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Don't Get TOO Comfortable
What is comfort?
In Özlem Görey’s I refuse these givens’: Embracing Multiplicity of Identity in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich, he brings up an interesting point about the self and the other. In most of the travel novels we have read, the traveler is the self, and the natives of the country the other. The tourists/travelers are uncomfortable with what they encounter and therefore relate everything to what they are used to. They reference the native as someone foreign, and take away their voice in the situation. While Colin and Mary begin their journey as true tourists, referencing everything around them as “the other,” they quickly get too comfortable in their situation and fall into Robert’s lare. Consequently, they become the “other.” Their voices are literally taken away, and they are stripped of their humanity, and used as objects in Robert and Mary’s sex games.
So what does this have to do in the overarching theme of travel? Perhaps it spreads the message that one should never be too comfortable, or to cautionary, because one never knows what lies on the other side of the door (literally). One must explore the area they’re in, but be smart about it. The problem with Colin and Mary was they were too comfortable to begin with, and set themselves up with the possibility of getting lost. From the beginning, they took their situation lightly, and walked around without maps, and then spent most of their time in the hotel, so that the reader wouldn’t even notice that they were in Venice without a close reading. Though Mary seems to suspect that Robert is up to no good, she and Colin immediately gravitate and seem to care for Mary, because essentially, they feel comfortable with her. She speaks English and seems like she needs help. She tells Colin she is a “prisoner” and perhaps it is curiosity, or maybe just the desire to help a woman in need, that brings him back to the scene of the crime. While we are able to understand their actions in the beginning when they appear as the “self,” as they fade into the other, we begin to see Robert and Mary’s plan in greater detail, but the lives of are protagonist seem to fade into oblivion and get blurred around the edges, just as the natives appear in previous books, such as Mosquito Coast and Death in Venice.
That's very true that Colin
That's very true that Colin and Mary lose their identities with Robert and Caroline, and I hadn't considered it in this way before, of the self becoming the other. They fall into a trap in which they are completely dominated. They are objectified and become tools in R & C's game. I like how you point out that that's something as foreign to themselves as the native is to the traveler...but their first taste of it is harmless and exotic, a break from anything ordinary. I think their return is powered by a want for more of the mystery, unexpectedness and general uncanniness of the last visit, which they know drew them closer to each other. They both know it's a bad idea, but they want it, and by the time they realize how much of it they're going to get it's too late and they are no longer in control of their own lives.