this is something I've been thinking about ever since Saul first came into The Golden Notebook. I remember feeling that, at the point right before Saul came into the picture, the book had reached a point were it could have ended. It could have stopped when all the other journals had come to an end, or when Anna goes to talk to Tommy and Marion, or when Molly and Richard come to talk with Anna afterwards. To me it felt like this moment would have provided a satisfactory ending in that, all the problems that were established in the very beginning of the novel, during a very similar conversation between Anna, Molly, and Richard (What to do with Tommy, how Richard had been treating Marion, etc.) had all been resolved. Marion has finally left Richard, Anna is finally able to influence Tommy, and when the three part, it is actually on a somewhat friendly note, unlike the first time when Richard leaves in anger and Molly and Anna part on seemingly shaky ground.
And then along comes Saul, and a small part of me couldn't help but wonder if maybe Saul's appearance, and how he throws Anna's life into disarray once again, wasn't some sort of karma. Maybe I'm being cruel to Anna, and I'm not saying that what Saul did was excusable, but when Anna was looking through Saul's diary and she began to grow jealous of how he was sleeping with other women, all i could think was "the mistress has finally become the victim". After all of the affairs that Anna had knowingly been a part of, after all the times she slept with men she knew were married, she was finally the one who was being cheated on. I say that she was "the wife" in this case and that the other women Saul slept with were "the mistress's" because Anna was the one that Saul actually lived with. just like the men Anna had affairs with would go back to their wives, Saul would go back to her. Just as all the relationships Anna had been in as a mistress had ultimately ended badly for her, so too did it end badly for the women Saul slept with while staying with Anna. At this point, Anna has experienced such a relationship from both sides, as the mistress, and as the wife
I think this view of the Saul situation is very interesting. I say that because I had not viewed the relationship exactly in this way when I first read it. I was more focused on the implications of this relationship and the concept of "free women." Even though Anna is a "free woman" in the sense that she is not married, she is tied down, like you mentioned, as a wife.
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