The Beautiful and Damned: Flimsy Foundation

 Note: This post contains spoilers for The Beautiful and Damned!

Previously in part one, we have seen the role distance plays in Anthony and Gloria’s relationship. Although all seems to be well at the beginning, their relationship then begins to deteriorate. In this post, I’ll explore why their marriage collapses in relation to what I’ve discussed in the first post: distance, beauty, and desirability. (There are, of course, other causes and points of view.)

Skipping Groundwork

A marriage is a serious commitment. Ideally, one should consider many things before agreeing to a matrimony. Take, for example, suitability (in terms of personality), living accommodations, work arrangements, and so forth. Nevertheless, Anthony and Gloria skip this entire process - which is their main problem. They never really got to properly know each other. Our main couple largely bases their relationship on initial excitement, on that beauty and desirability produced by distance.

Anthony's affair with Dorothy Raycroft was an inevitable result of his increasing carelessness about himself. He did not go to her desiring to possess the desirable, nor did he fall before a personality more vital, more compelling than his own, as he had done with Gloria four years before.

Book 3, Chapter 1, Dot

The passage above, for instance, tells us one of Anthony’s motives for marrying Gloria: “to possess the desirable”. He was entranced by desirability. Many men find Gloria desirable, but they never became her longtime companion. So perhaps this competitively drives Anthony to be the one who really “owns” the desirable.

However, if it all hinges on distance, then marriage would utterly destroy it. In an unmarried state it is true that distance exists between the two lovers. A union in marriage, however, closes that distance. With distance gone, the beauty and desirability it produces naturally disappear too.

Anthony and Gloria then begin to find deficiencies they had never seen in the other. Perhaps all that initial glitter obscured their view. Or perhaps they had seen, but never took them seriously. Gloria’s selfishness, Anthony’s arrogance, and their tendency to seek personal pleasure above all else are now in full display and make close proximity difficult. Thus, without the beauty and desirability offered by distance, their marriage has nothing solid to depend on.

(To be fair, I do think there are certain things that you can only find out about your partner when you actually get married. But these things should not be so…grievous. I guess that’s the best word I can think of currently. You really need to get to know your partner before the marriage.)

Lost Forever

If distance is what they need, then surely giving each other more space - perhaps regularly - must fix the relationship. That’s partly true, exemplified by this passage:

Then the serenity, the content, had become less jubilant, had become, gray—very rarely, with the spur of jealousy or forced separation, the ancient ecstasies returned, the apparent communion of soul and soul, the emotional excitement.

Book 2, Chapter 3, The Broken Lute

It is only partly true because distance is just a temporary fix. Despite the occasional return of the “ancient ecstasies” - the excitement and happiness - the “grayness” of their marriage always finds a way to return too.

In Book 3, we also find the biggest example of this temporary fix. In the midst of their collapsing marriage, Anthony leaves Gloria to enlist in the army, and it is due to this separation that their relationship improves. This return to a state of bliss, however, is brief.

As the winter passed with the march of the returning troops along Fifth Avenue they became more and more aware that since Anthony's return their relations had entirely changed. After that reflowering of tenderness and passion each of them had returned into some solitary dream unshared by the other and what endearments passed between them passed, it seemed, from empty heart to empty heart, echoing hollowly the departure of what they knew at last was gone.

Book 3, Chapter 2, Another Winter

Although distance had momentarily revived their relationship, it did not take long to return to its dilapidated state. Gloria is objectively beautiful, and distance must have amplified that beauty even more, but that isn’t enough to resolve their issues with each other. Anthony and Gloria’s awareness of the other’s faults are too real, too massive for distance to “cover up”, and to make things worse, both do not have enough sense of responsibility to do something for the better.

Interestingly, the same thing occurs in the beginning of the book. Let us revisit the moment Anthony finds a lady beautiful because of her distance.

His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley….It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful….

He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices…

The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair. 

Book 1, Chapter 1, Afternoon

After Anthony discovers that the lady is actually unappealing, distance doesn’t seem to be able to revive that impression of beauty. The beautiful girl now stays an unattractive woman despite the distance between them. So perhaps I should correct myself when I say distance renders beauty. More accurately, distance renders beauty most effectively when paired with ignorance.

To conclude…

Anthony and Gloria’s marriage fails because most of their relationship hinges on temporary excitement. They married without taking the time to thoroughly consider substantial things, such as their spouse’s character, way of life, and so on. Their problems are also exacerbated by each of their inability to change as a person. And thus, when that initial sparkle is gone, the marriage collapses.