Body

Rebecca West, English author of “Indissoluble Matrimony”, was thoroughly a modernist. Modernism as a movement in England was an attempt to make sense of a world that felt alien to its inhabitants due to the cultural changes that had already occurred and the cultural shifts that were still rapidly developing (Greenblatt 1890). The formation of industry, advances in science, the reconstruction of gendered expectations and subsequent arguments concerning gender, and many more instances were hallmarks of the previous Victorian era and were all undeniably influential, but most importantly for a discussion concerning West, the Victorian era ushered in the possibility for Modernism to address changing ideas and cultural anxieties about religion (Woelfel and Stayer 5). Moving away from literature that was focused on being didactic and the dissolution of the clear, forthright expectations of earnestness and strict morality of the Victorian times into a new, flexible array of techniques and subject matters is an important element in seeing the achievement of modernist writers. Science and a changing society had led people to move away from traditional Christian understandings about the overarching operations of the world, and this left a hole in the way people viewed their lives. The dissolution of almost total Christian dominance is where modernist authors have searched to make sense of the way changes and breakdowns of social norms have aided in developing new understandings about the world.

 

Rebecca West and “Indissoluble Matrimony” exemplify the feelings of this prevalent trend in Modernism through strategic choices and subject matter. West uses the religious framework of an ancient religion, Manichaeism, to communicate ideas about the overarching operations of society and the forces of darkness and light which are given an innate and natural position within West’s world. Manichaeism is an ancient religion compiled from aspects adopted from other religious groups created by the Persian prophet Mani (Ferm 220). Its most notable component, and the one that we find most important for a discussion on “Indissoluble Matrimony”, is the inherent emphasis on dualism. The Manichaeism conception of the world is based upon the moment “when the powers of Darkness first broke through into the realm of Light” and the light within humans is tainted with darkness, yet ultimately this will result in the light particles being reunited (Ferm 222). Important to this conception of humans as mixed beings with particles of light and darkness is an understanding of flesh as problematic.

Mani sees the body as physically “beyond redemption” and “polluted” (Buckley 400).

 

The relation between spirit and matter and light and dark is meant to be “the basis for the solution of the problem of Good and Evil” (Ferm 220). This issue of good and evil existing within the world was on the minds of modernists, and is something addressed by West in a modernist fashion. As duality is an important component of “Indissoluble Matrimony” and this duality can be seen as a manifestation of Manichaeism, West’s interpretation of the role Manichaeism plays becomes paramount.

West was familiar and well-versed in Manichaeism. She wrote a well-researched biography of Saint Augustine, whose philosophy required background knowledge in Manichaeism in order to understand (Glendinning 153). Due to his Manichean association, readers then know West was extremely knowledgeable in regards to Manichaeism. Scholars have also pointed out a wide array of other areas in which she has used this as an application to engage in the world. Its recurring nature results in those studying West to be “struck by how consistently these concepts pervade” her work, and this especially includes her major work Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Glendinning 223). Therefore, even without any personal subscription to the religious ideas inherent in the Manichean ideas, readers also know that this idea is apt to appear threaded through her works and in the way she personally engaged with the world. While knowing of past and continued tendencies to address a particular topic does not go far in the way of providing substantial evidence that an author is addressing those themes again in a particular work, it does show that this is an idea that remained heavily on the mind of Rebecca West as she was trying to make sense of the world amidst the messiness of life during the modernist era.

The two main characters of “Indissoluble Matrimony”, George and Evadne, become signifiers of a dualism that extends far beyond their interactions. Without a guiding cultural compass of the Victorian type in which the world is straightforward and absolute in its operations, West uses this Manichean framework as a new method of viewing the function of the world to bridge the gap that now exists. As the story is one of a turbulent marriage between a man and a woman, understandings of this story are frequently, and reasonably, centered around the gendered interactions that occur. However, in looking at the culturally encompassing results and implications of the present Manichaeism based framework, it becomes apparent that although gender is an important component, a singularly gender focused approach leads to the increased possibility of a limited view which may fail to make proper note of the far reaching cultural connections within “Indissoluble Matrimony” and its ability to signal how modernists sought to cope with the concepts of good and evil as ill-defined in the world.

 

The feminist centered arguments and interpretations can be broadly defined as a perspective which focuses on the gender infused interaction that is portrayed between the two main characters. While mentioning “Indissoluble Matrimony” within a text written to highlight women writers in Modernism, Gilbert and Gubar situate this story repeatedly, and almost exclusively, within the frame of “women achiev[ing] victory in their sexual battles with men” (114). Feminist interpretations are frequently compounded and reinforced by a focus placed on the battle that occurs between George and Evadne as representative of the greater cultural battle pertaining to women's rights and place in the modernist world, or being “especially attentive to the joint concerns of male impotence and female political power” (Brush). The resurrection of Evadne is viewed as the perseverance of women in the face of a struggle inflicted by men, while George’s multiple incapacities and ultimate failure to subdue Evadne displays the impotence of the modern man. Humms encapsulates this discussion concerning “Indissoluble Matrimony” by stating that it is “a male/female battle won by Evadne, the heroine with her skills of passive resistance and intuitive power” (30). The events that unfold are then consistently said to have been meant to display the positioning of a victory of the female power over the male.

​

Rebecca West, in engaging with wider cultural moments than this feminist interpretation gives credit for, writes many moments where she has applied similar strategies to her work that modernists before her and at the same time had done. The idea of reincarnation within “Indissoluble Matrimony” serves a main purpose of ensuring a connection between Evadne and Manichaeism, but it also reveals cultural trends about feeling unable to progress in a positive manner that were pervasive throughout modern culture due to the discussion enabled by the cyclic nature caused by Evadne’s reincarnation. It shows that West is engaging with the idea that the modernists did not always embrace the societal changes that occurred with positivity. The stagnation serving as a key point of Evadne’s story is reminiscent of the empty and unchanging attitude of depressing modernist characters like Prufrock, a creation of T.S. Eliot’s that is synonymous with modernist depression. There was certainly no life or change being breathed into his atmosphere or the life of Evadne and George West also reveals her relation to Modernism and asserts her place as a thorough modernist by utilizing other common modernist trends. Modernists tended towards building “modern myths on the dry bones of the old Christian ones” (Greenblatt 1903). Evadne, through her name primarily, has ties to mythology or the ‘mythical method’ which was a very popular lens for modernists to shape their understanding of the world from. The mythical method, described here in relation to Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is “a poetic method to create a complex web of oblique allusions and cross-cultural correspondences” that became one of the hallmarks of Modernism (Freer 357). In regards to Modernism and the way Rebecca West is very much a modernist, we can look at the tendency towards mythology as used by others and the way that her writing then follows a similar pattern to show the importance of the wider modernist cultural lens that should be used to view this story. Like West, we see other modernist writers looking towards the stories of antiquity. Eliot identified that writers were using myth as a “way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy that is contemporary history” (qtd. in Bell 122). T.S. Eliot does this in “The Wasteland”, as well as James Joyce in Ulysses. The modernist movement made people want to look to the past to find some kind of satisfactory answer for what they were all experiencing.

​

For Eliot, the mythical method allowed him to “express[es] a sense of cultural dislocation or loss while suggesting continuous parallels of symbolic reconnection.” (Freer 358). This cultural dislocation is found in many modernist stories, including being a core component of “Indissoluble Matrimony”. The drive to the Greeks and to the old religions like Manichaeism are then arising out of a similar societal need to incorporate the past. Rebecca West, although she mainly looks to religion rather than the Greeks, takes some influence from there as well in the manner of Joyce and Eliot.

Evadne’s name, shared with a Greek mythological character, is too specific and well-fitting to be a coincidence. The mythological story that “Indissoluble Matrimony” is associated with through the name is that of Evadne and her husband Capaneus. Capaneus is

killed in a war, and in mourning, solidarity, and devotion, Evadne jumps into his funeral pyre against her father’s pleas (Euripides 990). The obvious connection is through possessing the same name, but there are thematic issues that connect them as well and shows that West has restructured this mythological story in particular to fit a modernist world. Both Evadnes are involved in a situation in which their marriage bonds are presented as indissoluble and that those bonds function in that manner is at the heart of both of their stories creating a story about marriage that is, as its defining characteristic, inseparable. Capaneus dies by lightning strike, and West brings in this element of lightning with George by saying “He remembered the withered ash tree, seared by lightning to its root, that stood by the road at the bare frontier of the moor” and George prays, “May God strike her like that” (140). This location where the ash tree is serves as the backdrop for their battle. This new story has then been transplanted directly on top of the old. Rebecca West changes the mythology to make George’s Evadne a less willing participant, which does make the story more feminist, but it also allows it to perform in a more thoroughly modernist fashion. Rebecca West makes it clear that she is creating an inverse by taking fire from Capaneus’s story and turning it into its own inverse, water, for George’s story.

 

If the name Evadne is significant and reveals more thoroughly West’s intentions, it brings into question the significance of George’s name and how he becomes implicated in modernist culture. West is clearly an author that takes into consideration names as references a great deal, with her own moniker being an Ibsen reference. George is culturally regarded as a very English name and, in keeping with the theme of looking towards the past to shape the present, reminds readers of Saint George and the cultural ideals of old England. This is a valuable cultural figure to invoke, even if subtly, as “St George evolved from being seen as a martyr saint to an allegorical chivalric warrior who represented the victory of good over evil” (Bryne xiii). West had created an inverted Evadne out of the use of sources and inspiration that existed prior, and this is what she has done with George as well. George, notably, does not possess the positive attributes that a patriotic Englishman would associate with old England. This association with George then does not shine on old England, or the current men of England that stem from that line, very positively. With the singular focus on gender, one would miss this criticism of traditional English feelings.

Both Joseph Conrad and Rebecca West use a Manichean, dualist framework to view the modernist world. Conrad’s main dualist work is Heart of Darkness. It positions a very strict light and dark dualistic dichotomy in which the English becomes “Something like an embassy of light” (12) while Africa becomes, as the title states, the heart of the darkness. Beyond George functioning as a sort of modified Conrad through their joint fascination and repulsion of women of color, they share connections to Manichaeism. JanMohamed describes this relationship as Conrad using “a Manichean allegory… based on an overdetermined metaphor of Africa as the heart of darkness and evil … operat[ing] through imagery of light and dark” (70).

Heart of Darkness was published fourteen years before “Indissoluble Matrimony”, and West has taken ideas reminiscent of Conrad and made them into something more complex and fitting for a modernist world. It is possible to look at how these associations are built and how moments concerning race shape the events of the story as they unfold. West chose to make Evadne non-white and consistently moving towards modernistic ideas as described earlier rather than being stuck in the primitive, womanly way of life. Conrad similarly builds a relationship between race and women, albeit in a much less progressive manner. Describing Conrad’s focus on the Black woman within Heart of Darkness but applicable to George, “the fear and desire of the observing white male” is at the root of this intersection between race and gender (qtd. In Viola 166). Conrad's representation of Africans in Heart of Darkness is deeply problematic in a very similar way to George’s statements. Conrad’s tendency to “ontologiz[e] the African as an animal” (Lackey 32) is seconded by the many animalistic references made by George to Evadne. For both Conrad and George, darker skin tones like Evadne’s are overtly sexualized, animalized, and a source of fear (Rohman para. 5). Rebecca West, through the interactions between George and Evadne and through allusions to authors like Conrad, makes racial aspects an important part of her story to be explored.

​

Like Conrad, West uses race as a tool to discuss morality and the forces of good and evil and what those forces are, and this shows that it is a trend at least partially found throughout Modernism that West is adjusting for her own purposes. This encompassing of cultural principles and dualist nature being employed for the purposes of a wider cultural application can be seen in the way Heart of Darkness pertains to similar issues. Conrad also explores the idea of morality in a new and changing world through a dualistic lens. The previously mentioned feminist centered readings do not take enough account of the racial implications found in “Indissoluble Matrimony” that are made possible through the Manichean dualism and character associations.

 

Conrad’s tendency towards duality can be seen in other works as well and can therefore be assumed to be an important idea explored though his work. His short story The Secret Sharer in particular is said to examine duality through the lens of good and evil (Simmons 209). For authors like Conrad, there is an overlap with ideas like colonialism and Manichaeism. One philosopher in particular, Frantz Fanon, regarded these two ideas as related. The importance of this relationship can be described through identifying “the very Manichean structure that Fanon identifies as the foundation of the colonial world” (Nicholls). This association and philosophy came after the time of Conrad, but it displays the manner in which a correlation between Manichaeism and colonization could be easily drawn. Heart of Darkness does not shy away from exploring the relationship between British society and the societies that they colonized, the idea of the primitive, or Manichaeism in general.

​

The links between Conrad and West and their use of nature and the primitive to communicate large, societal ideas about what constitutes good and evil within a confusing modernist world then becomes an indisputable component of the manner in which these two authors are linked together through their use of Manichean ideas. West has displayed a partial adoption of the frameworks used by Conrad, but she also has displayed a refinement of those concepts in which color and gender are no longer attributes to be feared. Both use the human body to embody larger societal forces that culturally are at the center of everyone’s mind in a now changing, very modernist world. This cultural importance and interest that authors had in ideas such as these, considering the way that the modernist writers were approaching the world and their collective trends and pervasive feelings considering religion and changing social norms, is not surprising.

 

West grasps on to what already exists in modernist literature and then develops it in further ways, but she approaches these concepts in a slightly different manner that allows them to function without reliance on the same racially problematic background as Conrad. These developments and complexity with which she approaches these other areas prevents a focus that is singularly on gender. While gender is a prevalent and important concept in Modernism that is addressed within “Indissoluble Matrimony” and the approaches of others certainly have their merits, it is possible to argue that this focus leads to limitations in understanding the wider application of dualism within the story. The most puzzling aspect of the previously mentioned feminist-based approaches are not the fact that they engage the story from a female view in which the female is given increased agency, but that this conflict is centered around a dichotomy that is presented as a win or lose situation. While this is a gendered dualism, the dualism itself in this equation is not discussed to the same extent in which it is present and is the driving force in the way the gendered dualism is manifested.

It is reasonable that the framework used to view Evadne and George’s night at the water is through the lens of a battle, but more than a battle of the sexes in which one must be declared victor, “Indissoluble Matrimony” is a display of the operations of the world and the feelings manifested in Modernism on a minor scale. Although male and female interaction are included within this understanding, it is not limited to that framework. Therefore, it is unfair to label the feminist centered approaches of others as wrong. Our understandings are not at odds in the sense that the feminist approach can fit neatly under a larger Manichean and dualist understanding.

​

Ultimately, winning a battle, if that is what one might venture to call Evadne’s actions at the pool and eventual resurrection, is not the same as winning a war or preventing future battles from occurring. Through the ending and Evadne’s unexplained reappearance, readers are given the impression that this will all happen again for these characters. In addition to the events within the story, the title itself reinforces the idea that this is not a one-time occurrence. If Rebecca West’s primary goal was trying to create a piece celebrating the perseverance of women, this story would be more disparaging than hopeful. While women can be proud of Evadne's resiliency, she is never going to be in a truly comfortable place because of the unending nature of the story. She will remain in a defensive position because this matrimony cannot and will not be dissolved. Just as the Manichean particles of light and dark must still work towards sorting themselves but have yet to achieve that division, George and Evadne are cursed with being stuck in their unchanging, unsortable positions. The story goes so far as to tell us George “undressed and got into bed: as he had done every night for ten years, and as he would do every night until he died” (150). The unendingness established here, and the resulting conclusion that winning becomes less of a possibility, aid in the understanding of how this story connects itself to the larger cultural moment within Modernism and away from more strictly feminist understandings. The dualistic forces, whether man and woman or good and evil, engage themselves in a complex, messy, and unending manner that is much more culturally reminiscent of the confusion and alienation felt by modernists than the comparatively more straightforward attitude that preceded the work of Rebecca West.

​

In other areas of her work and of her life, Rebecca West does not espouse ideas that seem in line with female triumph over male to the extent implied by critics. Should Evadne’s adventures on the water be viewed as female triumph, it would make it seem as if West were endorsing the dissolution of the traditional heterosexual couple and the norms within that coupling as it was understood during her lifetime. If it is victory, then there is nothing to

continue fighting about. However, this is not true. West is a woman that seems fairly focused on heterosexual relationships. Within this, she is undoubtedly a feminist, but her ideas are not those of a woman who would argue for deconstruction of gender roles or something as radical as the female overhaul of the man and woman coupling. Her relationship with men, particularly H.G. Wells, placed her in a position in which she was “strained and lonely” and in which he possessed the power to subdue aspects of her ambitions (Trilling 2). Felber reinforced that while West always remained a feminist and proponent of women’s rights and “Indissoluble Matrimony” is not a text that is used as an example of lacking feminism, within her other works she often “overvalues strong males and emphasizes their duty to support dependent women, [and] she demonstrates a desire for male dominance” for some of her female characters (210).Through the manner in which she engages gender, she gives the impression of a person who would focus more on how to make adjustments within a heterosexual coupling rather than truly dismantling the inherent power dynamic.

​

Her relation to feminism is implicated in where she chose to have her story published. “Indissoluble Matrimony” was put into Blast, a magazine from the years right before World War1. Blast was a publication organized by Wyndham Lewis to, as the title implies, blast away the old ideals of the Victorian age and the ideologies that were viewed as old and problematic (Morrisson). It is, however, not aligned with exactly the type of feminism that a modern feminist might have hoped for. Its text states, “To Suffragettes. A word of advice. In destruction, as other things, stick to what you know.” (Lewis 192), and West was the lone female contributor in her edition (Marcedo 309). The actions of feminists that Wyndham is describing within Blast are that of Mary Richardson, who has been described as “denouncing the institutional space of art as deeply gendered and discriminatory” (Macedo 299). Blast, rather than validating or celebrating this act of feminism, meets the action with “the pseudo- ironical, or better, the patronizing tone” (Macedo 300). West must have been acutely aware of the lack of any convincing feminism within Blast. If this lack of feminism was something she wished to reject, submission to Blast can be taken as an endorsement, or at least the lack of a significant desire for rebuttal, of its text and corresponding ideologies within its pages as is further implied by West’s choices in her writings. While the feminist focused interpretations of “Indissoluble Matrimony” would have the story more aligned with the Richardson style of feminism, West has aligned her story more closely with Wyndham instead.

​

Beyond the broad themes, and beyond what is possible to learn from West’s other writings, there are topical moments within “Indissoluble Matrimony” that point to Rebecca West’s incorporation of Manichaeism. George’s insistence in addressing Evadne’s “purely physical” (131) attributes is reminiscent of Manichaeism’s insistence of the flesh as evil. The description of the setting is rife with words indicating either lightness or darkness, the duality at the heart of Manichaeism. It is said to be,“Filled to the brim with yellow moonshine… and the fiery play of summer’s lightning … stars … its silver scales glittered … [and] moonlight lay across it like a sharp edged sword” all create a sharp, Manichean contrast with the darkness of the night (140). Within the context of the lake, “the light blazed so strongly that each reed could be clearly seen like a black dagger stabbing the silver” (140). These moments in which light and dark are contrasted against each other provide a very Manichean physical backdrop for the moments within this story.

The most prominent way to engage this idea of looking for the influence of Manichaeism within this text is to look at how the two characters become representative of ideas associated with Manichaeism and duality. Looking at the two characters and the manner in which they are representative of other ideas is much more complex than a simple good and evil or one gender as light and the other serving as symbolic of the dark. They rather seem to have both of these particles within themselves, which is what Manichaeism puts forth as the rightful understanding of people’s composition. Trying to sort these two people into strict categories does not yield entirely fruitful results. Due to George's propensity for being whiny and accusatory, it would be easy to point to him as being purely representative of those negative attributes, yet West does not serve to put these characters in strict boxes of good and evil beyond providing George with an abundance of grating personality traits.

​

Despite this lack of a clear-cut division, many moments within the text connect Evadne to Manichaeism ideas in particular. There are both thematic and topical mentions that can serve to bring readers to this conclusion and association. Perhaps the most convincing and obvious is the events that occur as the two characters sit down to eat dinner. In the tenets of Manichaeism, followers are supposed to favor the consumption of foods like fruit. Evadne prepares “a bowl of plums” and “a great yellow melon” for her meal while George eats tongue (132). George has consumed food not favored by Manicheans, while Evadne has. This clearly divides these two spouses into Manichean and non-manichean actions (Hama 5). Evadne shows preference for items that were more approved by the Manichean suggestions for how to most properly restore light particles to their place in the world, and therefore becomes more associated with Manichaeism. She also becomes representative of Manichaeism through her reappearance at the end of the story. This could easily be construed as a ‘rebirth’. There is no feasible way that she would have been able to escape and return with enough speed to beat George and turn off the gas otherwise. The story tells us that “bodies like his do not kill bodies like hers” (150). West ensures that there is reassurance that this is not an apparition, because “Evadne was not the sort of woman to have a ghost” (149). This type of rebirth would further correspond to Manichean ideas and is reminiscent of what is necessary for sorting the particles of light and dark that exist in the world properly. She is therefore doing what she is meant to be doing if she was a follower of the Manichean doctrine. The relationship between rebirth and Manichaeism is thoroughly established. It is stated, “Mani taught how the soul of the righteous returns to Paradise whereas the soul of the person who persisted in things of the flesh -- fornication, procreation, possessions, cultivation, harvesting, eating of meat, drinking of wine -- is condemned to rebirth in a succession of bodies” (Britannica). Evadne, in reappearing in the bed at the end of the story, uses this type of reincarnation to reinforce the cyclic nature of the story which in turn lends itself to the previously mentioned manner which is unbecoming for the feminist argument.

Evadne is also Manichean- associated due to the fact that Evadne and George do not have a baby. Evande is sad because of this, and early on she states, “we are a couple of dull dogs aren’t we? I wish we had children” (134). In this inability to have children, Evadne and George have failed to pass on their particles and are not sorting them. These moments are particularly relevant considering the strong ideas that followers of Manichaeism held surrounding birth.

​

Regarding the birth of Jesus, “the Manichaeans believed he was wholly divine, and that he never experienced human birth, as the physical realities surrounding the notions of his conception and his birth filled the Manichaeans with horror” (Lieu 127). The Manichean distaste for aspects of life related to flesh becomes particularly identifiable in this negative association. This lack of birth provides a manifestation of being stuck as exemplified by a lack of a baby, and fits into modernism by concerns over society not moving forward or at least not moving towards a new and brighter direction in a similar manner as reincarnation. It has been demonstrated that Evadne as a character was crafted with Manichean ideals in mind, and in many ways these reflect items that were more accepted in a slightly more progressive modernist society. Evadne’s preferences for fruit over meat reflect veganism which was more mainstream in this time period. She is more socially progressive as seen through her “passionate socialism”, which is in sharp contrast with George’s non-manichean and non-modernist beliefs (135). Evadne is also not white, and her mother is described as “a little darker than conventions permit” (133). This would have still been an issue for many people at this time, much as it is for George in his tendency to animalize and portray race negatively, but still less controversial than in the previous era.

​

On the other hand, and the almost complete opposite of Evadne and her Manichean associations, George is heavily associated with Christianity. He actively eats the tongue that rests in front of him that is discouraged by the Manicheans. In the same way that Evadne mentions Manichean ideas and follows their tracts, George does the same with Christianity although potentially in a more distorted way. George certainly sees himself as representing Christian triumph even if he personally fails to be morally sound in the reader's eyes. Upon completing what he believes to be Evadne’s murder, it says “he did not shrink from entering for his great experience: as Christ did not shrink from being born in a stable” (148). It then goes on to reference the “little house solemn as a temple… this house was a holy place … passover blood on the lintel” showing an incredible abundance of Christian references that George views his world through (149). Earlier on, he also builds this connection through “have I gone to the Unitarian chapel every Sunday morning and to the Ethical Society every evening for nothing?” (147). However, there is a moment in which George longs for ideas that are more Manichean associated. Early in the text George wonders, “why the Church did not provide a service for the absolution of men after marriage. Wife desertion seemed to him a beautiful return of the tainted body to cleanliness” (133). This has an interesting correspondence to other primitive religions which Manichaeism is said to owe a debt to in the creation of its own belief system (Lieu 40), where “a married man … would not be admitted to baptism until he agreed to separate from his wife (Lieu 43). Also relevant to George’s Christian association is where Rebecca chose to publish her story. While Blast, as discussed, was not exactly a particularly progressive type of feminism, it was formed with the goals of blasting away the old and outdated ideas. Some of these might have been the rigidity of and domineering nature of Christianity, including its patriarchal foundations, as represented by George. West therefore logically could be speaking against aspects of Christianity as manifested through George and his inadequacies.

Evadne coming back and her Manichean style resurgence is not just female triumph then; it shows the cultural reawakening, unavoidability even, of ideas like Manichaeism. This is particularly true for how Manichaeism and Christianity exist with each other in an everlasting cycle within society. In this situation, where George represents Christianity and Evadne is Manichaeism, there is an interaction in which Christianity attempts to assert itself onto the former, more natural religion and ultimately fails by the resurrection of the duality focused Manichaeism. Hence, this connection shows that the gender perspective is limiting in this way as well, as there is no way to account for these religious interactions. “Indissoluble Matrimony” deals with large forces at work within society and as individuals and societal systems interact with each other. To say that it is a story about gender is to fail to look at the religious and cultural interactions that are also occurring within the gendered interactions. That duality and religiously focused, messy interactions are fitting culturally and are relevant to a modernist society that itself is viewing religion in an overall convoluted and complex manner.

 

In looking at George and Evadne as representative of the interactions between religious ideas or more generally ideas about the operation of good and evil in the world, understanding the manner in which religions asserted their cultural dominance is important. Multiple former religions were based in the operations of the natural world. Frazer’s The Golden Bough revealed that religions like Christianity built their tenets up around the remains of these more naturalistic religions, often incorporating many elements to assert their own authority (Fraser xxvi). Modernism began to look at these interactions in a more critical way. Authors and artists were interested in looking at those remnants of what used to be before the Christian demolition. Manichaeism, as a more naturalistic, primal religion, would fit into this pattern. This resurgence and cyclic nature of cultural power then becomes more apparent in the interactions between George and Evadne and their corresponding associations. Evadne as the new and George as the old shapes all understandings possible, even the gender focused ones.The interactions between the two characters serves as a compressed history of the way that religions have become understood as interacting with one another. While religions were always interacting in that way, Modernism brought it more to people's attention and made it a cultural moment. In revealing this relationship, Frazer’s The Golden Bough has “frequently been seen as a harbinger of modernism” (Fraser xxxvi). Knowing this connection, looking at the way in which Modernism as a movement is directly implicated in that decision further becomes important. Due to the nature of the way Modernism integrates ideas like Manichaeism, it is easy to see the overlap between the two concepts, but there are distinct ways in which Modernism itself is more directly involved as well.

​

Manichaeism specifically provides a useful and adept framework for Rebecca West to explore the intricacies of British society, colonization, and interactions with what is considered primitive. Evadne is more strongly associated with Manichaeism, which is more of a natural, nature based primitively associated religion, and George is Christianity, which cannot claim those same roots. Modernists frequently discussed how Christianity was removed from sources when it co-opted aspects from preexisting religions (Levenson 100), similarly, George is “without strong primitive instincts” (139). Evadne is not plagued with the same issues, but George is physically incapable no matter how often he tells himself “I must be a very strong man” (146). He is weak and altogether suffers more tremendously when in an outdoor setting. This is true even in minor ways. While George frequently falls while outside, Evadne only falters when confined to the home. She “stumbled on the threshold of the lobby” on her way out of the home (138). George encounters quite a few physical setbacks on his way to the lake. Evadne and nature are tied together through feline allusions as well. Evadne’s actions are described “as a cat licks its fur” (131), like that of “a young animal” (133), that she “trod softly like a cat” (137), and many other moments. Nature itself is described as a “silly kitten’s tail” (138). This is significant in highlighting Evadne’s naturalistic association in that feline characteristics or descriptors are frequently attributed to Evande. Evadne then, through her animal association, is shown to be aligned with nature.

​

The fact that there is no gendered victory, which is the pervasive idea throughout this paper, is in line with Manichaeism. Within this framework, the light particles are still in the process cycle of being returned to their proper areas and this is where that idea of being continuous rather than instantaneous is important. In saying that the story is about a feminist overcoming or any kind of victory takes away from the depth of the story, and makes it more simplistic than it would be otherwise. The matrimony is indissoluble, not a winnable battle. Without this understanding, any information about good and evil and the way the world works would be lost. Dualism as seen in religion and how those forces can still be applied to gender, just in new ways that are sure to include the framework that West has invoked, would be lost. West created a multitude of ways to show that each character was providing a different role within this condensed version of religious interaction. The importance of the Manichean framework in regards to modernist culture is seen because of how reoccurring it is when it is seen in Conrad’s work as well as West’s. To make this story worth the reader’s time beyond what is possible to see from the gender perspective, attention should be paid to all of the intricacies within “Indissoluble Matrimony” and the implications for a modernist society as built through a dualistic framework.

 

Works Cited

 

Bell, Michael. Literature, Modernism and Myth: Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, 1997. EBSCOhost,

https://search-ebscohost-com.easydb.angelo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN= 2081&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Britannica Editors. “Manichaeism”, Ancient Religions and Mythology, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Manichaeism.

 

Brush, Emma. “Bodily Topography in Rebecca West’s “Indissoluble Matrimony””, Colloquium, 2017, https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/colloquium/2017/05/04/bodily-topography-in-reb ecca-wests-indissoluble-matrimony/.

​

Bryne, Alice. “The Cultural and Political Significance of St George in England, 1509-1625” University of Warwick, http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3442875~S1.

​

Buckley, Jorunn Jacobsen. “Tools and Tasks: Elchasaite and Manichaean Purification Rituals.” The Journal of Religion, vol. 66, no. 4, 1986, pp. 399–411. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1202727.

​

Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness” A Norton Critical Edition, Edited by Paul B. Armstrong. Fourth Edition, 2006.

 

Euripides. “The Supplicants” The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr., Vol 1., translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.

​

Felber, Lynette, “Paradoxical Feminism: The Novels of Rebecca West. (Book reviews: West's Novels)” English Literature in Transition 1880-1920. Spring, 2002, Vol. 45 Issue 2, p209.

 

Ferm, Vergilius T.A. “Manichaeism” Forgotten Religions (Including some Living Primitive Religions). 1970. pp. 217-23.

​

Fraser, Robert. “Introduction” The Golden Bough, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. ix-xxxix Freer, Scott. “The Mythical Method: Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ and A Canterbury Tale (1944).” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 27, no. 3, Aug. 2007, pp. 357–70. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.easydb.angelo.edu/10.1080/01439680701443127.

 

Glendinning, Victoria. Rebecca West. Alfred A. Knopf INC, New York, 1987. Greenblatt, Stephen. “The Twentieth Century and After” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th ed. vol F. pp. 1887-913.

​

Hama, Mark. “‘Indissoluble Matrimony’ and the Heresies of Rebecca West” International Society for Heresy Studies Conference, 2 June 2016, New York University.

​

Humme, Maggie. Modern Feminisms, Columbia University Press, 1992. JanMohamed, Abdul R. “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 59-87.

​

Lackey, Michael. “The Moral Conditions for Genocide in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1).” College Literature, vol. 32, no. 1, Jan. 2005, EBSCOhost,

https://search-ebscohost-com.easydb.angelo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A128705117&site=eds-live&scope=site.

 

Levenson, Michael H. “Modernism”, Yale University Press, 2011. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.easydb.angelo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&A44 8249&site=eds-live&scope=site.

​

Lewis, Wyndham. “Blast, No. 1” Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/BlastNo.1/page/n191/mode/2up.

 

Lieu, Samuel N.C., “Manichaeism in the later Roman Empire and medieval China: a historical survey” Internet Archive, 1992, https://archive.org/details/manichaeisminlat00lieu/page/14/mode/2up?view=theater&q=b irth.

​

Macedo, Ana Gabriela. “‘To Suffragettes. A Word of Advice…’. Blast, Gender and ‘Art under Attack” Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida Losa, 2013.

​

Morrisson, Mark. “Blast: An Introduction” Modernist Journals, https://modjourn.org/blast-an-introduction/.

 

Nicholls, Tracey. “Frantz Fanon” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/fanon/.

 

Rohman, Carrie. “On marrying a butcher: animality and modernist anxiety in West's 'Indissoluble Matrimony'” Mosaic (Winnipeg), 2007, Vol. 40 Issue 1, Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A162353981/LitRC?u=txshracd2485&sid=ebsco&xid=74 472d48

​

Simmons, J L. “The Dual Morality in Conrad's ‘Secret Sharer’” Studies in Short Fiction; Newberry, S.C. Vol. 2, Issue 3, 1965.

​

Trilling, Diana, “Jaguar and panther: The unequal liaison between H. G. Wells and Rebecca West”, Times Literary Supplement. July 24, 2020 Issue 6121, p30.

​

Viola, Andre. “A Black Athena in the Heart of Darkness, or Conrad’s Baffling Oxymorons.”

 

Conradiana, vol. 38, no. 2, June 2006, p. 163. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.easydb.angelo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A161023201&site=eds-live&scope=site.

 

West, Rebecca. “Indissoluble Matrimony” Blast, pp. 132- 50 https://archive.org/details/BlastNo.1/page/n191/mode/2up.

​

Woelfel, Craig, and Jayme Stayer. “Modernism and the Turn to Religion [Special Issue].”

 

Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, vol. 73, no. 1, 2021, pp. 3–75. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.easydb.angelo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2 02122397210&site=eds-live&scope=si