and
somehow the glass set off his good looks.” On
another occasion, discussing a minor poet
with Henry among the gravestones, Belinda is unable to keep up with her
end of
the conversation because she has gone off into a kind of trance,
“thinking how
handsome he still is. His long pointed
nose only added to the general distinction of his features.” And during a church service she cannot
“concentrate
on her sins” because she is staring at Henry’s back and “reflected that
he was
still very handsome.” Belinda “still saw
[Henry] as the beautiful young man he had been.” This
attraction to physical beauty is an
instinct she has not suppressed. She
confesses,
“I like to see beauty in other people.”
When it is suggested that she means “beauty of character,” she
says,
“No, I mean beauty of person.” Throughout
the novel she spends as much time mooning over Henry’s physical
attractiveness
as she does ruminating on his intellectual acuity. Belinda’s
loss of passion has more to do with
her feelings toward herself – her sense of being past her prime and
dowdy in
dress – more to do with her low self-esteem than with any lessened
attraction
to Henry.
If
the Hoccleves’ marriage is one
of practicality and questionable passion, the figurative marriage that
plays so
prominent a role in Belinda’s life is one of unilateral devotion. She can recite Henry’s remarks verbatim: “I
always remember everything Henry says . . . Thirty years of it.” Indeed, she still wears light blue because
Henry once told her more than thirty years ago that he liked her in
this color. She “flushe[s] with
embarrassment and secret
pleasure” when he glancingly thanks her for “put[ting] up with” his
“ill-humour”; this trifling compliment leaves her feeling “somehow
exalted.” When Henry has delivered his
Judgment Day sermon, so insultingly condemnatory that some of the
parishioners actually
wave away the passed collection plate “with an angry gesture,” Belinda
tells
herself, “loyally,” that “it had really been one of the finest sermons
she had
ever heard him preach.” At other times her
mind jumps to sentimental memories of the “crimson socks” Henry bought
in
The
opposite of devotion – paired
in alliterative terms – is dalliance.
But Belinda does not dally; she never directs her devotion, in a
romantic way, toward another. Her
devotion gives her comfort; it’s reminiscent of old clothes she no
longer
wears, and she knows that she can no more “clear out” the closet of her
emotions than she can willingly part with faded favorites from her
wardrobe. She declines Bishop Grote’s
marriage proposal for the best of reasons: “I don’t love you.” No need
to make
excuses there. But Bishop Grote is not
put off. He does not accept this as an
adequate reason and challenges her, observing that at their age love is
not
something to be “expect[ed].” Belinda
responds with an even stronger reason for rejecting him: “‘I did love
somebody
once,’” she says, “‘and perhaps I still do.’”
Old love lingers; and for that reason, it is only new
love that is
not to be expected. Again this notion of
the religious vow crops up – Belinda has dedicated herself to Henry,
she has
given herself to him in a spiritual marriage, and as his figurative
bride, she is
not free to marry another.
Agatha,
on the other hand, is
enticed toward a mild version of dalliance.
She returns from her stay at Karlsbad looking “splendid”
and she is noted to be “in very good spirits.”
Not so much, as it turns out, because of the
curative powers of the German waters, but because she has found someone
on whom
to “beam” – the same Bishop Grote whom Belinda will later reject. When Belinda learns of the apparent role
reversal for Agatha’s and Henry’s engagement – that it was Agatha who
popped
the question – she tells Agatha that she herself could never “take on
the
responsibility” of asking a man to marry her for fear she might meet
“somebody
else afterwards.” Agatha admits, “That
can happen. One wonders how often it does happen when one knows that it can.”
By Agatha’s response we are
given to understand that this has indeed now happened to her. Her affections have strayed.
She has had the experience of meeting a man
whom she might have preferred to her husband.
But she is married, and she is not free to act on her feelings.
This
freedom – to pursue some other
object of affection – has not been lost on Belinda’s sister Harriet. After Henry jokingly remarks that being
single gives one the freedom to be late for lunch, Harriet says that,
“if he
were single now, he might have
discovered that there were even greater advantages,” alluding to
Belinda’s
potential availability. The freedom of
infatuation is Harriet’s motif – for the past 30 years she has been
flirting
with a succession of young curates. As
with Agatha and Belinda, her interaction with the deservedly maligned
Bishop
Grote is instructive. Harriet “had
certainly been very much in love with him” when he was “a willowy
curate in his
20’s,” an early specimen in a long line of such “cherished” men; lest
we be
tempted to consider Harriet’s series of crushes immature and girlish,
Bishop
Grote gives us a not-very-pleasant insight into what “the unknown
trials of
matrimony” to one of these curates might have had in store for her. These “tall, pale men” do not age well. Bishop Grote, at 57 or 58, considers himself
to have reached his “riper years,” echoing Dr. Purnell’s notion that a
man “on
the threshold of 60” “needs a woman to help him into his grave” – while
the
ever-irrepressible Harriet considers 60 to be “the Prime of Life.” And so we see that Harriet might be too easily
dismissed as a mild case of arrested development. Perhaps
she has been wise not to advance her
romantic life beyond the stage of innocent infatuations, for she has
escaped
this attitudinal “doddery” – her word
– for which she expresses such emphatic disdain.
Like
his wife, Henry is himself no
slouch at affectionate wanderings.
Agatha is very much his intellectual equal, and although he
recognizes
this, suggesting that she might like to resume her academic research,
his petty
and puerile emotions often default to the less clever Belinda simply
because
she dotes on him. And this is
notwithstanding the fact that the first time he strayed it was in the
opposite
direction – from Belinda, whom he courted for 5 years, to Agatha, whom
he
married. Now in his late 50’s it was one
of his “grievances that people never made a fuss of him,” and his
thoughts keep
“going back to the days when Belinda’s frank adoration had been so
flattering.”
He thought of Belinda as “a nice,
peaceful creature” compared to Agatha. He
laments that “Agatha never asked him to read aloud to her when they
were home
together in the evenings,” and he is sometimes nostalgic for “the old
days”
when he used to read to Belinda. Henry
wistfully remarks to Belinda how different it is when Agatha is away,
and he says
with a sigh, “But there it is. We can’t
alter things, can we?” Of course, any
regret he feels for marrying Agatha instead of Belinda is based in no
small
part on having “forgotten how bored he had been by [Belinda’s]
constancy.” What he is really looking for
is someone who will
be fully indulgent of his moodiness. In
Agatha’s absence, when Belinda feels “justified in adopting a wifely
tone
towards him,” – that he’ll catch cold brooding in the cemetery sitting
on a
damp bench – he responds “irritably,” thinking “it was just the kind of
remark
Agatha would make.” Henry resents these
marital patterns by which husbands and wives rightfully encourage each
other
toward healthful and reasonable behavior.
It is his desire to be indulged that has caused his affections
to
wander. Even Belinda recognizes that
Henry doesn’t really “prefer her to Agatha”; it’s just that she is “the
one he
hadn’t married.” Henry wants a
relationship based on poetry rather than practicality.
In Some Tame Gazelle, we see that marriage has its problems,
but that
these problems are not necessarily avoided by remaining single. Because she is married to Henry, Agatha is
barred from Bishop Grote, the man she wants, while Belinda is barred
from the
man she wants, Henry, because they have not married.
And while Henry resents his wife Agatha’s
practicality, when Belinda speaks to him in a practical way, he resents
her
too. But in addition to problems, marriage
has its privileges, and some of these privileges remain exclusive to
the
marriage. Belinda thinks to herself: “I
love him more than Agatha does,” and yet it was Agatha, not Belinda,
who “had
the privilege of seeing [Henry] in his bath.”
Yet
even though she is single,
Belinda is not entirely denied such intimate domestic pleasures, for
the
enduring close connection in her life is with her ever-sensuous and
happy
sister Harriet. Preparing for an evening
of entertaining, Belinda watches Harriet “splashing about in the tub
like a
plump porpoise,” the room “filled with the exotic scent of bath salts.” From the bath, Harriet appraises Belinda: “Yes, you look very nice,” she says, “but I
think I should use some more lipstick if I were you.
Artificial light is apt to make one look
paler.” “Oh, no, Harriet, I don’t think
I can use any more,” Belinda responds.
“I shouldn’t really feel natural if I did.” Whether
rejecting unwanted suitors, or flirting
with non-suitors, or pining for a long lost love, the sisters have
indeed found
the way of living that is natural to them – the very thing other people
look
for, and many find, in marriage – a harmonious joining together, a
cohabitation
in which they feel secure and loved.