Interpretation "Smile"

Interpretation "Smile"

Never could a smile have been more disgraceful for Matthew than the one he bared in the short story "Smile", written by D.H. Lawrence. Matthew, the main character, receives a telegram informing him of his wife's critical health. Then, he goes to see Ophelia, his wife, in the convent where she resides. The relationship between the couple is problematic; they have separate 12 times. Once at the convent, the setting of the story, the Mother Superior informs Matthew that his wife is dead. He is not able to contain his new feeling of freedom and exalts his joy by smiling to his wife's dead body right under the nose of the three flabbergasted nuns. Matthew then focuses on his self-contempt because he is bounded by social conventions. In the short story "Smile", Matthew realizes that his wife and social conventions have prevented him from being a "man alive" and have condemned him to martyrdom.

First of all, Matthew is limited by the social conventions he follows. The social conventions prevent him from fully exposing his happiness and being a "man alive". He feels like smiling but he takes "the look of super-martyrdom" instead. Even though he is extremely happy, Matthew is trying to show he is sad because smiling at a dead body is considered disrespectful. Incapable of hiding his smile behind a false facial expression, he tries to blame "himself [, who] had not been perfect", for the bad relationship with his wife. "Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa", he cries, "dwell[ing] on his own imperfections." He thinks that if he concentrates on his own faults his smile will go away. The poor man feels self-contempt instead of feeling the exaltation of the new life he is starting. For him, Ophelia has been a source of anxiety and trouble for the past years. He is totally relieved when he fully realizes that Ophelia "[is] gone forever." He has been living for ten years with a woman who is a burden to him without ever considering divorce because social conventions disapprove of it. These social conventions have been forcing him into a certain path. Matthew cannot overcome social conventions, and thus, forces himself to behave the way defined by social conventions. From Lawrence's point of view, Matthew, the same way, condemns him to live as a "dead man" in life.

According to Lawrence, to be "alive", a human being needs to change and to satisfy his aspirations. Ophelia has not been living as a dead person like Matthew. Ophelia has been controlling Matthew to satisfy her own desires. Matthew feels "largely sad" that the couple has no children. He "had always wanted children" but "Ophelia had always wanted her own will". Ophelia had never wanted children and they never had children because Ophelia had always imposed her own decision to her husband. A man cannot live following somebody else's will. A man needs satisfy his own convictions to and desires to be "alive". If not, you live for someone else, not for yourself, and therefore you are "dead" in life. To form a good couple, both members need to have a strong personality. If not, the strongest personality of the couple simply dominates the other one preventing him from being "alive" in life. Compromises have to be made from both sides so that both the husband and the wife accomplish their desires and be "alive" in life. However, Matthew does not have a strong personality and Ophelia dictates his life according to her will. Contrary to Matthew, Ophelia has been constantly changing throughout her life. Her feelings toward Matthew have changed throughout the marriage; "[s]he had loved him, and grown obstinate, and left him, and grown wistful, or contemptuous, or angry, a dozen times back to him." Matthew has not changed, each time he simply accepts her wife's decision. The way Ophelia acts with her husband limits him in life. She prevents him from having the required freedom and autonomy to be a man "alive" in life.

Matthew makes a martyr of himself by living according to Ophelia's pleasure. He is a martyr because he has always lived to satisfy his wife. Several allegories are used throughout the story comparing Matthew to Christ on the Cross and monks to reinforce Laurence's argument that Matthew is a martyr. Matthew has never enjoyed life, he is taking life with gravity and humourlessness: "Deep inside him was a black and ponderous weight: like some tumor filled with sheer gloom, weighing down his vitals. He had always taken life seriously. Seriousness now overwhelmed him. His dark, handsome, clean-shaven face would have done for Christ on the Cross, with thick black eyebrows titled in the dazed agony." Laurence clearly demonstrates to the reader that Matthew is a martyr by using the image of Christ on the Cross to describe Matthew's look. Laurence emphasizes his allegory of Matthew and martyrdom: "his monk's changeless, tormented face." Matthew, just like