The Dewy Morn · Chapter
XXI explained
This chapter delves into Robert Godwin's profound and obsessive love for Felise Goring, which began nine years earlier when he saw her as a child playing in a meadow.
What happens
This chapter delves into Robert Godwin's profound and obsessive love for Felise Goring, which began nine years earlier when he saw her as a child playing in a meadow. It explores the depth of his devotion, the impossibility of their union due to differences in personality and age, and his complete absorption in her, which leaves him emotionally absent from the world. The narrator also reflects on the importance of nature and freedom for children's education and soul development.
Themes in this chapter
Obsession and Jealousy
Godwin's love is depicted as an all-consuming obsession that dominates his entire existence, leaving him unable to engage with reality.
Nature and Spirituality
The chapter extols the virtues of nature for children's development, describing it as a source of secret knowledge and emotional depth.
Love and Idealization
Godwin's love for Felise is idealized and abstract, focusing on her as an image rather than a real person, which makes their connection impossible.
Characters to notice
- Robert Godwin
The chapter focuses on Godwin's inner life, his obsessive love for Felise, and his inability to express or act on his feelings. He is portrayed as a man consumed by a single idea, living in a dreamlike state.
- Felise Goring
Felise is the object of Godwin's love, first seen as a child playing in the meadow. She is described as beautiful and free-spirited, unaware of Godwin's feelings.
- Mr. Goring
Felise's uncle, who is indulgent toward her after she comes to live with him following her father's death.
Key passages
“things like to be loved. Very rarely is a woman loved as Godwin loved, such utter abstraction, such loss of self-existence, such death of self-existence.”
Women desire to be loved, but Godwin's love is rare in its complete selflessness and loss of self.
Highlights the unique, consuming nature of Godwin's love.
“He loved her and gave her up at the same time. He loved her more and more as the years drew on, and year by year he acknowledged to himself that the gulf between them grew more and more impassable.”
Godwin simultaneously loved Felise and accepted that they could never be together, with the distance between them increasing over time.
Illustrates the paradox of Godwin's love and resignation.
“If you wish your children to think deep things—to know the holiest emotions, take them to the woods and hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows.”
To nurture deep thoughts and pure emotions in children, let them experience the freedom of nature.
Reflects the chapter's advocacy for nature in child development.