Christianity in Portrayed in the Second Death

¶ … Christianity in portrayed in "The Second Death" by Graham Greene and "The Virgin and the Gipsy" by DH Lawrence. Two sources used. The Second Death" and "The Virgin and the Gipsy" D.H. Lawrence and Graham Greene have each written stories concerned with Christian mores and parental approval, or rather disapproval. The parent in each story is clearly convinced that others are influencing their adult child's character and leading them astray.

Each has forbidden their child from associating with certain people whom the parent believes are not of good Christian standing. Moreover, each child is clearly filled with passion for life and sexual exploration. Lawrence's story is far more sensual and poetically lustful than Greene's, as his female character's sexuality is awakened. However, Greene's story, sketches a young man's sexual exploits and his last moments before death, his second death. Each author sets his story in a small country village.

Lawrence's "The Virgin and the Gipsy" expresses his ideas and beliefs regarding morality and sexual passion. It is the story of a young girl, Yvette, who lived a life of relative seclusion with her father, the rector, in a small English country village. Yvette's mother had become frustrated with her husband, and left the rector for another man. Thus, leaving Yvette and her sister with their father, to be raised by a grandmother and maiden aunt.

Her mother had been known for her virginal beauty and nature, and the rector still held her memory close to his heart. He never got over his loss, yet always referred to her as 'she who was Cynthia' (Lawrence 2002). Yvette had grown to resemble her mother in looks and nature. Since not only her father, but her grandmother and aunt as well, despised anything that reminded them of 'she who was Cynthia,' life was less than pleasant for Yvette (Lawrence 2002).

Bored with her life, her family, the boys who courted her, she yearned for something else, for greener pastures. One day she met a handsome young gipsy who intrigued her and sparked a light within she never knew existed. However, she feared the repercussions of the social convention and particularly her father, should she ever become involved with this man. Moreover, 'She was born inside the pale. And she like comfort, and a certain prestige" (Lawrence 2002).

Although, the gipsy moved Yvette beyond her imagination, she feared the meaning of it all, the very reality of it, the passion she knew morally wrong with respect to her world. Lawrence shows not only the hypocrisy, but the unrealistic religious and social mores of the time. When Yvette's father, the rector, discovered she had become friends with a couple who are living together before marriage, he referred to them as 'unsuitable' people and forbade her to see them (Lawrence 2002). She obeyed and ended her friendship with them.

Those is in a correct and polite society, pretended that emotions such as passion and lust could only occur only within a marriage, and even then on a limited and restricted basis. This pretentious belief is exactly what drove Yvette's mother away. She was a woman filled with passion and desire, qualities not only unappreciated by her husband, but stifled by him and all those around her (Lawrence 2002). Lawrence paints a portrait of a society determined to believe that Christianity and sexual passion cannot co-exist.

For them, sexuality contradicted Christianity, the sin of carnal knowledge. The Second Death" by Graham Greene is also set in a small remote village. A friend of a dying man narrates the short story. The dying man if over thirty years of age and still lives at home with his mother. Moreover, the mother still scolds and nags him as if he were a mere child. The narrator says the mother orders her son about because she has no husband to boss.

Because she believed the friend to be a bad influence on her boy, the mother had always tried to keep them apart, "as if any mortal man could have kept him off a likely woman when his appetite was up" (Greene 1987). The friend blamed the mother for her son's vices, "if they were vices, but I'm very far from admitting that they were" (Greene 1987). Though now, she came for him because her son was dying and was asking for him.

The man had never cared for his mother and had never tried to hide the fact. He had just seen him a week ago on his way to the farm where the big breasted girl lived. The friend describes the man as generous and kind, but ugly with sly eyes. As he entered the house, the doctor's face was "pious, as though there was something holy about death" (Greene 1987).

When he saw the sick man lying in his bed and the frightened look on his face, he tried to crack a joke, but the man was not amused, and the friend knew he was getting religious about his own death. The man began to tell his friend of the last time he died, or nearly died some years ago. They were actually on their way to bury him, when a doctor came along and stopped them.

Again, his friend tried to calm him, telling him he had many years left to live and many women to chase. But the man replied that if he lived he would never touch another woman. Then the friend was certain he had turned religious and thought to himself, "There's always something a bit funny about a sick man's morals" (Greene 1987). The man however, proceeded to describe what happened to him while he was dead. There was someone there with him who knew everything about.