And then, like money, sex also becomes a symbol of power and greed. It is this typically human intolerance of ambiguity that puts an end to their m nage quatre. Severin, the wrestler, the grappler with issues, feels that Edith is getting some intangible benefit out of the arrangement that he isn't. It all comes down, Mr. Irving implies, to a quantitative quarrel. A disappointing answer to such a provocative question.
Convention turns out to be the optimum level of control.
He reclaims his in his wife and children and Utch goes back to Europe, leaving the narrator stripped of his past, in order to recover her own. Mr. Irving seems to be saying that, unless we Americans start seriously grappling with our national and sexual history, we are lost. Though there is some truth in this, he exaggerates. In taking intellectuals as representative Americans, he flatters and slanders them at the same time.