[Abstract] This paper attempts to explore the novel The Thor(3)
2013-08-04 01:10
导读：2.2 The love stories about the other women in The Thorn Birds Mary is Meggies aunt. She takes possession of a large amount of property and lives in Drogheda, a great pasture. She has been a widow for
2.2 The love stories about the other women in The Thorn Birds
Mary is Meggie’s aunt. She takes possession of a large amount of property and lives in Drogheda, a great pasture. She has been a widow for so many years, but she refuses to marry again. “Not Mary Carson’s idea of living, to play second fiddle. So she had abjured the flesh, preferring to wield power”[8]. She was not born into money or is not so charming, but besides her genius, the great effort makes her lead a superior life. When she meets Ralph, she has already been an old woman, but she crazily falls in love with him, who has remarkable appearance and uncommon intelligence. On her deathbed, she asserts her true feeling to Ralph,
“ ‘I have loved you. God, how much! Do you think my years automatically preclude it? Well, Father de Bricassart, let me tell you something. Inside this stupid body I’m still young─I still feel, I still want, I still dream, I still kick up my heels and chafe at restrictions like my body. Old age is the bitterest vengeance our vengeful God inflicts upon us.’ ”[9]
She believes that there are no bounds of age in love, but she is clear that Ralph is not likely to love her, who knows that only Meggie is his lover. As a result, she becomes to hate her old age and envy Meggie. Moreover, she can’t bear Ralph and Meggie to get together, and she also cannot stand others possessing the things she hungers for but could not gain. She has said to Ralph,
“ ‘I’ll be like the Devil, and offer you─Enough said! But never doubt I’ll make you writhe. You’re the most fascinating man I’ve ever met. You throw your beauty in our teeth, contemptuous of our foolishness. But I’ll make you sell yourself like any painted whore.’ ”[10]
Therefore, she chooses to retaliate by separating Ralph from Meggie. The reprisal works after her death, but it really changes the fate of Ralph and Meggie. She knows Ralph very well, and she is sure that if the church inherits her abundant legacy, Ralph will quit Meggie to be the bishop of Catholicism, who can never marry. In the letter given to him, she says,
（科教作文网http://zw.NSEaC.com编辑发布） “ ‘Ralph, I love you, so much I would have killed you for not wanting me, except that this is a far better form of reprisal. I’m not the noble kind; I love you but I want you to scream in agony. Because, you see, I know what your decision will be. I know it as surely as if I could be there, watching. You’ll scream, Ralph, you’ll know what agony is.’ ”[11]
If she never knows how to do anything else, she actually knows how to make the ones she loves suffer. Just as the sayings go, if you love him, send him to New York, because it is a heaven; if you hate him, send him to New York, because it is a hell. Mary does so and she succeeds finally. Ralph accepts Mary’s will which makes his dream come true, so he reaches the heaven; Ralph betrays Meggie in order to get the money, which means that there will be an everlasting gulf between them from then on, so he arrives in the hell. If Mary is a thorn bird, Ralph is her sharp spine. However, because of the interlacement of love and hate, she chooses to destroy him.
Fiona, Meggie’s mother, was born in Armstrongs, a passport to colonial aristocracy. She is a very handsome, very fair woman a little under medium height, but rather hard-faced and stern. “She was a silent woman, not given to spontaneous conversation. What she thought, no one ever knew, even her husband”[12]. She is a hardworking housewife, but who can imagine that she used to be well-bred girl from an honorable family, and marries the poor hired herdsman─Paddy. It goes without saying that she has contracted a shocking mesalliance. What is worse, she doesn’t love Paddy, but she deeply loves another handsome married man, named Pakeha, with whom she has the son Frank. Fiona thinks the man is everything Paddy isn’t─cultured, sophisticated, very charming. She loves him to the point of madness, and she thinks she will never love anyone else. However, he is impossible to marry her, though they have a son, so she is forced to marry Paddy by her family. It is a legal marriage but without love. Although Paddy loves her so much and tries his best to make her happy, she never feels happy, and she always keeps silent, which means she never belongs to Paddy until his death. Among the family members, she only loves Frank, or loves Frank more than the rest of others put together, because she loves his father. In the family, Frank is her only spiritual mainstay, but he cannot get along with Paddy well. When Frank manages to drop away from home after the furious quarrel with Paddy,
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“There had not been a flick of emotion in those soft grey eyes, not hardening nor accusation, hate or sorrow. As if she had simply been waiting for the blow to fall like a condemned dog for the killing bullet, knowing her fate and powerless to avoid it.”[13]
She keeps herself folded up with quietness, and a total undemonstrativeness. In fact, Fiona has led an impassible life since she left Frank’s father and lost her love. When she loses Frank, it means that she loses all her hope.
