Educating Celia

Not everything is this black or white for Celia...

First of all, thank you to the people who wrote with support or ideas or comments about my last post and my 'crisis'. I really appreciate your help.

Some people felt that I was worrying unnecessarily about Celia and that if I tied up the story successfully from the point where I am now, she'd have least learnt not to be quite so trusting.

While that is certainly a useful thing to learn it doesn't seem to me to be that interesting for the world at large. I still feel she needs to be a better person at the end of the story, not just a more suspicious one.

So I think I need something more significant and the clue I feel lies in the problem in the relationship between Franz and Celia. Looking at chapters 4-7 again it doesn't seem plausible that all the problems are caused by Franz, with Celia just a victim. I think she needs to play a part in the marriage's deterioration.

And I think a source of trouble could be Celia's background. I think she could be a lot more bourgeois than she cares to admit and Franz losing his job as a philosophy professor on a point of principle could be extremely annoying to her, especially if he then takes a job on the railways instead. Apart from the possible financial strain, there would be the whole status issue. It's all very well marrying somebody foreign to irritate your family (perhaps?) if they are prestigiously employed; it's something else if they are a night train conductor when you are a latent snob.

There could also be another problem for Celia. What if she's explicitly offered the choice at some point to carry on working for Colonel Kaiec and make a sensational art history discovery or carry on asking questions about her brother and lose her job? I like the idea of presenting her with a moral dilemma where she initially makes an unethical choice.

Anyway, that's the way I'm tending at the moment. If you have any comments, send them in!