Memory and the Past

Charles’s ongoing attempts to tell Elizabeth the truth about her parentage are inspired by his desire to reconcile with his fraught past. Because Charles has no contact with Mary at the novel’s start and because his “mother [does not] care very much for discussing things in the past,” Charles feels caught between temporal eras (14). He struggles to conceptualize a future for himself because he does not have his own family and because Louise is constantly caught in delusions of her past life. As a result, Charles feels perpetually haunted by the past. The time he spends caring for Louise and playing into her delusions constantly reminds him that there is “this history [he is] a part of, a history [his] body ha[s] experienced and moved through,” but that he does not know about and cannot access (16). For this reason, he...