Near the end of the novel, Archer is becoming increasingly obsessed with Ellen and disinterested in May. While at home together one night, he and May have a tense interaction, during which he metaphorically describes himself as being “dead,” as seen in the following passage:
After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard her say: “Newland! Do shut the window. You’ll catch your death.”
He pulled the sash down and turned back. “Catch my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding: “But I’ve caught it already. I am dead—I’ve been dead for months and months.”
When May tells Archer that he will “catch [his] death”—an idiom popular at the time meaning to catch a cold or chill—Archer wants to respond that he has already been dead “for months and months.” This language is evocative. Archer doesn’t actually believe that he is dead but feels he has experienced a metaphorical death by being separated from his true love (Ellen) and forced to maintain the façade of a man who is happy in his lackluster marriage.
This metaphor effectively communicates that Archer is not merely a husband who has an affair for the fun of it, but is a man struggling against a society that he feels is killing him. Ellen is a respite from the society he despises, and, without her, he doesn’t even feel alive.
