Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Moving Finger, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Obsession, and Control
Beauty and Objectification
Grief and Loneliness
Summary
Analysis
As the narrator and Mr. Grancy sit by the fire, Mr. Grancy says that the narrator and their mutual friends can guess how much Mrs. Grancy meant to him, though no one can truly understand. He admits that he needs a partner to experience life alongside him. Mr. Grancy says that when he met his second wife, he finally experienced simple, effortless happiness; Mrs. Grancy seemed to light up the dark parts of his life. On his way home at the end of each workday, Mr. Grancy would only think of how Mrs. Grancy would be sitting in her armchair in the library, the lamplight falling on her hair in a particular way.
Here, Mr. Grancy admits that he needs a romantic partner to feel complete, which is why he had Mrs. Grancy’s portrait altered—he needed to feel like she was still with him. This is another hint that Mr. Grancy was perhaps more obsessed with than in love with his wife, as his need for a partner seems to be rooted in a fear of being alone. And, again, Mr. Grancy seems to value Mrs. Grancy primarily for her appearance, as his fondest memory of her is centered on how her hair looked rather than something she said or did.
Themes
Mr. Grancy tells the narrator that in Mrs. Grancy’s portrait, Claydon somehow captured the expression that would appear on Mrs. Grancy’s face whenever Mr. Grancy walked through the door. He admits that he sometimes wonders how Claydon knew what Mrs. Grancy looked like when they were alone. Mr. Grancy had adored the painting; when it was finished, he’d told Mrs. Grancy that she was his “prisoner” now. Even if Mrs. Grancy left him, he’d joked, he’d still have her “real self” on his wall. When Mrs. Grancy died three years later, the loss was so sudden that Mr. Grancy felt like nothing had changed—as though Mrs. Grancy herself had been frozen in time, just like the portrait.
Mr. Grancy’s comment to Mrs. Grancy, that having her portrait meant that she was his “prisoner,” confirms that his feelings for her were based in possessiveness rather than genuine love—in spite of what their relationship looked like to outsiders. Furthermore, the fact that Mr. Grancy believed that he had Mrs. Grancy’s “real self” on his wall hearkens back to Claydon’s comment that “the portrait was Mrs. Grancy.” Together, these sentiments suggest that the essence of Mrs. Grancy was captured in the portrait—that is, that there’s nothing more to know and love about Mrs. Grancy than her beauty. The remark that Claydon somehow knew what Mrs. Grancy looked like when she and her husband were alone suggests that Claydon and Mrs. Grancy may have had an affair (in other words, she may have looked at Claydon the same way). This would help explain Claydon’s attachment to her.
Themes
Mr. Grancy confides in the narrator that he’d stayed in Europe for five years, working as hard as he could. After a few months of deep depression, he began thinking that Mrs. Grancy would be interested in what he was doing, and eventually it began to feel like Mrs. Grancy was actually there with him. Their hearts and minds had been so intertwined while Mrs. Grancy was alive that it seemed like her consciousness was inhabiting his own.
While Mr. Grancy claims that he was deeply intertwined with Mrs. Grancy, there’s no indication that his affections for her were based on anything more than an admiration of her beauty and a dependency on her companionship. Meanwhile, the fact that he imagines she’s still alive and present with him speaks to how deeply his grief has affected his mental well-being, as he’s resorted to denying reality as a way of coping emotionally.
Themes
When Mr. Grancy returned home, he’d gone straight to look at Mrs. Grancy’s portrait and felt that she was looking at him coldly and distantly. He realized that he and the woman in the painting were strangers now—his wife wouldn’t even recognize the haggard old man he’d become. Mr. Grancy thus began to resent the beautiful portrait for driving a wedge between him and the ghostly presence of Mrs. Grancy that had comforted him since her death. He felt incredibly lonely.
While Mr. Grancy was fixated on Mrs. Grancy’s beauty while she was alive, he began to resent it after her death. This is seemingly because the youthful portrayal of Mrs. Grancy in the portrait made Mr. Grancy self-conscious of his own aging, and this made him feel distant from his late wife. He was, apparently, so intent on maintaining his hold on Mrs. Grancy that he was willing to sacrifice her beauty (the very thing he loved most about her) if it meant feeling like she was alive and aging alongside him.
Themes
Literary Devices
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Then, Mr. Grancy had noticed that Mrs. Grancy’s portrait looked lonely too, and he thought about how his wife would have hated to be left behind. Mr. Grancy realized that the painting is what stood between him and Mrs. Grancy—that the portrait, not his wife, was dead. He sent for Claydon, who initially refused to alter the paining. But eventually he agreed, shutting himself into a spare room working on the portrait for a full day. When Mr. Grancy saw the finished result, he felt like Mrs. Grancy was embracing him once more. When he’d thanked Claydon, however, Claydon coldly cut him off and left abruptly. Presently, Mr. Grancy says to the narrator that while Claydon lost his masterpiece, he himself gained his wife back.
Again, Mr. Grancy claims that he had the portrait changed because he didn’t want Mrs. Grancy to feel left behind, but it’s clear that he was the one terrified of feeling alone. His real motivation for having Claydon alter the portrait seems to be that he wanted to feel like Mrs. Grancy was still his “prisoner” and that she was aging alongside him. Claydon, meanwhile, was distraught that he ruined his “masterpiece”—that is, he defaced Mrs. Grancy’s beauty, which he all but worshipped when she was still alive.
Themes
Literary Devices
