The Love of Life

Warning: this is a long essay. It was for my Critcial Writing, and it's about Washington Irving's short story "The Widow and Her Son," and how love is good. yup. : )

Love of Life

            Washington Irving’s short story “The Widow and Her Son” (93-99) illustrates the life-giving power of a loving relationship with God.  A Revolutionary-War-Era author, Irving wrote “The Widow” in the early 19^th century when the United States was just beginning its search for literary, moral and religious identity. The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. is a collection of short stories and essays including “The Widow” that record Irving’s continuation of that search. Using the traveling narrator Geoffrey Crayon, Irving voices a critical analysis of British citizens’ personal values, attempting to determine what benefits society and what does not, and addresses his ideas in part to America’s ideologically young society. This analysis of personal values is particularly apparent in “The Widow,” where Crayon witnesses the death of a beloved son and the different, revealing reactions to this extremity of life. Through describing the power of a widow’s relationship with her son to overcome death, Irving suggests that a sincere, loving relationship with God can overcome the temporal nature of mortality and involves unconditional love and the sacrifice of worldliness.

The allusion in the Epigram of “The Widow” signifies that the Widow’s love for her son and the Son is expressed through honor and reverence and frames the story within the significance of familial relationships. Quoting from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Irving writes, “Pittie old age, within whose silver haires Honour and reverence evermore have rain’d” (93). Honor can be defined as a keeping all of one’s commitments, and reverence denotes a respect for things that are sacred or that pertain to God. In Tamburlaine, the protagonist’s failure to honor his familial relationships and commitments is followed by the death of his worldly success, his abuse of God’s sacred word, and ultimately his separation from the divine. In relation to “The Widow,” this quote suggests that the incredible endurance of the Widow’s love for her son relates and in some ways enables her love of God. However, if the Widow does not renege on either of these relationships, why does Irving suggest that we “pittie old age”? This phrase foreshadows the increasing the significance of the Widow’s steadfast love as the sketch develops—Crayon discovers that this elderly woman not only lacks wealth and material goods, but that she has lost her husband and now faces the loss of her son.  He writes, “the sorrows of the poor…the sorrows of the aged…these are indeed sorrows which make us feel the impotency of consolation”(96). Irving acknowledges that the Widow, although she is possessed of both honor and reverence, will continue to feel grief. This confirms that her love has continued beyond the grave and by extension implies that her relationship with God will also outlast death.

Irving’s allusion to George Herbert’s “Virtue” denotes that the Widow’s love will also outlast the grave because it is virtuous.  The allusion comes within the first paragraph of the sketch, when Geoffrey Crayon describes the country landscape using lines from George Herbert’s “Virtue.” “Sweet day, so pure, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky” (93). Although this quotation seems like a straightforward way to praise and indicate the sacred nature of the fields and farms, the next line in the original text lends itself to a more complex set of implications. Herbert writes, “The dew shall weep thy fall to night; For thou must die.” The poem as a whole states that ultimately, everything beautiful will die, save virtue: “Onely a sweet and virtuous soul, Like season’d timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives.” These final lines in “Virtue” describe the final victory of virtue over death. Virtue’s triumph influences the interpretation of  “The Widow’s” conclusion, when the woman has lost everything she cared for in this life but still displays a “pious, though broken heart” (98). When she passes into the next life, Crayon feels happy for her: “I heard, with a feeling of satisfaction, that she had quietly breathed her last, and had gone to rejoin those she loved, in that world where sorrow is never known, and friends are never parted” (99). He rejoices that she has received salvation, the reward of a virtuous soul, but he does not write that he rejoices because she was virtuous: his happiness comes because she had loved on earth, and so will continue to do so after death. This allusive substitution of loving relationships for “virtue” suggests that the two terms are closely related, and elucidates Crayon’s characterization of the Widow as someone who loves completely and yet is virtuous beyond the grave of those she loves—her behavior indicates that someone who can maintain love for a family member through sickness and death will also be more capable of loving God in the extremities of existence.

Expanding on the idea that a virtuous soul’s relationship with God will continue beyond death, Irving uses contrasting imagery from the landscape surrounding the town and the church the Widow attends to indicate love’s humility and simplicity.  The sketch begins with the previously mentioned quote from Herbert’s “Virtue,” which describes the natural environment surrounding the small village. It may appear that the original context of the poem suggests the eventual death of the landscape because in the poem, nighttime brings death to the sky and the earth’s “bridal relationship.” However, this metaphor displays the inevitable death of all relationships based on impermanent factors (the sun’s presence in the sky). Recording the environment’s response to the Sabbath, he writes, “The holy repose which reigns over the face of nature, has its moral influence; every restless passion is charmed down, and we feel the natural religion of the soul springing up gently within us” (93). This moral significance, or even behavior, indicates that the natural environment becomes sacred (or belonging to God) because of the way it responds to His presence. This description of the naturally sacred environment is in direct contrast to that of the old Church building, which, according to Crayon, is “shadowy…mouldering…dark…reverend with the gloom of departing years” (93). These adjectives associate the building with secrecy, death, and history’s ability to weigh down on the present. The melancholy, presumably once beautiful chapel has come to represent the mortal death of earthly pride. The significance of these images becomes clearer in the next paragraphs, when Crayon describes the inhabitants of the church as “wealthy and aristocratic…glittering,” and the widow as possessing “the lingerings of decent pride” (94). He explains that “her dress, through humble in the extreme, was scrupulously clean.” This comparison between the Widow and congregation further indicates that what separates the life-sustaining natural world from the life-ending church is their response to sacred things; nature’s appearance and response to God on Sunday, like the Widow’s, are genuine and simple, while the church’s and its congregation are ornate and artificial.

The Widow’s humble sacrifice of everything in her life for the love of her son alludes to the parable of the Widow’s mites, and provides a metaphorical precursor to the Widow’s ultimate demonstration of love for God.  Describing the Widow’s loss, Crayon writes “When I saw the mother slowly and painfully quitting the grave, leaving behind her the remains of all that was dear to her on earth, and returning to silence and destitution, my heart ached for her” (96). The Widows in both bible and this sketch are creatures who have lost all earthly wealth. They have lost the great love and support of their husband, they are alone in the world, and they are dangerously poor. Nevertheless, they choose to sacrifice their hearts to the Savior. This is demonstrated in the bible when the Widow gives all that she has in her possession—two mites—to the Church, taking regardless of her own welfare. Irving’s widow has already demonstrated her willingness to sacrifice by dedicating her life to helping her dying son. Crayon records, “His mother was his constant attendant, and he seemed unwilling to be helped by any other hand” (97). When the boy to whom this woman has given the strength of her old age dies, the reader might expect the Widow to feel frustration with him or with God, or at least to give up on any further attempts at showing love. However, the Widow instead demonstrates her willingness to sacrifice for her love by appearing at church. Crayon describes a “struggle between pious affection and utter poverty…” (98). Although the Widow does not even possess proper mourning attire, she does her very best to demonstrate her love for her son and, through him, the love of the Son of God.

Although Irving describes his sketch as a “humble tale of affliction,” the virtue evident in the Widow’s profound humility and self-sacrificing love for her son gives a powerful example upon which American society could model its cultural values. Today, Washington Irving’s portrayal of the Widow appeals to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic in large part because she embodies humble, self-sacrificing love and devotion, which are now indeed cultural values. The allusions in this sketch direct the reader to the importance of relationships in the ability to overcome the weakness and temporal nature of mortality, while the images create a sharp contrast between the woman whose life has been devoted to her son and God and the other proud, emotionally closed members of her congregation. Irving’s text paints the portrait of a woman whose significance and longevity are greater than those of the Church where she worshipped: “this living monument of real grief,” writes Crayon, “was worth them all” (98). Although the Widow suffers the inevitable pangs of mortal death, Irving reassures the reader that her love will continue beyond mortality: “I heard, with a feeling of satisfaction, that she had quietly breathed her last, and had gone to rejoin those she loved, in that world where sorrow is never known, and friends are never parted” (99). In the end of life, the Widow’s willingness to sacrifice herself for her relationships to her son and God will allow her to eternally live in love.