What does it mean to sell your fiancée?
There’s a really odd moment near the end of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, where you can’t decide whether to choke and spit out whatever you’re drinking and exclaim “What!??” or just laugh and continue reading. It’s when Adam sells “his share” in Nina to cover his tab at Lottie’s. It’s ironic that the whole of the book he’s been trying to scrape together enough money to comfortably marry her and then sells her off to cover a debt. It’s like the cancellation of two debts—one to Lottie, one to her. In one fell swoop, he no longer needs to “pay up” to anyone!
The context of the scene is unusual. Ginger is reluctant to buy a girl—“it’s not decent”, he says (279). Then, he quickly changes his tone. The next sentence reads, “Besides, a hundred pounds is the deuce of a lot” (279). And, he goes on about the cost of getting married, buying a couple of Irish polo ponies, and getting them over to England! His moral scruples are easily overcome: he’s really just worried about the expenditure. So, getting Adam out of the way for 78 pounds seems like a good deal to him. He actually only gets Adam to promise that “[he]’ll try,” but it’s enough for Ginger (280). From this, we can deduce that from Ginger’s point of view, the relationship between Adam and Nina is completely airtight and strong. His only way in is to accept the offer.
Adam, on the other hand, is having his revenge, paying off all his debts, and still keeping Nina to himself. Compare Nina’s speech where she says she’ll marry Ginger with this one, Adam notifying her of her sale:
“I’m engaged to be married”
“Who to?”
“I hardly think I can tell you… Ginger.”
“Well?”
“I don’t ever want to see you again”
(260)
“My dear, I sold you”
“Darling … who to?”
“Ginger. You fetched …”
“Well?”
“And now I never am going to see you again”
(281)
When Nina notifies him of her engagement to Ginger, he declares a paradigm for the future—I never want to see you again. Then, when he sells her to Ginger, the transaction is complete from both sides. Nina chooses Ginger, Adam sells her to Ginger. And then, he never has to see her again. The parallelism in their speech makes it clear that poor Ginger is really just the intermediate in some outbreak of frustration between the two, the vehicle they use to convey painful messages back and forth.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 17th, 2005 at 4:59 pm and is tagged with evelyn waugh, polo ponies, moral scruples, vile bodies, odd moment, fianc, lottie, deuce, enough money, ginger, swoop, paradigm, nina, darling, debts, cancellation, point of view, revenge, shell, relationship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.