As long as they are happy … really?!

The late Agatha Christie’s novels still sell because she carefully built the personalities and relationships of the characters as well as the stories – many have been made into movies. But lost in the modern interpretation of Christie’s books are her interwoven discussions of morals which contrast sharply with today’s blithe accepting sigh, “As long as they are happy.”
The long-term effect of personal decisions emerges as the theme clearly in her 1944 non-fiction book “Absent in the Spring,” one of six books that Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
The novel describes the history and personalities of one family via the reflections of the family matriarch during a week of unexpected isolation.
At one point she thinks back to the day she and her husband received a letter stating that their daughter, Averil, had been seen in the wood kissing a married, renowned scientist, a man 20 years her senior. The parents argued about what to do. The mother considered it a short-lived infatuation that would soon end.
The father disagreed. “No, our daughter feels deeply and loves deeply. He [the scientist] is human enough to wreck his own life – and to nullify his lifework. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” the mother wondered.
“It depends on our daughter. On how strong she is and how clear-sighted.”
The father negated his wife’s suggestion to isolate their adult daughter with any separation from the man because she “can only be influenced by factors that she respects.”
They confront their daughter. The mother’s approach emphasizes the obvious truths, “you are young and romantic. This is out of the question, you will regret it and bring sorrow on your parents.”
Averil listens, then wearily says to her mother, “Must we go on like this? … won’t you accept the plain truth, that nothing you can say or do will make the least difference? We care for each other. His wife is an invalid,” Averil says to justify her actions.
But this father knows his daughter and begins to expose the weakness in her justifications.
“Marriage is a contract. … entered into by two people of adult years in full possession of their faculties and with a full knowledge of what they are undertaking. It is a specification of partnership and each partner binds himself and herself specially to honor the terms of that contract – that is, to stand by each other in certain eventualities – in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse.”
He acknowledges that the words are only spoken at the wedding, but stipulates, “they are none the less a contract, just as any agreement entered into between two people in good faith is a contract. Because some of the obligations undertaken are not enforceable in a court of law, they are none the less binding on the persons who assumed them,” he says, asking Averil if she agrees.
“That may have been true, but it is different now. People are not married in the church and do not use the words of the church service,” she responds.
Weighing his words, the father says, “That may be so, but 18 years ago he did bind himself by using those words in a church  … uttered those words in good faith and meaning to carry them out.”
Averil shrugs off the whole concept.
Her father continues anyway, “Will you admit that, although not legally enforceable, he … did enter into such a contract with the woman who is his wife? He envisaged at that time, the possibilities of poverty, of sickness and directly specified them as not affecting the permanence of the bond.”
As the daughter’s face turns white, the father continues, “I want an admission from you that marriage is, apart from all sentimental feeling and thinking, an ordinary business contract. …. and [that he] proposes to break that contract with your connivance. … with no regard for the due rights and privileges of the other party to the contract?”
Averil brushes it all aside saying that the wife is only concerned about herself and her illness.
Her father presses the issue, “I don’t want sentiment from you, Averil. I want an admission of fact. … you have no knowledge at all of [her] thoughts and feelings. You are imagining them to suit yourself.”
“Very well, she has rights.”
Averil knows she would be happy to run off with her lover. Her father knows she would be happy, but he also knows that her happiness would be built on the back of a wife robbed of her husband’s pledge to be faithful even through sickness. He also further argues that the decision will ultimately affect the man’s work and may blame her for that.
Hardly the kind of reasoning found in today’s society. In this decade, a wife’s decline into dementia or any other chronic disease has even highly recognized religious and social leaders empathizing with the husband’s inconvenience. Many sympathetically excuse his inclination to leave the sick rather than encouraging him to be an honorable person and uphold his original commitment.
Being a man (or woman) of one’s word – even in the face of a difficult marriage is not exactly the pattern reflected in today’s constant chorus, “As long as they are happy,” but it is definitely something to consider.

(Joan Hershberger is a reporter for the El Dorado News-Times. She can be reached at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)


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