Guilt, Duty, and Unrequited Love: Deconstructing the Love Triangles in James
Joyce’s The Dead and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure “It’s no problem of
mine but it’s a problem I fight, living a life that I can’t leave behind.
But there’s no sense in telling me, the wisdom of the cruel words that you
speak. But that’s the way that it goes and nobody knows, while everyday my
confusion grows.” --New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle, from Substance, 1987
Most people who have watched a soap opera can recognize that the love triangle
is a crucial element to the plot. In fact, the original radio broadcasted soap
operas seemed to consist almost entirely of love triangles. The love triangle,
for plot purposes, seems to be a popular technique employed to change the
dynamic, add dimension, and generally ‘spice up’ an otherwise stagnant
monogamous relationship. It would make for a pretty dull and quite unpopular
show if such popular daytime soap characters as Luke and Laura or Bo and Hope
had enjoyed a smooth courtship, uncomplicated marriage and then grew old and
gray together without a single conflict. The viewers watched them go through
many conflicts, some of which involved the classic love triangle. Such conflicts
as the love triangle keep the story moving. Common elements of triangles in
today’s soaps consist of lust, greed, jealousy, any of which are
interchangeable with the conflicts resulting from situations involving lovers
coming back from the dead or paternity uncertainties. Yet love triangles,
whether in the soap opera or in the novel, are not all uniformly constructed.
James Joyce’s The Dead and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, both modernist
novels, each contain love triangles as an integral element of the story. The key
triangles I will focus on are comprised of Michael, Greta and Gabriel, and,
Philotson, Sue, and Jude. Although not absolutely identical, deconstruction
reveals guilt, duty, and unrequited love as essential components to the
construction of both. Besides the most obvious similarity that both triangles
are composed of one woman and two men, guilt also figures prominently. Although
the men of the triangles may have their own guilt-related issues, it seems as
though it is the guilt felt by the women that presents the most conflict. In The
Dead, Greta has to live with the knowledge that it is because of her, although
indirectly, that Michael died. It is likely that because of this guilt that she
pauses on the staircase to listen to The Lass of Aughrim, a song that, as she
tells Gabriel later, reminds her of Michael. At the time, her husband interprets
her expression on the staircase as one of “grace and mystery…as if she were
a symbol of something.”(Joyce 2028). He was correct, except not in the way
that he thought. All the way to the hotel, the lingering memory of that sight of
her incites his passion. However, he experiences a terrible upset as Greta tells
him about the song and what it means to her. This is the critical moment where
Michael, or rather his memory, enters and completes the triangle, although he
may have been there all along without Gabriel’s knowledge. To Gabriel, this
turn of events casts a different light on his entire marriage to Greta as he
“thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many
years that image of her lover’s eyes when he told her that he did not wish to
live”(Joyce 2035). He wonders “how poor a part he, her husband, had played
in her life”(Joyce 2035). Although it is a bit peculiar for one of the members
of this bizarre love triangle to reside beyond the grave, we see here that
Michael plays a significant role, perhaps altering Gabriel and Greta’s
relationship forever, with Greta’s guilt as the instigating factor. As for
Sue, in Jude, her guilt operates on a completely different level, a religious
one. Like Greta, Sue also had a sick man die after braving the elements just to
see her. Yet, unlike The Dead, this event has no great impact on the love
triangle between Jude, Sue and Philotson. This three-cornered romantic disaster,
because of Sue’s return to Philotson, had already reached it’s climax. If
anything, Jude’s death made Sue’s promise never to see him again easier. But
because Jude’s death happens at the end of novel, the reader does not find out
if this adds to or detracts from her guilt. All we are told is that she is
“tired and miserable,” “years and years older,” “quite a staid worn
woman,” and still absolutely repulsed by Philotson (Hardy 431). Sue’s guilt
originates from societal pressures, and then surfaces after the death of the
children. She knows that shacking up with Jude after her divorce from Philotson
is frowned upon, yet she does not share the same morals and values as the
society in which she lived, thus, does not expect any sort of punishment. She
takes the horrifying death of her children as a sign of divine admonishment.
“I see marriage differently now!…My babies have been taken from me to show
me this!”(Hardy 369). Therefore, so that their death’s would not have been
in vain, Sue becomes religious and returns to Philotson, adding more complexity
to the triangle. Sue’s last words to Jude before he dies are: “Don’t
follow me—don’t look at me. Leave me, for pity’s sake!”(Hardy 412). This
bizarre love triangle may not be broken even after Jude’s death, for it is he
whom she really loves. For Philotson, Sue only feels a sense of duty. Richard
Philotson is not a bad guy, not at all the villain of the story. He is just as
much a victim as Sue and Jude. Actually, the role of the villain seems to
co-star Sue’s sense of guilt and the judgmental society that causes her to
perform such maddening acts of senseless duty that construct the love triangle
between them. One chief act of duty is when she becomes engaged to Philotson,
despite her feelings for Jude. Another major one occurs when she actually
marries Philotson, although it is completely against her principles. Philotson,
as a mentor, had ingratiated himself to Sue and she had to appease him somehow
when the scandalous rumors about her and Jude emerged. Sue writes to Jude about
the impending marriage, ”It is so good of him, because the awkwardness of my
situation has really come about my fault in getting expelled”(Hardy 176). Yet,
Jude fears that the real reason behind her marriage to Philotson stemmed from
his confession regarding his marital status. Regardless of the convoluted
reasoning, Sue was able to perform the duty of marriage but not the duty of the
bedroom. Philotson finds that she would rather sleep in the closet than with
him. As her repulsion grows, so does her longing for Jude and freedom from
marital constraint. Poor Philotson, aware of Sue’s affections for Jude and her
aversion to himself, allows her to leave the marriage. So Sue gets her freedom,
yet despite her unconventional values, she just can not seem to go long without
this sense of duty that overwhelms her. She is torn between her own values and
those that society has not only instilled in her, but reminds her of daily. She
takes deeply to heart such instances as when she and Jude were not seen fit to
complete their job of painting of the Ten Commandments. “I can’t bear that
they, and everybody, should think people wicked because they may have chosen to
live their own way!”(Hardy 318). This together with Father Time’s arrival
intensifies her torment over the marriage dilemma. But this is one act of duty
that she can never bring herself to perform which makes it much simpler for her,
after the death of her children, to return to Philotson whom she dutifully,
though illogically, regards as her true husband. On the other hand, Greta is
able to fulfill all of her wifely duties for Gabriel, including bearing his
children. He even thinks, until he realizes her attachment to Michael, that she
performs these duties blissfully. Greta plays the part of the doting ornament at
his aunt’s party, appearing as though Gabriel were the center of her universe.
As they danced Gabriel felt “proud and happy…proud of her grace and wifely
carriage”(Joyce 2031). As they are leaving, Greta “turned towards them and
Gabriel saw that there was color on her cheeks and that her eyes were
shining”(Joyce 2029). But it was Michael, not Gabriel, who was the reason for
the expression. Despite Greta’s anguish over the song and the memory it
brought, she was not too distraught to attempt to stroke her husband’s ego.
She kissed him and said, “You are a very generous person, Gabriel”(Joyce
2032). But Gabriel’s joy at this attention is later crushed as it is made
apparent to him that all along “she had been comparing him in her mind to
another” (Joyce 2033). Greta’s sense of wifely duty toward Gabriel had
protected him from this knowledge all the years of their marriage. With the
truth out, Gabriel may never return to the comfortable illusion that Greta had
allowed him to live him for so long. Michael may now always be a haunting
presence in their marriage, and the reader is not told if Greta will favor her
sense of duty to her marriage or to his memory. While Greta sleeps, recovering
from the memories brought by The Lass of Aughrim, Gabriel contemplates the
relationship between his wife and Michael. He realizes the enormity of
Michael’s love for Greta as something he “had never felt like that himself
towards any woman but he knew such feeling must be love” (Joyce 2035). This
must leave him to wonder whether Greta had felt the same for Michael or whether
the love, on that level at least, was unrequited. Greta had answered ambiguously
that she had been “great with him at that time”(Joyce 2034). Gabriel wonders
if she is being completely truthful. He knows that he does not love Greta the
way that Michael did, but throughout their marriage he seems to have been under
the delusion that her love was greater for him, than his for her. Perhaps,
because of Greta’s deep attachment to Michael, it was really his love for her
that was unrequited. Gabriel seems confident in his role as supreme husband and
lover until after Greta’s confession when he looks into the mirror and sees
“a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous
well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealizing his own
clownish lusts…” (Joyce 2033-34). The knowledge of Michael and fear of
comparison has reduced him to this state of inferiority and self-doubt. This may
be how Philotson felt when he found that his love for Sue was so undeniably
unrequited. How damaging it must be for a man’s ego to find that his wife
would rather brave sleeping in a closet than with him. Philotson wonders wry,
”What must a woman’s aversion be when it is stronger than her fear of
spiders!”(Hardy 232). The poor man had normal expectations for his marriage,
only to find that the mere suggestion of intimacy prompted her leap to what
could have been her death. He explains to his friend Gillingham, “She jumped
out the window—so strong was her dread of me!”(Hardy 241). This is the final
straw and Philotson grants her a divorce. Yet, he is not the only one to
experience unrequited love. Jude does also, but definitely not to such a severe
degree. Although, Sue loves Jude, she does not seem to love him enough to stay
with him, at least not in the way he loves her. He wants her as a wife and she
is content to go back to just friendship. “We’ll be dear friends just the
same Jude, won’t we?”(Hardy 374). She asks him, as if Jude could so easily
dissolve his romantic feelings for her. Sue’s only real true love appear to be
her own values and moral urges, which seem to change with the tide throughout
the novel. Love, with its power to create agony or ecstasy, is a dependable
source of drama, whether it be for the novel or the soap opera. As we see in
Jude the Obscure and The Dead, the tension of the love relationship is increased
with the addition of a third party. Jude and Sue’s relationship may likely
have been quite simpler without the presence of Philotson. He would not have
been an option for Sue’s need to rectify the death of the children. In fact,
she may have seen marriage to Jude as the right thing to do. They may have
actually gotten married and been very happy. But for some reason, Hardy did not
allow this to happen. Instead, he preferred to leave the reader with the dark
view of love, where there is not always a happy ending. As for Gabriel and
Greta’s relationship, if Greta had not told of Michael, Gabriel’s evening
may have ended much differently. He would most likely have satisfied his lust,
yet the novel would lack the epiphany Greta’s confession causes him to have.
The components of guilt, duty, and unrequited love, though not universal traits,
do well to maintain the complexity and efficacy of these particular love
triangles.