WEEK SIX ~ THE DAY OF THE SCORPION ~ July 21st - July 27th > PART THREE ~ A Wedding, 1943 (171 - 230)) No Spoilers

[Martin]

Thanks Hana & Jill for your answers.

The ending of the scene with Sarah visiting Lady Manners on the house point has stuck in my mind since the first reading of the Quartet for some of the reasons I posed.

I wanted to wait until this section, and the seventh week, before bringing it up, as we see Lady Manners in action here, and action I think is a key to understanding her wisdom, if that's what it is.

It seems obvious to me that Scott is juxtaposing Lady Manners with Pandit Baba as wisdom figures. From a philosophical perspective, I think an argument can be made that Pandit, for all his shortcomings, is closer to a wiseman than Lady M. And I think Lady M. recognizes that in her skepticism of Sarah's assessment.

That said, Lady M is wiser in her actions than Pandit Baba. Not only is she more effective - it's obvious she has the power to effect the reopening of Hari's case - but she is more compassionate. Taking in Parvati, pressing to reopen Hari's case, are done with benefiting Parvati and Hari. They don't go beyond that.

Her action illustrates the point Sarah made earlier about individual action vs social action, with the former delivering a greater benefit.

In contrast, Pandit's actions are manipulative, but to what end? Does the scene he orchestrated on the train platform advance any benefit to anyone? I don't think that Scott's authorial voice in the book thinks so.

By this point, I think we can safely say that Lady M is fulfilling Scott's notion of a wise person. She's an individual able to effect change for the benefit of other individuals, but also to make a ripple on the larger scale, but only a ripple.