Miker said:
>
> you are right, of course. spade wasn't big on acting
mushy
> but he had a strong romantic interest in the femme
fatale,
> didn't he? thats one of the reasons he was helping
her. and
> he kept rolling the possibilities over in his head,
and i
> believe that at the end if he thought she wouldn't
run off
> on him, that maybe he would have lied to keep her
outa jail.
>
> and marlowe... well. i've only read _the big sleep_,
so i'm
> not well-versed on him, but remember when that hot
little
> sternwood slut showed up in his bed naked? and after
she
> left he ripped the bed apart. i think that was a bit
of
I haven't re-read all the posts on this topic but it seems
there may be some semantic confusion going on over the word
"romantic", with the literary & colloquial meanings being
interchanged. Describing Marlowe as a romantic doesn't
(necessarily) mean that he's a horndog or lovestruck. I must
say that I totally disagree with your notion that Spade would
let his femme fatale go free if he thought he could trust
her. I think he made it quite clear that his code called for
him to avenge his partner & also to put criminals away.
That's what detectives (even private ones, in this case) do
& Spade defines himself according to what he does. He's a
detective.He may indulge in a little speculation but to my
mind there's no doubt about what he will do, even if Brigid
(IIRC her name) thinks she may have a chance - her charms
certainly worked on Miles & look where that got
him.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Mar 2002 EST