Enduring Love: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

The narrative shifts to a letter that Clarissa has written to Joe sometime after Joe’s shooting of Jed Parry. Clarissa opens by apologizing for the “row” that she and Joe had the previous evening, and she also apologizes, again, for disbelieving Joe about the danger posed by Parry.

However, Clarissa states, Joe’s “being right is not a simple matter.” Clarissa continues to believe that the entire episode “might have had a different outcome” had Joe “behaved differently.” She criticizes Joe for being so “intense and strange” and for lying to her about Parry’s initial phone call. She brings up Joe’s betrayal—his “ransacking” of her desk—and suggests that Joe’s researching of Parry’s condition was meant to “substitute for the science [Joe] wanted to be doing.”

Continuing on, Clarissa suggests that much of Joe’s emotional turmoil over the last many weeks has been due to his fear that he was the first rescuer to let go of his rope. “Parry,” she argues, presented Joe “an escape from [his] guilt.” Furthermore, Clarissa states, she understands why Parry might have thought Joe was “leading him on”: Joe’s obsessiveness suggested that Parry was bringing something “out” in him.

Clarissa’s most important point, which she soon comes to, is that Parry’s ultimate violence was never “inevitable”; rather, it was spurred on by Joe’s reactions. Clarissa thanks Joe for “saving [her] life,” but she simultaneously argues that Joe might have put it in jeopardy in the first place by overreacting to Parry’s attentions. As the letter concludes, Clarissa suggests that the two need “some time apart” (she will stay with her brother, Luke) and that she doesn’t know whether their love will survive.