i didn't want to think about this
i have suddenly developed a strong disliking of the book we are reading for english. the following is a passage from P.D. James's The Children of Men.
"Did you love them, either of them? Do you love your husband?"
She said quietly: "Did you love your wife?"
It was, he saw, a serious question, not a retaliation, and he gave it a serious and truthful answer. "I convinced myself I did when i married. I willed myself into the appropriate feelings without knowing what the appropriate feelings were. I endowed her with qualities she didn't have and then despised her for not having them. Afterwards I might have learned to love her if i had thought more of her needs and less of my own."
He thought: Portrait of a marriage. Perhaps most marriages, good and bad, could be summed up in four sentences.
She looked at him steadily for a moment, then said: "That's the answer to your question."
"And Luke?"
"No, i didn't love him, but i liked having him in love with me. I envied him because he could love so much, could feel so much. No on has wanted me with that intensity of emotion. So i gave him what he wanted. If i had loved him it would have been..." She paused for a moment, then said: "It would have been less sinful."
"Isn't that a strong word for a simple act of generosity?"
"But it wasn't a simple act of generosity. It was an act of self-indulgence."