The Passionate Friends

About the book

Stephen Stratton addresses an account of his life to the son he imagines reading it as an adult. His relationship with Lady Mary Christian, who marries another man, becomes central to an examination of affection, jealousy, obligation, and the arrangements that limit intimate freedom. Travel and experience of war widen the narrative beyond the personal relationship, connecting Stephen's changing outlook with ideas about humanity's collective future. Wells makes the retrospective form part of the inquiry: the narrator is trying to clarify his own convictions as well as explain what happened. The result combines a love story with a social argument whose claims remain bound to the person making them. Readers can consider both the force of Stephen's criticism and the partial perspective through which he understands his own desires.

• Love and possession
• Retrospective judgment
• Social ideals

Why read it

For a Wells novel that connects the interpretation of a difficult attachment with a wider challenge to possessive habits of thought.

Novel · English text