‘Going Out, Going Alone’ 63
and socially desirable Van. By allowing Van to walk with her she has delayed, but
not avoided, coming to the decision she will eventually be able to make when she
is given the freedom to walk in private.
Th e scene in which Alex is fi nally able to walk alone occurs aft er a sizeable
shift in the lives of the major characters. Alex is travelling to Crossriggs with
Robert Maitland, the married man whom she has secretly loved all her life. Alex
and Robert’s sense of duty have stopped them ever acting on their mutual feel-
ings, although under grief and stress they are briefl y drawn together. At fi rst they
are travelling in a carriage, but Alex asks to be let out as she thinks it would do
her ‘good to walk for a little’. Walking has by this stage been well established as
a context for Alex to make sense of her situation, and Robert gets out of the car-
riage too and walks up the steep road ‘in silence’ beside her. First, she asks him
to go on as she wants to rest in a fi eld bordered by symbolic foxgloves, a plant
that is as toxic to the heart and mind as it is medicinal. Robert would ‘not go on
alone’, and instead follows her and, in a sudden movement, tries to take her in
his arms. She resists, and tells him defi nitely to go on, in a more decisive manner
than she has achieved throughout the entire novel: ‘Go, go now’ she states sim-
ply, in contrast to her numerous internally-voiced desires for privacy, and gentle
requests to be left alone.^29 For example, in an earlier, mirrored scene with Robert
by a secluded burn, the narrator has refl ected, ‘his presence seemed an intrusion
to her just then, she would much rather than been left alone’, but externally Alex
has responded to Robert with conventional politeness.^30
As in that earlier scene, Robert has taken advantage of their seclusion to hint
implicitly to, and here to act explicitly on, their feelings for each other, exploit-
ing rural seclusion to trespass conventional sexual boundaries. Alex’s refusal in
both scenes to treat the rural location in the same way as the men do may signify
her acceptance of those boundaries; this is certainly how Giff ord interprets it in
his assessment of the Findlaters’ novels, which show ‘women trapped in varia-
tions of the same predicament, in which they feel their confi nement the more
keenly since they are all too aware that it is their own acceptance of the rules
of conventional society which imprisons them’.^31 Alternatively, I would suggest
that the sexual freedom tantalizingly promised in the secrecy of rural spaces sits
imperfectly with her wider desires for free movement, privacy, thought and self-
defi nition: indeed, for the things so far used here to defi ne women as ‘modern’.
Justifi cation for this is found in another emotionally ambivalent scene with
Van. It takes place aft er an excruciating tea party at Foxe Hall, to which Alex
has worn a fl imsy smart gown very uncharacteristic of her usual practical dress.
Escaping with relief from the gathering , Van starts to accompany Alex home,
but they must shelter from a sudden shower under a cavernous yew tree to pro-
tect her silk skirts from the rain. A timeless, silent, ‘twilight’ space, the yew tree
conceals Alex and Van from the gaze of anyone but each other, and as the scene