The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair
Name	The End of the Affair
Author	Graham Greene
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Novel, Romance, Psychological fiction
Publisher	Heinemann
Publication date	1951
Pages	160
Preceded by	The Third Man
Followed by	The Heart of the Matter

The End of the Affair is a 1951 novel by Graham Greene that examines passion, jealousy, faith, and the aftermath of World War II through a love triangle set in London during and after the Second World War. Told largely through the diary and retrospective narration of a novelist character, the work interweaves personal confession with theological debate, reflecting Greene’s engagement with Roman Catholicism and postwar British society. Critics and readers have celebrated its psychological intensity and moral complexity, situating it alongside Greene’s novels such as The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter.

Plot

The narrative unfolds in wartime and immediate postwar London as the narrator, a novelist named Maurice Bendrix, recounts his obsessive relationship with Sarah Miles and her husband, Henry Miles, a civil servant. Following an unexplained end to Sarah and Bendrix’s affair, Bendrix becomes consumed by jealousy and hires a private detective, reminiscent of characters in novels by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, to follow Sarah and Henry through the ruins of the Blitz and the reconstruction of postwar Whitehall and Chelsea. Bendrix’s investigations, diary entries, and confrontations reveal Sarah’s secret vow, a crisis in faith that involves clergy such as a Catholic chaplain and discussions invoking figures like Saint Augustine and thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. The plot culminates in illness, confession, and Bendrix’s grappling with Sarah’s renewed religious devotion and the implications for love, pain, and redemption.

Themes and analysis

Greene probes the intersections of passion, faith, and morality, echoing motifs from Dante Alighieri, John Henry Newman, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in the novel’s exploration of sin and conversion. The work engages theological debates central to Roman Catholicism, including guilt, grace, and sacrament, while also invoking contemporary philosophical threads related to existentialism through allusions to writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The novel’s treatment of jealousy and obsession aligns it with psychological traditions seen in the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and its wartime setting situates personal rupture against events like the Blitz and the social dislocations following the 1945 British election. Greene’s narrative technique—first-person confession, diary fragments, and metafictional commentary—reflects influences from Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and the modernist novel.

Publication and background

Greene wrote the novel after returning to themes he had explored in earlier works and during a period when he renewed his public persona as a Catholic novelist, connecting to institutions like Catholic Worker Movement and debates within English Catholicism. Heinemann published the book in 1951 amid growing interest in postwar literature alongside novels by George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. Greene drew on his experiences in London during Second World War air raids, his friendships with contemporaries such as Elizabeth Bowen and Anthony Powell, and his long-standing preoccupations with sin and redemption that had earlier surfaced in texts like Brighton Rock and The Power and the Glory. Drafts and correspondence with editors and publishers revealed Greene’s revisions around narrative voice and the theological emphasis, paralleling editorial practices at houses like Heinemann and discussions common to literary circles frequenting venues like The Times Literary Supplement.

Reception and legacy

Upon release, the novel sparked debate among reviewers in publications such as The Observer and The New Statesman about Greene’s marriage of erotic realism and Catholic doctrine, while literary figures including V.S. Pritchett and E.M. Forster commented on its moral seriousness. The book solidified Greene’s reputation alongside peers like Graham Swift and successors in British letters, influencing novelists grappling with faith and modernity such as Kingsley Amis and John Fowles. Academics in departments at institutions like University of Oxford and King’s College London have continued to study its narrative form and theological content, citing its place in postwar canon formation and its resonance with cultural histories of London and British religion. The novel appears on numerous lists of significant 20th-century novels and has inspired scholarship across journals like Modern Fiction Studies and The Year’s Work in English Studies.

Adaptations

The novel has been adapted for film, radio, opera, and theatre, reflecting its sustained popular and critical appeal. Notable adaptations include the 1999 film directed by Neil Jordan starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, and Stephen Rea, and earlier television and radio dramatizations produced by institutions such as the BBC. The story has also been staged by companies associated with venues like the Royal Court Theatre and set to music in operatic interpretations performed at festivals including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Characters and major motifs

Principal characters include Maurice Bendrix, Sarah Miles, and Henry Miles; secondary figures encompass a Catholic priest, a private detective, and friends who evoke Greene’s recurring archetypes found in characters like those from The Quiet American. Major motifs recur: the wartime cityscape of London and its ruins, religious symbols tied to Roman Catholicism—prayer, confession, and sacrament—literary devices such as diary and unreliable narration that recall Graham Greene’s modernist interlocutors, and the physical and moral consequences of love, jealousy, and vow. The novel’s layered motifs link it to broader cultural texts dealing with faith, desire, and postwar reconstruction across British literature.

Category:1951 novels Category:Novels by Graham Greene