{"id":44882,"date":"2026-01-04T03:07:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T08:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/?p=44882"},"modified":"2026-01-03T23:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T04:41:12","slug":"humane-literature-and-the-divided-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/reviews\/humane-literature-and-the-divided-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Humane Literature and the Divided Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life<\/a><\/span><\/i>
\nBy Heidi White.<\/span>
\nGoldberry, 2025.<\/span>
\nHardcover, 238 pages. $29.00.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Gary Hartenburg<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

H<\/span>eidi White\u2019s debut book, <\/span>The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life<\/span><\/i>, unites a memoir in fragments with a syllabus of literary works on the question of how to harmonize our duties and desires. A partial list of the works on White\u2019s syllabus includes the <\/span>Aeneid<\/span><\/i>; the parable of the prodigal son; <\/span>Hippolytus<\/span><\/i>, by Euripides; <\/span>Anna Karenina<\/span><\/i>; <\/span>Henry IV, Part 1<\/span><\/i>; <\/span>Pygmalion<\/span><\/i>; <\/span>Kristin Lavransdatter;<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/span><\/i>;<\/span> The End of the Affair<\/span><\/i> (the only work discussed in two places); and the poem <\/span>Autumn<\/span><\/i>, by Rilke. Most chapters in <\/span>The Divided Soul <\/span><\/i>consist of White\u2019s explanations of how these works help us understand the conflict between duties and desires. These explanations constitute the majority of the book, but its potency lies in the interplay of those accounts and the fragments of her life\u2019s story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Division, dilemma, and conflict stand in the way of harmony, unity, and happiness, a point White announces in the introduction (\u201cStories as Icons: How Literature Reflects the Divided Soul\u201d).<\/span> Great stories \u201cdwell upon the mystery of one immense dilemma\u201d; they concern a \u201cprimal division,\u201d which is also a \u201cprimary and underlying division\u201d as well as an \u201caching division.\u201d Such division results from an old and \u201csenseless separation\u201d and is experienced in life as \u201ctension between duty and desire.\u201d The division is so deep and violent that White describes it in tectonic terms\u2014the divided soul is \u201cfractured along the fault line of duty and desire\u201d\u2014and militaristic ones\u2014we are \u201cat war with ourselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The division specifically between duty and desire is the one that White keeps clearly in view throughout the book. She acknowledges that this is not the only conflict; there can be conflicts between two desires and between two duties; for example, hunger and health, family and homeland. The conflicts between duty and desire often arise from the disordering or distorting of either duty or desire, or both. The conflicts are the focus of most chapters, for example, in chapter 5 (\u201cThe Turning of the Wheel: Death and Tragedy\u201d), which contains White\u2019s account of <\/span>Anna Karenina<\/span><\/i>: \u201cThe novel takes us inside the interior worlds of Anna, her husband, Karenin, and her lover, Vronsky, exploring the division between duty and desire that destroys them all.\u201d According to White, we ourselves instigate conflict in many ways; the conflicts are not the result of circumstance. Sometimes conflicts \u201carise\u201d because we avoid duties or cannot overcome obstacles to attain what we desire. The shirking of duty indicates that these conflicts will not be solely internal but will also be external\u2014between men and women, in families, and among citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he good news is that the reconciliation of duty and desire is possible, largely because of the priority of goodness and its attendant order over wickedness and its corruption. One of White\u2019s starting points is that \u201cboth duty and desire are intrinsically good,\u201d and she expresses the intrinsic goodness with metaphors of depth and age. Disordered desire, for example, lies on a \u201cdeeper desire\u201d that is nonetheless \u201csincere\u201d for being deeper, and \u201cunderneath all the false images lies a right longing.\u201d The metaphor of age is tied to the biblical account of the fall\u2014given in some detail in the introduction\u2014which succeeded a time when \u201cduties and desires were wholly unified\u201d and \u201caltogether unified,\u201d a time in which Eve\u2019s soul possessed an original \u201cinternal cohesion\u201d and when \u201cduty and desire united in harmony.\u201d In light of this intrinsic goodness, <\/span>The Divided Soul<\/span><\/i> refuses to be a treatise on how to eliminate either duty or desire.<\/span><\/p>\n

If not eliminate, then what? In the first half of the book, the emphasis is on harmonization: \u201cDuty must harmonize the dissonance in the desiring soul.\u201d In chapter 7, White introduces the practice of submerging desire in duty. But how to understand that? The image ready to hand at many places in <\/span>The Divided Soul<\/span><\/i> is baptism, which symbolizes death by water and resurrection through coming up out of it. Still in chapter 6, we do not have articulated baptism imagery, but White hints at it by stating that Henry IV\u2019s speech \u201cstirs deep waters.\u201d Later, in her recapitulation of <\/span>The End of the Affair<\/span><\/i>, White reminds readers of Sarah\u2019s early baptism and its continuing postmortem effects, points which she did not mention in her first analysis of that novel in chapter 2. And in her treatment of Eustace Clarence Scrubb in chapter 11, she glosses the finale of his undragoning: \u201cthe Lion immerses Eustace in the cleansing waters, and he emerges a boy again. This is, of course, Eustace\u2019s true conversion, when he is baptized into a new and truly human life.\u201d In plain language, desires must be baptized not by lions but by duty, and in her exposition of Galahad in chapter 7, she imagines him as someone who \u201ccompletes the quest because his desires are as pure and noble as his duties.\u201d As Galahad reveals, \u201cOur true duty is to keep Christ\u2019s commandments, and our true desire is to unite with Him in an eternal paradise.\u201d (Frodo\u2019s quest similarly reveals the necessity of \u201cthe unity of desire-and-duty.\u201d) But \u201cto be one with God means we must be at one with ourselves,\u201d so the freedom from internal and external conflicts comes from uniting oneself to the Father, which is the goal of human life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, another bit of good news is that the reconciliation of duty and desire turns out to encompass both the attempt to become happy and to know our fathers.<\/span><\/p>\n

W<\/span>hite does not give readers a theory of how to bring about harmony and unity. There is no formula or recipe. Instead, she offers a variety of ways of getting started. One might begin with attention to one\u2019s duties, for \u201cduty must harmonize the dissonance in the desiring soul\u201d and it \u201cfortif[ies] us to reject our baser appetites in favor of joy, which is desire\u2019s true object. . . . Duty transforms desire from tyrant to a guide.\u201d But one might just as well start with virtue, either the virtue of chastity, which harmonizes duty and desire between the genders, or the virtue of fidelity, which is \u201ca potent antidote for the diseases of disordered desire that plague us.\u201d We might also choose to contemplate images such as Odysseus, who is \u201can icon of harmonious desire\u201d and has a \u201cspirit tempered to endure\u201d (<\/span>Odyssey<\/span><\/i> 5.239\u2013249), for \u201cit is not duty that motivates Odysseus\u2014it is desire.\u201d With no specific starting point singled out, White\u2019s admonition seems to be, \u201cStart where you are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose then that one has decided to set about submerging profane desire in the waters of duty. What happens next is to some degree outside one\u2019s control inasmuch as it depends on what White calls \u201crecognition,\u201d which is both passive and active. It is passive inasmuch as it is a matter of opening one\u2019s eyes and mind to what there is to be seen and cognized, and it is active inasmuch as it is a matter of identifying what one sees and thinks with the notions of good and bad that one somehow already possesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

White leans on such recognition in both theoretical and practical contexts. The latter are more numerous, though the former also involve recognition, as, for example, a fact of moral psychology that \u201cdeep down we intrinsically recognize that duty and desire belong together.\u201d Recognition is also at work in the interpretation of literary works, as when \u201cwe recognize that both poems . . . present perspectives that work.\u201d In the practical world of White\u2019s memoir, unlike her sophomoric approach to romance, \u201ca unified soul would have recognized another woman\u2019s prior claim as a compelling obstacle to the object of desire\u201d; that is, a person not subject to the division between duty and desire would have <\/span>noticed<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>considered<\/span><\/i> that the college boy with whom she was in love was already spoken for and would have <\/span>somehow rightly judged<\/span><\/i> that to be a kind of fidelity that ought to be respected rather than undermined. And of her later life White confesses, \u201cWhat I did not know at the time was that God was carrying my mother and I, just as He is now carrying my children. Much pain would have been avoided if I had recognized that earlier.\u201d In the practical worlds of the literature White analyzes, recognition is likewise crucial. A turning point in <\/span>Henry IV<\/span><\/i> is Hal\u2019s \u201crecognition that his recent actions conflict with his true nature and a realization of what must be done to recover himself.\u201d In <\/span>Jane Eyre<\/span><\/i>, \u201cJane recognizes her divided soul and in [Helen\u2019s] actions she finds a model of virtue to imitate.\u201d In <\/span>That Hideous Strength<\/span><\/i>, Jane Studdock \u201crecognizes for the first time that she is a person under authority, that the terms of marriage are absolute, and that her spiritual state cannot be extricated from the holy sacrament.\u201d The instances of recognition that White identifies for readers are as numerous as they are spontaneous: there seems to be not so much a clear explanation for them as a deep appreciation of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

If one cannot guarantee that such recognition will take place, either in oneself or in others, the spontaneity must be a matter of providence. White argues that we must read books that will form our character properly, but was it chance that her grandfather\u2019s bequest included the copy of <\/span>Anne of Green Gables<\/span><\/i> that saved her life? So much depends on a book taken from the shelf, pages turned with wetted finger to read, \u201cMrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow . . . .\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One hopes there are more books to come from White, and though wanting them to be more meaningful than <\/span>The Divided Soul <\/span><\/i>would seem an enormous burden to place on an author, the reader nonetheless senses that there will be more books from White and that she will find a way to render her first her least.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Gary Hartenburg<\/b> is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Honors College at Houston Christian University.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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