John Fowles - The Collector

Once or twice I’ve wondered whether it wasn’t all a trap. Like a sacrifice in chess. Supposing I had said on the stairs, do what you like with me, but don’t send me away?

No, I won’t believe that of him.

Time-lag. Two years ago I couldn’t have dreamed of falling in love with an older man. I was always the one who argued for equal ages at Ladymont. I remember being one of the most disgusted when Susan Grillet married a Beastly Baronet nearly three times her age. Minny and I used to talk about guarding against being “father” types (because of M) and marrying father-husbands. I don’t feel that any more. I think I need a man older than myself because I always seem to see through the boys I meet. And I don’t feel G.P. is a father-husband.

It’s no good. I could go on writing arguments for and against all night.

Emma . The business of being between inexperienced girl and experienced woman and the awful problem of the man. Caliban is Mr. Elton. Piers is Frank Churchill. But is G.P. Mr. Knightley?

Of course G.P. has lived a life and has views that would make Mr. Knightley turn in his grave. But Mr. Knightley could never have been a phoney. Because he was a hater of pretence, selfishness, snobbism.

And they both have the one man’s name I really can’t stand. George. Perhaps there’s a moral in that.

November 18th

I have eaten nothing for five days. I’ve drunk some water. He brings me food, but I have touched not one crumb .

Tomorrow I am going to start eating again.

About half an hour ago, I stood up and felt faint. Had to sit down again. I haven’t felt ill so far. Just tummy pains and a bit weak. But this was something different. A warning.

I’m not going to die for him.

I haven’t needed food. I have been so full of hatred for him and his beastliness.

His vile cowardice.

His selfishness.

His Calibanity.

November 19th

For all that time, I didn’t want to write. Sometimes I wanted to. Then it seemed weak. Like accepting things. I knew as soon as I wrote it down I’d go off the boil. But now I think it needs writing down. Recording. He did this to me.

Outrage.

What little friendship, humanity, good nature there was between us has gone.

From now on we are enemies. Both ways. He said things that showed he hates me as well.

He resents my existence. That’s exactly it.

He doesn’t realize it fully yet, because he’s trying to be nice to me at the moment. But he’s much nearer than he was. One day soon he’s going to wake up and say to himself—I hate her.

Something nasty.

When I came round from the chloroform I was in bed. I had my last underclothes on, but he must have taken everything else off.

I was furious, that first night. Mad with disgust. His beastly gloating hands touching me. Peeling my stockings off. Loathsome.

Then I thought of what he might have done. And hadn’t. I decided not to fly at him.

But silence.

To shout at someone suggests that there’s still contact.

Since then I’ve thought two things.

First: he’s weird enough to have undressed me without thinking, according to some mad notion of the “proper” thing to do. Perhaps he thought I couldn’t lie in bed with my clothes on.

And then that perhaps it was a sort of reminder. Of all the things he might have done, but hadn’t. His chivalry. And I accept that. I have been lucky.

But I even find it frightening that he didn’t do anything. What is he?

There is a great rift between us now. It can never be bridged.

He says now he will release me in another four weeks. Just talk. I don’t believe him. So I’ve warned him I’m going to try to kill him. I would now. I wouldn’t think twice about it.

I’ve seen how wrong I was before. How blind.

I prostituted myself to Caliban. I mean, I let him spend all that money on me, and although I told myself it was fair, it wasn’t. Because I felt vaguely grateful, I’ve been nice to him. Even my teasing was nice, even my sneering and spitting at him. Even my breaking things. Because it takes notice of him. And my attitude should have been what it will be from now on—ice.

Freeze him to death.

He is absolutely inferior to me in all ways. His one superiority is his ability to keep me here. That’s the only power he has. He can’t behave or think or speak or do anything else better than I can—nearly as well as I can—so he’s going to be the Old Man of the Sea until I shake him off somehow.

It will have to be by force.

I’ve been sitting here and thinking about God. I don’t think I believe in God any more. It is not only me, I think of all the millions who must have lived like this in the war. The Anne Franks. And back through history. What I feel I know now is that God doesn’t intervene. He lets us suffer. If you pray for liberty then you may get relief just because you pray, or because things happen anyhow which bring you liberty. But God can’t hear. There’s nothing human like hearing or seeing or pitying or helping about him. I mean perhaps God has created the world and the fundamental laws of matter and evolution. But he can’t care about the individuals. He’s planned it so some individuals are happy, some sad, some lucky, some not. Who is sad, who is not, he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. So he doesn’t exist, really.

These last few days I’ve felt Godless. I’ve felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he’s so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns—all silly and useless.

I’m trying to explain why I’m breaking with my principles (about never committing violence). It is still my principle, but I see you have to break principles sometimes to survive. It’s no good trusting vaguely in your luck, in Providence or God’s being kind to you. You have to act and fight for yourself.

The sky is absolutely empty. Beautifully pure and empty.

As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or could live in them all. It’s obvious, it stares you in the face. There must be a God and he can’t know anything about us.

(Same evening.) I’ve been very mean with him all day. Several times he’s tried to speak, but I’ve shut him up. Did I want him to bring me anything? I said, I want nothing. I am your prisoner. If you give me food I shall eat it to keep alive. Our relations from now on are strictly those of a prisoner and a warder. Now please leave me alone.

Luckily I’ve plenty to read. He’ll go on bringing me cigarettes (if he doesn’t I shan’t ask him for them) and food. That’s all I want of him.

He’s not human; he’s an empty space disguised as a human.

November 20th

I’m making him wish he never set eyes on me. He brought in some baked beans for lunch. I was reading on the bed. He stood for a moment and then started to go out. I jumped to the table, picked up the plate and hurled it at him. I don’t like baked beans, he knows it, I suppose he’d been lazy. I wasn’t in a temper, I just pretended. He stood there with the filthy little bits of orange sauce on his so-clean clothes and looking sheepish. I don’t want any lunch, I snapped at him. And turned my back.

I ate chocolates all the afternoon. He didn’t reappear until supper-time. There was caviare and smoked salmon and cold chicken (he buys them ready-cooked somewhere)—all things he knows I like—and a dozen other things he knows I like, the cunning brute. It’s not the buying them that’s cunning, it’s just that I can’t help being grateful (I didn’t actually say I was grateful, but I wasn’t sharp), it’s that he presents them so humbly, with such an air of please-don’t-thank-me and I-deserve-it-all. When he was arranging my supper-things on the table, I had an irresistible desire to giggle. Awful. I wanted to collapse on the bed and scream. He was so perfectly himself. And I am so cooped up.