26 pages • 52 minutes read
Fay WeldonInd Aff
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Gendered Power Imbalances in Love
Fay Weldon’s central conceit of “inordinate affection” is a way of framing the gendered inequality within the relationship between the two central characters. The idea of passion framing such inequality occurs in the story when the narrator asserts that she loves Peter in a way that necessitates being “good in bed” in the same paragraph as remarking, “I was dependent on him for my academic future” (Paragraph 4). This highlights the imbalance of power in the relationship between a male professor and a female student, suggesting that her future depends upon her desirability to him. As references to the love and sex between them continue, so do reminders that he is her professor. For example, when discussing how she loves him with “inordinate affection,” the narrator refers to an unofficial lecture he has given her about the history of the term. Not only does her future hinge on his whims, but the story suggests that the world values him for his mind and her for her body.
When their love gets explicitly named as “inordinate affection” or “Ind Aff,” it is in reference to what John Wesley considered sinful and denied feeling toward a member of his congregation. Though this has become a joke between Peter and the protagonist, it has the seed of tragedy: The affection they feel, is, if not sinful per se, at least potentially harmful. When Peter then remarks, “Your Ind Aff is my wife’s sorrow” (Paragraph 27), it’s an overt suggestion that Peter holds the power in both of his relationships with women, and they both await his choice.
Overall, the refrain of “inordinate affection” illustrates the power dynamic between Peter and his mistress, which speaks to the larger power dynamics between men and women. In calling the story “[a] silly sad episode, which I regret” (Paragraph 48), the narrator derides the affair as a youthful mistake, so she seems to be blaming herself rather than Peter or the patriarchy. Yet the text as a whole highlights the relationship’s exploitative nature, driving it home with the detail that Peter tries to fail his ex-lover’s thesis.
The Effects of Pivotal Choices
Weldon contrasts Princip’s choice to be an assassin with the main character’s choice to leave her relationship, highlighting the drastic effects of the choices that people make. The importance of choice is foreshadowed by the couple’s decision of entrée: “[At the restaurant] we knew we would be given a choice, but pay more. We chose the wild boar” (Paragraph 9). The word “pay” relates choice to a capitalist economy but also suggests its other definition: suffering as a consequence of a choice.
Princip’s choice, it is stressed repeatedly, was made out of love, or “inordinate affection,” for his country, whereas the protagonist’s choice was made out of falling out of love. Princip’s decision to try the assassination again after his first attempt failed is framed thusly: “But what’s a man to do when he loves his country?” (Paragraph 37). In contrast, of her decision to leave Peter, the narrator reflects, “[a]nd that was how I fell out of love with my professor” (Paragraph 47). To emphasize the comparison, Weldon describes relates both choices to upward motion, with the narrator saying “I stood up” (Paragraph 44) and the assassin “leap[ing] to his feet” (Paragraphs 37, 48). In both cases, too, the pivotal choices reflect a second chance, in Princip’s case a wasted one: Princip’s first shot “had missed,” and the protagonist already made a choice to be with Peter before ultimately choosing to leave him.
In terms of consequences (“pay[ing] more” [Paragraph 9]), Princip’s decision caused his death and inadvertently caused millions of deaths through triggering World War I; the protagonist’s choice saves her from further “pain in the heart” (Paragraph 38), and it saves Peter and his wife’s marriage. The narrator muses continually on the consequences of Princip’s action, with comments such as, “Forty million dead (or was it thirty?) but who cares? So long as he loved his country” (Paragraph 2). She poses the idea of an alternate history in which World War I was avoided entirely, the way she avoids a continued relationship with her professor: “If he’d just hung on a bit, there in Sarajevo, he might have come to his senses. People do, sometimes quite quickly” (Paragraph 48). “People do” refers to herself and her own decision.
Ultimately, Weldon’s work suggests that seemingly small choices can have enormous impacts on both the individual scale, such as the shape of one person’s life path, and on the global scale, such as the course of world history.
