2010
The Comforters / Muriel Spark
Caroline realised that she had been starring at Mrs. Hogg’s breasts for some time, and was aware at the same moment that the woman’s nipples were showing through her cotton blouse. The woman was apparently wearing nothing underneath. Caroline looked swiftly away, sickened at the sight, for she was prim; her sins of the flesh had been fastidious always. (Spark 35)
And then the typewriter again: tap-tap-tap. She was rooted. ‘My God!’ she cried aloud. ‘Am I going mad?’
As soon as she had said it, and with the sound of her own voice, her mind was filled with an imperative need to retain her sanity. It was the phrases ‘ Caroline wondered’ which arrested her. Immediately then, shaken as she was, Caroline began to consider the possibilities, whether the sounds she head were real or illusory. (Spark 48)
‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘That’s just the point. I won’t be involved in this fictional plot if I can help it. In fact, I’d like to spoil it. If I had my way I’d hold up the action of the novel. It’s a duty… I intend to stand aside and see if the novel has any real form apart from this artificial plot.’ (Spark 115)
Laurence and Giles…were overjoyed at Georgina’s [Hogg] astounding bosom. Giles was the one who produced the most poetic figures to describe it; he declared that under her blouse she kept pairs of vegetable marrows, of infant whales, St. Paul’s Cathedrals, goldfish bowls. (Spark 150)
Caroline Rose sighed as she lay in hospital contemplating her memory of Mrs. Hogg. ‘Not a real-life character,’ she commented at last, ‘only a gargoyle.’ (Spark 152)
[In her childhood] Georgina would tell the cousins,
‘I can know the thoughts in your head.’ (Spark 154) (Attributed to “because I go to school in a convent.â€)
And what a day for Mrs. Hogg, that gargoyle, climbing into her mousy room at Chiswick where, as she opened the door, two mice scuttled one after the other swiftly down their hole beside the gas meter.
However, as soon as Mrs. Hogg stepped into her room she disappeared, she simply disappeared. She had no private life whatsoever. God knows where she went in her privacy. (Spark 170)
[Caroline’s] sense of being written into the novel was painful. Of her constant influence o its course she remained unaware and now she was impatient for the story to come to an end, knowing that the narrative could never become coherent to her until she was at last outside it, and at the same time consummately inside it. (Spark 197)
It was not until Mrs. Hogg opened her mouth finally to the inrush of water that her grip slackened and Caroline was free, her lungs aching for the breath of life. Mrs. Hogg subsided away from her. God knows where she went. (Spark 214)
