55 pages • 1 hour read
The End Of The Affair
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The Nature of Jealousy
There can be little doubt that jealousy is the dominant emotion felt throughout the text. At one time or another, every major character is gripped by a feeling of jealousy. In some cases, such as Bendrix, this jealousy comes to define them as a character and motivates much of their actions during the novel. Jealousy and what it means to be jealous is explored throughout the text, while discussions on the nature of jealousy appear in Bendrix’s prose and Sarah’s diary.
The first mention of jealousy in the book comes from Henry. As he sits in the pub with Bendrix, two men united by their love for the same woman, he declares that “jealousy's an awful thing” (6) when commenting on a piece of lurid graffiti Bendrix has seen in the bathroom. Bendrix initially takes this to be a comment on the graffiti itself, but when Henry follows it up by saying that “when you are miserable, you envy other people's happiness” (6), the sentiment becomes a diagnosis of Bendrix character. Bendrix is miserable, as he and Sarah are no longer together. This misery has metastasized into a burning jealousy, a jealousy of the man sat opposite him in the pub. Bendrix envies Henry’s life, though Henry maintains little to no awareness of this. Jealousy and the hiding of jealous feelings set the emotional tenor of the text right from the opening pages.
Jealousy is also an important topic when Bendrix meets with the detective agency. When first discussing the idea with Henry, Bendrix suggests that he visit Mr. Savage and pretend to be a jealous lover, because “jealous lovers are more respectable, less ridiculous, than jealous husbands” (9).
Henry’s ridiculous situation—asking his wife’s former lover to investigate her possible infidelities—is laden with dramatic irony. Bendrix has already confessed the true nature of his relationship with Sarah to the audience, but Henry has no idea. His naivety and his innocence are portrayed alongside Bendrix’s all-consuming jealousy; Bendrix is willing to pretend to be a jealous lover, though this piece of theatre will require no acting. He is telling Henry exactly what he is, while still maintaining a shroud of deceit. Bendrix wants to reveal his true nature—that of a jealous man—but finds himself constricted by social norms. Instead, he concocts an absurd visit to the detective agency to satisfy his own jealousies.
By the end of the novel, Bendrix is still unable to let go of his jealousy, even though it has evolved. Earlier, the thought of Sarah with another man consumed him. However, after her death, he finds himself emotionally dulled, to the point where he “thought jealousy was quite dead” (85). However, the sight of another of her lovers rekindles the feelings within him and shows that the nature of Bendrix’s jealousy has changed. Now, he is envious of the memory of Sarah, of the legacy she left behind. When people try to alter her funeral arrangements or suggest that her faith was legitimate, Bendrix reacts angrily. He is jealous that his own personal conception of Sarah is being betraying and sullied. Bendrix becomes fixated with an idea of Sarah, rather than Sarah herself, and he meets any attempts to alter this idealized version of his dead lover with jealous rage. While Henry is able to abandon his jealousies and move on with his life, Bendrix remains jealous to the end, defined at last by the all-consuming nature of his jealousy.
The Complexities of Faith
A theme which gradually emerges throughout the course of the book is faith. In the opening chapters, religion plays very little role, as Bendrix draws a careful portrait of the delicate situation which exists between Henry, Sarah, and himself. Indeed, the first mention of “God” is parceled in Bendrix’s subtle admission that he is irreligious: in the phrase “if I had believed then in a God” (4), the word “if” is stresses a large portion of his character. Similarly, the next mention is found in the phrase “and yet they say a God made us” (6), which carries a derisive and disbelieving tone. At the beginning of the novel, Bendrix peppers his prose with denials of the existence of God, thereby establishing a baseline for discussions of faith which emerge later.
The key character in any discussion about faith in The End of the Affair is Sarah. She comes to religion in a strange manner, even when leaving aside her status as a crypto-Catholic, as told by her mother. During a bombing raid, Bendrix is caught in a blast. Sarah sees his body and fearing that the man she loves has died, offers to make a desperate pact with God, promising never to see Bendrix again if God will keep him alive. When Bendrix walks back into the room, she finds herself with no choice but to believe. She does not believe in God in the conventional sense, but finds her faith held to ransom by the circumstances: If she does not believe and if she sees Bendrix again, she worries that he might die. Stuck in this difficult position, Sarah begins to obsess about her faith.
As a result of this obsession, she visits two people: Father Crompton and Richard Smythe. The former is a Catholic priest, while the latter is an evangelist for rational thinking. Smythe does not just refuse to believe in God, but he attempts to dissuade others from believing. Sarah visits both. She hopes that Crompton will be able to provide her with a moral Christian pre-text for being with Bendrix, while she hopes Smythe will be able to convince her that God does not exist, so she need not worry about her promise. Neither man is able to convince her fully, and Sarah dies, still locked in an internal debate over her faith.
Following Sarah’s death, Bendrix finds himself forced to think more about God. While he does not have faith himself, he does acquire an enemy: Sarah’s faith. He refers to God as “a devil, God, tempting us to leap” (103) and rages against any suggestion that Sarah’s faith (and thus, the reason they were apart) was legitimate. Bendrix wants to preserve his own personal tragedy and introducing a religious element into the equation robs him of his agency and his sense of superiority. He wants there to be no God, so when he learns of Smythe’s miraculous cure, he believes the man to be either lying or an idiot. Smythe shows evidence of conversion, while Bendrix dogmatically refuses to look at any evidence. By the end of the novel, Bendrix’s position has become one of faith: He has faith that God does not exist, while others around him are beginning to present evidence. Much like Sarah, this internal turmoil takes its toll on Bendrix. He hates God, though does not believe God exists. This cognitive dissonance comes to define his life, the theme of faith revealed to be a constant and pervasive force.
The Manifestations of Love
If jealousy and faith are dominant themes within the text, there is also a long discussion on the nature of love and what it really means to love someone. Love manifests itself in several different ways. There is the passionate, improper love of the affair. There is the more reserved, respectable love of the marriage. And there is the platonic, amicable love which exists between friends. Throughout the text, Greene portrays these various types of love in different though not dissimilar ways.
One of the most obvious examples of love is that between Sarah and Henry. It is a strange form of love, one which is consecrated in a legal fashion. They are husband and wife; they are in possession of a legal document which demonstrates that they love one another (at least, in a theoretical sense). However, this love is also perfunctory and bland. Sarah admits that she does not feel desired by Henry, and by the end of her life, she views him almost as more of a friend than a husband. They are certainly no longer lovers, although this does nothing to diminish the love she feels for Henry. When she finally resolves to leave Henry, she writes him a letter. But before she can give it to him, she finds him crying. Henry tells Sarah that he loves her, but she views these words as “conventional words of a conventional husband, and they don't mean anything at all” (63). She does not believe in his declarations of love, yet still finds herself unable to leave him. Sarah never gives Henry the letter, deciding instead that she loves him too much to hurt him. She has spent the novel wrestling with a different kind of love, yet it is this timid, mundane loves which she eventually chooses. Although she dies a short time later, she dies as Henry’s wife, rather than as Bendrix’s lover.
This is contrasted with the burning, furious passion demonstrated in the love between Bendrix and Sarah. The novel details their affair, illustrating how they struggled to keep their hands off one another. On one of their first nights together, they book a short time in a hotel and make love. The memory stays with Bendrix long after Sarah has left him, the passion of the moment fixing itself into his mind. When he returns to look at the hotel, he finds that it is “blasted to bits” (25), a metaphorical representation of the destructive nature of the love he and Sarah shared. Although both Sarah and Bendrix profess their extreme love for one another, they also note a great number of occasions when they made each other miserable. Bendrix would belittle Sarah and make her feel inferior, while the merest hint of Sarah’s previous infidelities would rile Bendrix’s jealousies and prompt him to be meaner still to Sarah. While the love between Sarah and Bendrix seems more filled with passion and desire, it also seems more damaging and harmful. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that Sarah chooses Henry over Bendrix before she dies.
Following Sarah’s death, a third loving relationship appears to bloom. While there is less narrative space dedicated to the bond between Bendrix and Henry, they are undoubtedly finding love in one another’s company. Both men have lost the woman they loved. As such, Bendrix and Henry are the only two people who—they believe—can fully understand one another. They can each fill the vacuum of love in the other’s life. They live together, host dinners, and go out together. By the close of the novel, the relationship between Bendrix and Henry has come to resemble the relationship between Henry and Sarah. The men’s platonic affection is the closing image of the book, suggesting a new way to interpret the theme of love.
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