After Raymondin was finally able to enter the sacred room for Melusina and had seen her in her truest form, he was sure that whatever he was going to find behind that door couldn’t be what he imagined and it wasn’t! This should have been the best possible outcome for him, isn’t this what he hoped for? Except this was the worst outcome. His relationship with her was broken the moment he entertained his obsession with the pursuit of finding out what he didn’t know and he acknowledged this stating, “So it was he alone who was culpable! It had come to that! He was sure of her now, but too late!” (P.124) He could not go back how things were and the consequences of his actions were yet to come. It would have been better if his assumptions would have been right and his obsession that was slowly consuming his every thought was going to be worth it, except it wasn’t.
Leading up to this part of the story, I noticed the amount of times that the revelation of Melusinas secret was almost stopped which I thought was pretty interesting. From his inner feelings of doubt, the blade of his knife getting stuck and breaking off, to forgetting his lamp and wishing to go back to retrieve it. This all wasn’t enough to hold him back from finding out what he wanted to know. Like an itch that he could not resist to scratch, he would not have been satisfied until he found out what was behind those doors.
Hello Jackie,
Your post – in a way – coincides with mine in regards to the actual bond between Melusine and Raymondin not being worth it even if it did manage to aid others. This sort of “relationship” is something that escalated too quickly and was driven by lust (as I said in my post) rather than by an actual deep connection. This action later comes back to haunt to him when he can’t be at ease due to the unknown information Melusine carries.
Good points here. I would like to see you push your insights about the text to interpretations of it. Why does the story present such a focus on an itch that can not be scratched? Why the presentation of boundaries and privacy? What do you think is at stake in the story, when we think about the story as an allegory or allusion or way of thinking about something larger– perhaps about the environment?
Noticing the detail of his attempts being stopped by some fate of the universe is really interesting; it feels like a reflection of real life and how we hit all kinds of blockages or things in the way when it seems like we’re making the wrong decision. It connects to that realization you point out, where he’s filled with this regret and responsibility for his behavior that clearly disregarded what his wife wanted. In a way, not only is he obviously the one fully human main character, but he’s a very accurate representation of a human conscience that yearns for knowledge but aches at the consequence once they’re fully aware of how this information impacts their lives.
Hi Jackie,
I really liked how you pointed out that Raymondin’s curiosity was more like an “itch he couldn’t resist to scratch”. It makes me wonder if the story is less about Melusina’s secret and more about the danger of not being able to let go of doubt.