Novelists reflect the prevailing views of their society, even when they disagree with those ideas. The way society views women can be discerned in the novels The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, and The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Gender is used as one of many elements that orders society, and when novelists question this element, it is because they believe it is based on a false view of the issue and that it limits both men and women in their interactions and their ability to achieve.
Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is a moral work that elevates life rather than debasing it. The author brings the while forcing the reader to draw conclusions about how people cope with these issues. The primary human concern in the novel is with religious belief, reasons for such belief, and reasons for rejecting such belief. The clash is between faith and a more realistic and scientific approach to the world, between accepting the existence of God and questioning that existence. The character of Sarah, in particular, undergoes a period of questioning and examining her faith, doing so after having allowed her faith to determine her actions and direct her life for some time. Greene shows the need people have for a sense of salvation, yet at the same time questions whether there can be such a thing. In this novel, Greene interestingly does not so much question faith, but rather questions atheism, asking whether it can withstand the evidence that faith works. In truth, though, it is the very analysis of the issues involved that makes this a moral novel. Whether one decides that God is or is not real is not what makes this a moral work. Greene has as his intention the improvement of life by examining it in all its forms and ramifications, and this is the essential moral act of all good fiction.
In the novel, the central figure, Sarah, is seen through the eyes of Bendrix and the pages...