‘I think . . .’ She cleared her throat. Something was pinching at it. ‘I think it will help me make sense of . . . certain things. Of what’s happened, I mean . . .’ ‘Certain things.’
A clear reference to the well-known Christmas reading from John's gospel:
‘Don’t try to placate me! She was my only friend and they took her away from me! That’s the kind of god I’m supposed to believe in? I’d rather burn in hell.’
Later Andrew says to her:
‘You believe in a very strange god, Mara.’
One of these "things" is the death of her twin sister, Hester, who had drowned in the Sea of Galilee a few weeks before the opening of the novel. Mara and Hester had been members of a revivalist sect. Mara left after she rebelled against the teaching on the roll of women and the character of the leader but was unable to pursuade Hester to do so. Hester became pregnant and carried a dead baby to term in the belief it would be healed. She was still in the sect when she drowned.
The name Mara, means "bitter"*. She is bitter against God, the church, aspects of her chldhood, her Father and men in general. Over the period of the university year we inhabit Mara's world as she struggles with the irreconcilable loss of her sister, the invasion of her solitary life by new friends and one particular man, and the loss of the foundation of her life, her faith.
Why It Scratches Where I Itch
At its heart Angels and Men is about the Christian faith, what it is and what it means. The traditionalists, the fanatics, the modernists, the disillusioned, the agnonstics and the atheists are all present. The problems of faith in the modern world are laid bare. The conflicting views mirror my own journey as it has lurched from absolutist to agnostic but never quite to atheist.
An ever-present invisible realm
Mara is a talented artist, forever sketching people, places and her thoughts. She sees the world with an artist's eye. Catherine Fox uses this to bring alive the invisible world of soul and spirit. The novel begins:
The City is a galleon sailing on the river. Listen to the wind thrumming in the trees and singing round the chimney-pots. High on the crow’s nest of the cathedral hear the ping-ping-ping of rope against flagpole. This is where the angels pass by. These are the angel paths, the windy walkways. They are clothed with polished air and their faces are the faces of statues, bright as sunlight off water. No one sees them. ....
Aunt Jessie could see angels; but then, she was mad. Ran mad in the Welsh revival in 1904. She lies now in a quiet graveyard. Her tombstone says: Nearer my God to thee.
And later:
We are so obsessed with people and things. For a moment she had glimpsed another world where it was the space between things which was real. The realm of angels. Objects were gaps, pools of mere nothingness. She saw the angels passing to and fro across the breadth of the universe, transparent, incorporeal, going about their business.
As Mara looked at the sunlight on the bare branches, the same feeling she had known as a child came over her again. This world was no more than a thin membrane stretched out over eternity. At any moment it might peel back and the glory come blazing through. On days like this it seemed so near, the fabric pulled so fine that it was lit up from behind, beyond, and every shifting play of light, each moving leaf, might be the shadow of the just passing to and fro behind the veil among the angels.
I am science trained and no artist but for me the biological, physical, material world is not enough to describe our human nature. This novel evokes the invisible and invites the reader to see the unseen. In the words of my favourite hymn:
"Immortal, invisible, God only wise
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes"
.......
All Laud we would render, O help us to see
Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee
What Do You Want?
Despite reading for an English degree and researching theology, at heart Mara is an artist, a talent she tries to keep hidden. Who is she is meant to be?
Another character, Johnny, a young northern builder, is an ordinand training for the priesthood but he's like a fish out of water - a working class man in a middle class profession. Should he give up the idea of being a vicar?
In the novel both Mara and Johnny have visions of angels.
A group of friends are socialising and one asks Johnny to tell his conversion story. He told them how, one night in the pool room of a pub a vicar had told him the story of the prodigal son and how the son was welcomed home by his father. Johnny does't believe any father would do that.
‘But the vicar says, yes, that is what he does, because that’s what God’s like. No matter where you’ve been, no matter what you’ve done, he’s waiting for you to come home.’ ..... I said, “Listen, I don’t need God, or you or anyone else telling me what to do. I can run my own life.” Well, the vicar gave up and went home and I had a few more pints before closing time. On the way home I saw a vision.’ ..... I turned the corner and there was this bloody great angel blocking the path.’ .....
They sat watching him uncertainly to see if he was serious. ....
'Well, go on. What did it say?’ asked Maddy. ‘ “Hail, thou that art highly favoured”?’.......
‘No. He said, “Don’t mess with me, you arrogant little sod.” ’
‘You liar,’ said Maddy. ‘Angels don’t speak like that.’...
But it had rung true for Mara. It seemed to her that this was exactly how an angel might speak. Terrifying warriors, not effete pre-Raphaelite musicians.
Mara in her room one night and can't sleep:
The moon must be full, she thought. It was shining into her room through the open curtains, casting shadows across the floor. As she watched, the light seemed to intensify. Perhaps she was imagining it? She waited, and yes, sure enough, it was growing brighter all the time. ... she got up out of bed and went over to the window. The whole sky was white. Strange and beautiful. It must be some kind of atmospheric phenomenon. ....... Then, as she watched, the light began to gather itself. Slowly before her horrified eyes it drew itself in, forming itself, burning, burning. Her hands clawed the curtains shut and she stumbled back to bed, blocking her eyes, her ears with the covers. But she knew it was still there, fluttering at the glass.
Mara's grief over her sister's death leads to a breakdown. She recovers at a monastic retreat. When she leaves she goes to thank Tom, the prior.
She saw Tom’s right hand move to the cross he wore round his neck. The fingers closed around it, and she knew that this was a mute prayer. ..
‘Mara, what do you want?’
‘Nothing!’ The word shot frightened out of her.
‘What do you want, Mara?’
Freedom. To be free of all this guilt and fear and shame. To be absolved.
The ticking of the clock grew louder and louder in her ears. She watched as slowly his fingers uncurled from the cross. He raised his hand and pronounced the absolution. The familiar words slid over one another like pebbles worn smooth by centuries of tides. She felt her lips whisper ‘Amen’ and her hand moving to cross herself before she could stop it. A great sigh left her, as though her soul had been dislocated for years and had at last been slipped back into joint.
For a moment she sat still in wonder, then a sense of outrage seized her. How dare he do that without asking? He had tricked a response out of her, meaningless as a knee-jerk in a doctor’s surgery. She stood up angrily and turned to leave; but she had only taken two steps when she leapt back with a cry. Tom was beside her in an instant. The room seemed dim and she groped for his arm.
‘Did you see that?’ She could feel her brain gibbering.
‘See what?’
Her mind was still squeaking with terror when to her amazement she heard herself laugh. It seemed to come bubbling up from a forgotten spring.
‘What did you see?’ asked Tom. The laughter died back down again. Tick, tick, said the clock.
‘An angel.’ They stood looking at one another.
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ She shook her head, and he continued to watch her. Was he afraid she was mad?
‘I’ve seen it before,’ she heard herself gabble, as though this would reassure him. For a moment the memory of it made her quiver. The terrible countenance, eyes burning with wrath and fierce joy. Very cautiously she turned her head round, but there was nothing there, just a shaft of sunlight coming through the narrow window.
Some days later:
Then a voice drifted into her mind. It was a moment before she could place it. Tom. At the friary: ‘What do you want, Mara?’ Actually, she thought, I want to paint. And for one light-headed moment she felt her spirit rise up and go whirling over the river.
Who are we meant to be? We have our natural bodies, and our lives are formed by nature and nurture, but is there another me, not of flesh and blood but of soul and spirit?
A Strange God
The novel presents two forms of Christianity that are in stark contrast, the fundamentalist, fanatical believers who are sure the end of the world is not far off and the staid, safe traditionlists of the Church of England. Mara has rejected both, yet she cannnot escape a nagging feeling that there is another way of believing. At Christmas, one evening, she is outside her parent's house as the snow falls, waving godbye to a friend.
In the porch the candle flame guttered in some unseen draught. Mara began to walk back towards the house. The flame steadied itself and burnt on in the uncomprehending dark.
A clear reference to the well-known Christmas reading from John's gospel:
"In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." Jn 1:4-5
The darkness in Mara's life is the profound loss of her twin sister. Light is still shining yet she is unable to comprehend it.
The darkness in Mara's life is the profound loss of her twin sister. Light is still shining yet she is unable to comprehend it.
Andrew, a fellow graduate plays an important part in the novel. He too has given up his faith and understands Mara's struggles. In this passage she is talking with Andrew and boils over in rage against, God.
‘Don’t try to placate me! She was my only friend and they took her away from me! That’s the kind of god I’m supposed to believe in? I’d rather burn in hell.’
‘Well, what if there’s another kind?’ he asked. “Merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love”? ’
Later Andrew says to her:
‘You believe in a very strange god, Mara.’
‘I don’t.’ She felt insulted. The god she so faithfully didn’t believe in wasn’t at all strange.
‘You don’t think irrational sadism is an odd quality for the Divine Being to possess?’
She looked blank.
‘Listen. God creates a woman and gives her the ability to draw like an angel. He fixes it so that there is nothing in the world she would rather do than draw, then he damns her in perpetuity if she picks up a pencil.’
Mara stared at him. He’s right. That is what I believe.
She turned away and faced the window in amazement. She saw the beautiful morning, heard the birds singing on the riverbank, the bells chime. Someone somewhere was laughing at her. She put her hand over her mouth to stop herself joining in. It was a theological gaffe of stupendous proportions.
So that was the angel’s message. For an instant she saw it again in her memory, like sunlight flashing off a distant window, the fierce eyes, the wrathful joy. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, you fatheaded finite fool. How can you even have thought it? She remembered Andrew’s earlier words: What if there’s another kind of God? Gracious, slow to anger. She heard herself laugh.
Unrelenting Grace
Mara projected a personality of cold, indifference to people as protective armour. She didn't want people too close and certainly not a God who could not save her sister. The novel plots the steady attacks on her defences until they are finally breached. In Christian understanding it is the unrelenting Grace of God that breaks through.
The poet Francis Thompson wrote the poem, The Hound of Heaven on this theme:
I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasm'd fears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me.
Both Mara and Johnny reject the God of Christian conformity and go through doubt, darkness, despair and anger before they finally hear a voice speaking to them individually. Then their faltering faith can throw off dead dogma and creeds and become a living thing.
"Wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong - does that apply to me too?
* “Don’t call me Naomi,(pleasant)” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter" Ruth 1: 20"
Quotes from: Fox, Catherine. Angels and Men . SPCK. Kindle Edition.
