Wow. Thank you for such an eloquent well thought out response. I would have to agree with what you have said. It's just that despite the clear narrative, Tristen and Susannah were so compelling that you can't help but to want the narrative to change so they could have had a future. Well at least that is what I wanted after Samuel died.
What Susannah loved about Tristan was his wildness, because she saw it as freedom. In a way she envied his bond with nature because she felt stiffeled in her world of rules and regulations...being with Tristan was as close as she could get to freedom in her mind. She wanted to be like him, and the closest she could get to that was to have a relationship with him.
She always looked at Tristen with so much curiosity. She was so intrigued with him. I never thought about her latching onto him because he represented freedom. Makes sense.
But that's not loving Tristan as a man, that's loving Tristan as an idea (freedom), she loved what Tristan represented to her more then loving the man himself. And that's why she killed herself when she lost him, because losing him wasn't losing a man, it was losing freedom, and all that was left for her was a lifetime prison sentence of rules and regulations and no children to make it bearable.
It was also mentioned that Susannah's parents died, and it was also mentioned that she was sent off to boarding school early. I always got the sense that she felt alone, and abandoned. So when Samuel took her home to his family she was so happy to finally be a part of a real family. Despite the instant connection with Tristen I think she would have been happy with Samuel if for no other reason she was finally part of a loving family. When he died it blew up her world. I think she latched onto Tristen not just because of the idea of what he represented, but because he was also apart of that family unit she never had. Then he abandons her which absolutely devastates her, and what is left? Be alone again with no family, or marry the last man connected to the only family unit you have known.
Tristans relationship with Susannah was his escape from his pain and guilt of failing to save Samuel. Susannah is forever tied with Samuel in Tristans mind, and in having a relationship with her it might have been his way of preserving Samuel in his mind. The idea that through her love he could escape the guilt.
This is true. He definitely felt like being with Susannah was comforting because Samuel had loved her.
But as Tristan comes to realize you can't expect other people to save you, in the end you can only save yourself. In a way I feel Tristan was using Susannah to try and escape his pain, instead of facing it and dealing with it he was running from it. Thats not to say he didn't care about Susannah in his own way, but it was the wrong time to have started any kind of relationship with her or anyone else, he was too traumatized by the loss of Samuel and looking for an escape from the guilt and Susannah happened to be their, he had always been physically attracted to her, and so he unintentionally used her as an escape. Hence once Tristan was able to face his guilt and heal from it, he had no real problem letting Susannah go. He didn't need her to escape from reality anymore, he'd made his peace.
There were genuine feelings, but it was definitely outweighed by his anguish over his brothers death.
A scene that really seals the idea of Susannah being an escape for Tristan is the scene between them at the jail after Isabelle 2 has died. At first Tristan responds to Susannah's kisses as he's desperate to escape the pain of losing his wife...but then he pulls himself back and tells Susannah to "go back to Alfred", he's learned from losing Samuel how to deal with pain and he is NOT going to use Susannah as an escape again.
This is one of my favorite scenes of the movie. When he tells her to go back home, it's written all over her face. She is done.
Such a sad ending for them both.
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