Love and Reverence: Two Different Things

Today I had the chance to read quite a bit of the novel. Between Lady Dedlock's death and poor Sir Leicester Dedlock's sincere love for her, I really felt my first real emotions with this book. I was really sad when I was done reading today! The scenes where Sir Leicester is watching the snow and listening for her steps to return almost tore me up. It would seem through all of their riches, fashion and fame, there was a deep sense of real love. It was beautifully written and I am now a true Dickens fan.

So what exactly went wrong with their love? Was it Victorian society? Was it that women just didn't have room for error? If they were "real" people and messed up (say like got pregnant), did that put them in jeopardy of survival? I am so disturbed by the fact that she took it upon herself to "know" how Sir Leicester was going to handle the information and didn't understand his deep loyalty to her. Why didn't she know that she was going to be safe? Why didn't she comprehend, understand, or feel security within their marriage? I believe that page 656 gives us some clues. When the housekeeper begins to confront Lady Dedlock and gives her a letter, before she even reads the contents, she is already closed off. It is said of her, "But, so long accustomed to suppress emotion, and keep down reality; so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart, like flies in amber, and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless; she has subdued even her wonder until now" (656, 657). Lady Dedlock lives up to her name; she is in a dead lock in life. Her secrets led to a void, emotionless, distant life that in the long run gave her life a dreary gloss. I find one of the most important elements to this is that she was a woman that had everything. She had the husband, the house, the fashion, the fame, and the money. Yet, Dickens is showing us that it is the openness of the heart that gives a richness in life. There was nothing in this life that could fill her heart as it had once been filled by Hawthorn. Love, true love, even forbidden love, with all its spectacles, is the only thing that causes us to live. She gave that away when she didn't choose Hawthorn and her daughter. I believe she had a lot of reverence and respect, and yes, love, for Sir Leicester, but it wasn't the kind that allowed her to "feel." Reverence and respect, and even gratefulness, are wonderful to experience in a relationship, but Dickens is showing that it doesn't make for wholeness. Wholeness comes from loving in spite of mistakes. Had she told Sir Leicester her mistakes years before, she may have been able to obtain a sense of wholeness in her life. But, Dickens makes it clear that secrecy in relationships will never amount to love. In fact, he goes so far as to say, it kills not only the secret keeper, but everything in its path. This subdued void should be a heavy warning to everyone in a relationship. It's equivalent to death!

So, in the end it wasn't Victorian society. It wasn't patriarchal marriage. It wasn't fame and all its fashion. It was simply dishonesty. Dishonesty within a marriage and within oneself. This is what killed her. She died because she allowed her past love (her true love) to live without her. And she died because she allowed her present love to really never be loved. Ouch!