The Impact of the Past on the Future
In the novel’s prologue the past is described as an alien place where things are done differently. It is an apt metaphor to describe how the past becomes a thematic link to the present in the narrative. Although only 50 years more or less separate the main story from the framing device, it could almost be a hundred or two-hundred years. The relatively innocent bucolic setting where aristocratic honor of a family is at stake in the process of approaching marriage as a business negotiation is still separated from contemporary readers by a little over a century, but the rules conventional might as well as the code of chivalry practiced by medieval knights. And yet, as divergent as the future has become when Leo rediscovers his diary, that present is still being impacted upon by decisions made within the constrictions of an increasingly outdated morality and expectation of social convention.
So profound is the progression of history and the inexorable liberalizing of social discourse and the terms of social interaction that those living in the present can look back to the period of their own childhood and have difficult recognizing the point of so many things that seemed so important. And yet, the 1952 from which the adult Leo looks back upon that fateful summer as the 19th century turned into the 20th century was still a period in which Victorian considerations of sexuality were still the norm. Even from his vantage point beyond two World Wars, the inventions of the radio and television, the replacement of the horse by the automobile as the standard means of transportation for most people and the imminent arrival of Playboy and Marilyn Monroe, the decision by Marian and Ted to have sex outside the framework of marriage could become the stuff of scandal. And yet, at the very same time, how foreign it must have seemed to Leo half a century on that Marian Maudsley would come under such pressure to marry the Viscount for the sole purpose of moving up a few rungs on the strictly defined social ladder.
It is not for mere effect that Hugh and Marian’s grandson Edward both wear the aristocratic title of Viscount. In Hugh’s time, such a title still meant something. By the time Edward speaks of a ridiculous curse, the title has almost assumed the mantle of parody. To be a Viscount in 1952 was already a thing of pure silliness from a past that seems longer ago than it really was.
While aristocratic titles may have seen their day in the sun long pass into the shadow of caricature, not everything has changed with the time. The past will still intrude on Leo fifty years out with a request for loyalty and trust. Marian will come to him with another request to deliver a message as the go-between and in the unquestioning willingness of the adult Leo—practically the senior citizen Leo—to be there when needed, there is evidence that while the future will eventually winnow out those elements of the past it deems useless and unnecessary, there is an everlasting present in which things like friendship and empathy remain unchanged.
