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Jerry
Robert is Emma’s husband and Jerry’s oldest friend. Like Jerry, he has turned his back on some of the more idealistic literary aspirations of his youth in his career as a successful publisher. The necessary compromises made along their professional paths distress Robert more than they do Jerry. Overall, a painful recognition of these self-betrayals seems to underlie Robert’s hardening into an inexpressive and sometimes brutal character. In the play’s chronologically final scene, Robert tells Jerry that he doesn’t care about Emma’s affair with Jerry or his own current divorce. Yet that harsh refusal to seem like he cares has been present from the play’s (chronological) beginning, when he walks in on Jerry seducing his wife and then merely walks away. The extent to which these indignities actually hurt Robert and stoke his own harsh behavior is unclear: Pinter leaves deliberately vague whether Robert’s own affairs and his beatings of Emma began before or after learning of her affair. Squash provides a vicarious outlet for Robert’s violent, competitive impulses, and it likewise provides him with one of his few sources of pleasure—a pleasure which, he explains, relates to its exclusion of women. Robert’s investment in an idealized masculine order goes hand in hand with his neglect of women. In his concentrated thoughtlessness in this regard, he resembles Jerry, though with more conscious denial than lazy indecisiveness. By blocking out Emma’s romantic betrayal and his own artistic self-betrayal, Robert can get on with his life, joyless and unfeeling though it is.
Robert Quotes in Betrayal
The Betrayal quotes below are all either spoken by Robert or refer to Robert. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Scene 1 Quotes
JERRY: The funny thing was that the only thing I really felt was irritation, I mean irritation that nobody gossiped about us like that, in the old days. I nearly said, now look, she may be having the occasional drink with Casey, who cares, but she and I had an affair for seven years and none of you bastards had the faintest idea it was happening.
Pause
EMMA: I wonder. I wonder if everyone knew, all the time.
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JERRY: You didn’t tell Robert about me last night, did you?
EMMA: I had to.
Pause
He told me everything. I told him everything. We were up… all night. At one point Ned came down. I had to take him up to bed, had to put him back to bed. Then I went down again. I think it was the voices woke him up. You know…
[…]
JERRY: You told him everything… about us?
EMMA: I had to.
Pause
JERRY: But he’s my oldest friend. I mean, I picked his own daughter up in my own arms and threw her up and caught her, in my kitchen. He watched me do it.
EMMA: It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone.
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Scene 2 Quotes
JERRY: The fact is I can’t understand… why she thought it necessary… after all these years… to tell you… so suddenly… last night…
ROBERT: Last night?
JERRY: Without consulting me. Without even warning me. After all, you and me…
ROBERT: She didn’t tell me last night.
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JERRY: [Casey’s] over the hill
ROBERT: Is he?
JERRY: Don’t you think so?
ROBERT: In what respect?
JERRY: His work. His books.
ROBERT: Oh, his books. His art. Yes his art does seem to be falling away, doesn’t it?
JERRY: Still sells.
ROBERT: Oh, sells very well. Sells very well indeed. Very good for us. For you and me.
JERRY: Yes.
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Scene 3 Quotes
JERRY: We’re here now.
EMMA: Not really.
JERRY: Well, things have changed. You’ve been so busy, your job, and everything.
EMMA: Well, I know. But I mean, I like it. I want to do it.
JERRY: No, it’s great. It’s marvellous for you. But you’re not—
EMMA: If you’re running a gallery you’ve got to run it, you’ve got to be there.
JERRY: But you’re not free in the afternoons. Are you?
EMMA No.
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Scene 4 Quotes
JERRY: Well, I suppose… boys are more anxious.
ROBERT: Boy babies?
JERRY: Yes.
ROBERT: What the hell are they anxious about… at their age? Do you think?
JERRY: Well… facing the world, I suppose, leaving the womb, all that.
ROBERT: But what about girl babies? They leave the womb too.
JERRY: That’s true. It’s also true that nobody much talks about girl babies leaving the womb. Do they?
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ROBERT: Well, to be brutally honest, we wouldn’t actually want a woman around, would we, Jerry? I mean a game of squash isn’t simply a game of squash, it’s rather more than that […] You really don’t want a woman within a mile of the place […] You see, at lunch you want to talk about squash, or cricket, or books, or even women, with your friend, and be able to warm to your theme without feat of improper interruption. That’s what it’s all about. What do you think, Jerry?
JERRY: I haven’t played squash for years.
Pause
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Scene 5 Quotes
[Jerry] used to write me at one time. Long letters about Ford Madox Ford. I used to write him too, come to think of it. Long letters about… oh, W.B. Yeats, I suppose. That was the time when we were both editors of poetry magazines. Him at Cambridge, me at Oxford. Did you know that? We were bright young men.
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I’ve always liked Jerry. To be honest, I’ve always liked him rather more than I’ve liked you. Maybe I should have had an affair with him myself.
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Scene 6 Quotes
JERRY: Sam fell off his bike […] He was knocked out. He was out for about a minute.
EMMA: Were you with him?
JERRY: No. Judith. He’s all right. And then I got this bug.
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JERRY: She was so light. And there was your husband and my wife and all the kids, all standing and laughing in your kitchen. I can’t get rid of it.
EMMA: It was your kitchen, actually.
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Scene 7 Quotes
ROBERT: How are you? Apart from the bug?
JERRY: Fine.
ROBERT: Ready for some squash?
JERRY: When I’ve got rid of the bug, yes.
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I’m a bad publisher because I hate books […]. I mean modern novels, first novels and second novels, all that promise and sensibility it falls upon me to judge, to put the firm’s money on, and then to push for the third novel, see it done, see the dust jacket done, see the dinner for the national literary editors done, […] all in the name of literature. You know what you and Emma have in common? You love literature. I mean you love modern prose literature, I mean you love the new novel by the new Casey or Spinks. It gives you a thrill.
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Scene 8 Quotes
EMMA: Have you ever been unfaithful?
JERRY: To whom?
EMMA: To me, of course.
JERRY: No.
Pause
Have you… to me?
EMMA: No.
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Scene 9 Quotes
[…] I’m madly in love with you. I can’t believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has ever happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened. Your eyes kill me. I’m lost. You’re wonderful
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JERRY: I speak as your oldest friend. Your best man.
ROBERT: You are, actually.
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Robert Character Timeline in Betrayal
The timeline below shows where the character Robert appears in Betrayal. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Scene 1
...of Emma’s new affair with Casey, a client of his. Emma reveals that her husband Robert, a publisher, has been having affairs of his own for years and that the two...
(full context)
...pressed, Emma admits to Jerry that, during her divorce discussion the previous night, she told Robert about her and Jerry’s affair (which at this point has been over for two years)....
(full context)
Scene 2
Later that year, Robert has arrived at Jerry’s house. Robert is frustrated as Jerry struggles to get to the...
(full context)
Robert, surprised, reveals that Emma actually told him about the affair four years ago. He thought...
(full context)
...of them discuss Casey’s artistic decline since the days when Jerry discovered him and convinced Robert to publish him, However, they concede that Casey still sells well, making them both money....
(full context)
Scene 4
In the autumn of 1974, Jerry and Robert share a drink in Robert and Emma’s living room while Emma puts her son to...
(full context)
...have known that Casey had left his wife and moved to her neighborhood. Emma and Robert say that Casey has dried up artistically, but Jerry disagrees. Emma maintains that his latest...
(full context)
Robert presses Jerry on when they’ll play squash, but Jerry is evasive. Robert reveals he’s been...
(full context)
...going to New York next week with Casey on a publicity tour. He leaves, and Robert kisses Emma. She resists at first, and then she cries quietly on his shoulder.
(full context)
Scene 5
...their planned trip to the island of Torcello, in the summer of 1973, Emma and Robert are in a hotel room in Venice. Emma is reading a new novel by Spinks....
(full context)
Robert reveals that while cashing travelers’ checks at an American Express office yesterday, the clerks tried...
(full context)
Robert insinuates that Jerry, who was the best man at his wedding, might be having an...
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Robert declares that he’s always liked Jerry, even more than he likes Emma, and perhaps should...
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Scene 6
...to Torcello because of a speedboat strike. Jerry mentions his plan to get lunch with Robert, and Emma asks him for what purpose. Jerry denies that they need a purpose to...
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...of their affair. Finally, he recalls the moment long ago when he tossed Emma and Robert’s daughter up in the air while both his and Emma’s families were present.
(full context)
Scene 7
Later that same summer (1973), Jerry and Robert are eating lunch at an Italian restaurant. Jerry uncharacteristically drinks scotch at lunch to quell...
(full context)
...usual one they remember or his son. As they’re catching up, Jerry starts to tell Robert about his son’s bike accident but stops himself. Jerry asks Robert about his trip to...
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The subject of Spinks’s book comes up. Robert, drunk by this point, begins to grumble about his job as a publisher, expressing his...
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Drunk and depressed, Robert says he’s upset to be back in London. He claims that his morning reading on...
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Scene 8
...she’s become pregnant while Jerry was away on business and that the child is definitely Robert’s. Jerry expresses a muted congratulations.
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Scene 9
...in the shadows, startling her. There is a party going on downstairs in Emma and Robert’s house. Jerry is quite drunk and aggressively comes on to Emma. Emma resists Jerry’s advances,...
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At this moment, Robert walks in, unemotional as ever. Emma explains that Jerry is drunk, while Jerry congratulates Robert...
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