Such Is My Beloved
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Such Is My Beloved is a novel by Canadian writer Morley Callaghan.[1][2] It was first published in 1934 by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City and Macmillan of Canada in Toronto.
Such Is My Beloved takes place in a city experiencing the economic hardships of the Great Depression. The main character is Father Stephen Dowling, a young, exuberant priest searching for the meaning of God's love. Dowling decides to try to help two young prostitutes, Ronnie and Midge, turn their lives around. The priest goes to great lengths to try to help them, such as giving them money and clothes, while trying to find them jobs. As the story progresses, Dowling becomes increasingly involved in the girls’ lives. He exhibits agape, a Greco-Christian term referring to the love of God, for the prostitutes and does everything he can to help them redeem their lives. His relationship with the prostitutes is condemned by his rich, self-righteous parishioners and his bishop. In the end, the girls are arrested for prostitution. Dowling feels that he has failed the girls and becomes grief-stricken. His anguish over the girls’ fate causes him to lose his sanity and subsequently he is removed from the church and sent away to an insane asylum. In the end, Dowling has a moment of clarity in which he sacrifices his own sanity to God to spare the girls’ souls. The novel closes on his realization of the purely Christian love he bears for Ronnie, Midge and for all of humanity.
Setting
Such Is My Beloved is set in a modern city (easily identifiable as Toronto) in Canada during the Great Depression. It is set in a generic society so that the reader does not get caught up in the location, but rather focuses on the story and characters. The setting is bland so that the social problems in the novel are more readily recognized and are easily contrasted. The major turning points in the novel occur in two locations, the hotel room where Ronnie and Midge live in the inner city, and the cathedral where Dowling encounters the Bishop. Such Is My Beloved begins in the winter, and ends in the springtime. Because it is set in the 1930s during the Great Depression, the city in which the novel takes place seems slightly run down and a bit dingy, but is for the most part a decent place to live. The hard times of the Depression are evident in the downtown area where Ronnie and Midge live. The setting also functions to create an atmosphere of sympathy for the girls, and is often used to overshadow that they are prostitutes, but because times are hard, what they do to earn an income is eventually accepted by the reader.