SHORT STORY REVIEW – D H LAWRENCE – SMILE (1928)

A very short story in The Woman Who Rode Away collection. It deals with a man’s reaction to the death of his ex-wife, who left him after many separations and much bitterness, for a life in the convent. There is some irony in her name being Ophelia, the name given by Shakespeare to Hamlet’s suicidal or mad sister, who Hamlet had rudely told ‘Get Thee to a nunnery. This Ophelia has done just that.

With her death looming due to some unspecified illness, the nuns have contacted her ex-husband, Matthew, who sets out to visit her. The nuns have sent for him despite Ophelia’s wishes not to see him before her death, news that makes him feel very distressed. He stays on the train that has brought him to the convent’s vicinity, contemplating not going in. Eventually he does go in, but he is too late and Ophelia has already died.

Matthew is described as being a monk, suggesting that either he has also taken religious vows, or that in separation from Ophelia, he has been plunged into a life of sexual abstinence, chastity and celibacy. This is a couple who could not live their lives together well, but who are also hopelessly lost without one another.

Matthew asks to see Ophelia’s body, which the nuns allow, and they are shocked when he smiles on seeing her on her deathbed. His smile is however infectious and the nuns find themselves smiling too, but when Matthew leaves they se his look of despair and wonder if he will ever be able to smile again.

This is a story about how we can love and hate someone at the same time, and how we feel trapped, rather than liberated, by the death of those who have had a great old on our lives. Its capture of a state of mourning and the bitterness of the relationship described is brilliant.

Arthur Chappell