payment page
What about freedom, Marion? What about that? I thought we had, you know, an understanding. I thought we had a—well, a modern marriage. You’ve got the freedom to work, haven’t you? I should have the freedom to see whoever I like. I thought we were different from our parents
This passage comes from Part III of the novel, when Tom and Marion argue over his planned trip to Venice with Patrick. Marion confronts Tom over his failure to tell her about the trip to Venice, and Tom’s defensive response underscores his own desire for romantic freedom despite the confines of his marriage. Tom believes he can have the social benefits of marriage while maintaining a romantic relationship with Patrick, but his argument illustrates that this freedom is more difficult to achieve than Tom had imagined. Even though Patrick is willing to share Tom and Tom is willing to divide his time between his two partners, his ties to Marion inevitably infringe on his personal freedom. What’s more, Tom attempts to leverage Marion’s own freedom against her, throwing in her face that he has acquiesced to her pursuing a career. Tom uses Marion’s freedoms against her to trap her in an open marriage she never agreed to.
"They’re in Venice. Together."
"You said."
Julia sighed. "Men have such freedom. Even married ones."
Julia speaks these words to Marion in Part III of the novel when they are out together during Tom and Patrick’s trip to Venice. Julia speaks wistfully, envying the freedom Tom enjoys as a man. Although Tom is not as free as he wants to be, both because of his sexuality and because of his marriage, Julia recognizes that his gender nevertheless allows him relative freedom to move through the world as he pleases. Julia longs for the freedom Tom enjoys. Throughout the book, women have limited ability to shape their lives separately from men. In this scene, Julia tells Marion that she is like Tom, meaning that she is attracted to women. She understands that Tom’s trip with Patrick is a kind of honeymoon, a private time for two lovers. The freedom she refers to here is both the freedom to travel and also the freedom to shrug off, at least for a time, the restrictions imposed by society’s rigid gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality
After just two days of the possibilities of Venice, I said, "We should live here." And Tom’s answer was, "We should fly to the moon." But he was smiling.
While in prison at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, Patrick remembers his trip to Venice with Tom. Patrick experiences Venice as a paradise of freedom and beauty. Surrounded by art, he and Tom are free to be together as lovers, sitting close to each other on their exhilarating speedboat ride and kissing in public without fear. In this passage, Tom treats Patrick’s suggestion of moving to Venice as an impossible fantasy. However, his smile here shows that he, too, feels drawn to the promise of living freely forever, not just for a single trip. The novel introduces a stark contrast between Patrick’s dream of Venice and the restrictions of life in England, especially as he remembers this trip from prison. In Venice, he was free to love openly, to dream of a future in which he could not only be with the man he loved but also live openly, free from all secrecy. In England, his love for Tom lands him in prison, and the dream of freedom remains only a dream.
