Husbands & Lovers

Hannah is the text’s dynamic deuteragonist, who begins the novel feeling as though she is made of stone and no longer truly alive. She ultimately chooses life and love when she meets Lucien Beck. Early on, when Lucien tells her that love isn’t a bargain, she replies, “Of course it is. Every exchange between human beings is a bargain of some kind” (96). Hannah made a bargain when she married Alistair, trading the possibility of love, and any remaining hope of it, for security. As a Jew in the wake of World War II, Hannah feels as though she will never be safe; Alistair’s nationality and occupation offer her personal security she has never known. However, it comes at a cost, as she suggests.

As a result of her experiences, Hannah had to make herself into stone, so to speak; separating her mind from her body was the only way to survive. Her arc is a testament to Female Perseverance and Strength. Now, however, confronted with Lucien’s declarations of love, she has a choice: “Either she [could go] on existing like a stone pyramid, a monument to fidelity, or she [could return] to life in mortal sin” (101). Like Mallory, Hannah associates her choice with sinfulness, a moral judgment that suggests the guilt that she feels when she chooses not to continue on like the pyramids built for the pharaoh’s faithful wives. Allowing herself to love again restores Hannah to life. She realizes that Lucien “split himself open for her” while she “[h]ad never split herself open for him” (405), and so she finally opens herself up, revealing her vulnerabilities and losses to him. In choosing love, Hannah chooses life, reuniting her mind, soul, and body, which gives her the strength to overcome the loss of yet another child when the nuns take her baby girl away, as well as the strength to leave Alistair and return to her work fighting the Soviets in Hungary.

Monk is a flat, static character and Mallory’s romantic interest. His character is relatively unchanging throughout the narrative. Monk is the son of a wealthy, East Coast arts patron and an absent mother. He was raised by his Aunt Barbara, for whom he still feels deep affection and gratitude, and his relationship with her is much closer than with either of his parents. Even as a teen, Monk resented his father, believing the man to be a hypocrite because he championed the arts while discouraging his son from becoming a musician. He believes that his father and men like him only care about power, going so far as to call his father Machiavellian because of his willingness to manipulate and exploit others to maintain control over the family and its reputation. Monk doesn’t believe that being an “Adams” should dictate the choices he gets to make, and he behaves independently of his father—choosing Mallory over Lennox, dropping out of college to pursue his dream, and so on—from a very young age.

In the final chapter, Monk mentions his manager, Kevin, who once referred to Mallory as “Rosebud,” and this allusion to Orson Welles’s 1941 film, Citizen Kane, indirectly characterizes Monk’s steadiness, self-possession, and reliability, as well as how consistently he has loved Mallory. In the movie, “Rosebud” is the brand name of a sled that Charles Foster Kane had as a child. Throughout most of the film, the meaning of “Rosebud” is obscure, only revealed at the very end of the film, but it ultimately symbolizes Kane’s youth, comfort, and the last time he was really happy. Kevin’s allusion suggests that Mallory is Monk’s “Rosebud,” a person he has loved since childhood and whose presence has acquired symbolic significance in his life; she is what makes him truly happy. Further, the allusion suggests how constant Monk’s love for Mallory has been, even when she was unaware of it, and it demonstrates how consistently motivated by this love he is, well into adulthood.