Passage to India - Love and Marriage

^z 12th September 2023 at 6:54pm

From Part II Chapter XV of E M Forster's Passage to India, enigmatic musings on intimacy, attraction, and partnership:

... The discovery had come so suddenly that she felt like a mountaineer whose rope had broken. Not to love the man one's going to marry! Not to find it out till this moment! Not even to have asked oneself the question until now! Something else to think out. Vexed rather than appalled, she stood still, her eyes on the sparkling rock. There was esteem and animal contact at dusk, but the emotion that links them was absent. Ought she to break her engagement off? She was inclined to think not—it would cause so much trouble to others; besides, she wasn't convinced that love is necessary to a successful union. If love is everything, few marriages would survive the honeymoon. ...

^z - 2017-10-30