No, we haven't had another conversation about this same topic again. I just can't let it go.
You know, when Marie says "there are certain lines you can't ever cross," maybe I shouldn't get irritated or feel judged. Maybe I should just feel grateful that she has led such a charmed and sheltered life. Of course she has had bad things happen to her, like we all have. What I mean by the words "charmed and sheltered" is that maybe, somehow, she has reached her sixties without ever having to face her own capacity for evil.
Because we all have that capacity. Some of us exercise it more visibly or dramatically than others. But I'm convinced that at a moral level, any person is capable of any crime if only the circumstances are just right. (I specify "at a moral level": there might be some crimes which are, for example, too physically demanding for slobs like me.) If Marie feels that she can judge someone for crossing a moral line in words (and not even in deeds!), perhaps that's because she has never had to confront her own willingness to do likewise. And that means she has been able to avoid a certain measure of suffering in this life, which is in turn a good thing.
(I discuss coming to terms with my own willingness to do Wrong in this post here, and probably in other places too that I can't be bothered to find right now.)
- She works in retail, which is to say that she works in a service profession for a modest wage. (When she first graduated from college she went to work in high tech at a high salary, but she deliberately gave up that position after a few years.)
- Sometimes she has lived among others; right now she lives alone.
- But she has never married.
- Her sexual relationships have been few and brief. Well, I guess the one with me isn't exactly "brief"; but we see each other only a few times a year. Counted in Days Spent Together, it's still brief.
- She has never borne or raised children.
- Most of her knowledge of human passion—and, even more, of how people navigate difficult situations—comes from literature. At one point she responded to some story I had told her about Wife (or maybe D, I forget) by asking me to read Lois McMaster Bujold's novel Memory (a space-opera yarn forming part of the Vorkosigan Saga) … and then asking me, "Was it like that?" (Answer: No, it was nothing at all like that. What are you thinking?)
Strictly speaking, I suppose none of this rises quite to the level of "poverty, chastity, and obedience." But in a secular context it comes awfully close. When she deliberately chose a lower wage because it was more in line with her values, that came close to a religious vow of poverty. And her relationship history comes awfully close to looking like virginity. The funny thing is that people who are still virgins think that virginity is all about the condition of your genital parts. Once you are well past that threshold, you realize that the physical state of your genitals is the least of it; the real loss of virginity comes in relating to people in a different way. I don't know how to characterize the difference more exactly than that (possibly because I've been drinking this evening, though I don't really believe that's the whole reason) but I know it when I see it.
So maybe she's just a nun, and her moralism is just a profound innocence about the real world. I don't know if that's true, but it is a refreshing way to look at it.
Of course there's another reading.
Earlier today I found someone on Twitter quote the maxim, "The children who are subjected to abuse do not stop loving their parents, but they stop loving themselves." That came back to me as I typed the paragraphs above. And yes, I suppose it is possible that maybe Marie counts herself among the Reprobate and the Damned, but holds as an article of faith that Other People should not be as fallen as she is. I have no particular evidence for this thesis, however, so I'd prefer to leave it as a purely theoretical possibility.
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