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Question about Mrs. Chadwick and the ending spoilers!

posted 14 years ago by evixir
3 replies | jump to latest

I haven't read the book yet but I just finished watching the lush glorious film, and I was confused about one aspect -- at the end when Lucinda is playing in the water with the child, are we to take as its meaning that she brought Mrs. Chadwick and the child into her fold, so to speak? Or that she adopted the child? I doubt Mrs. Chadwick would have given up the child as she was rather scheming, but I'm just wondering what we're supposed to take away from that ending.

And when you have people like Roger Ebert claiming that Oscar and Lucinda are the grandparents of this child, then I really have to ask the experts because I know he sometimes gets critical facts about a film wrong!

[–] gross_fangirl_sobbing 14 years ago

In the end they say that Chadwick died and Hasset told Lucinda about the baby's history, basically offering the baby to her and she took it.

So yes she adopted it because it was an orphan.

[–] CountessGaviota 14 years ago

At one point very close to the end the narrator said Mrs. Chadwick lived long enough to see the child had red hair like its father (that's not verbatim, but close). I took that to mean she died shortly after childbirth.

Ebert got it wrong.

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

Ebert dropped the ball.

If you pay attention on a second viewing, you realize that though the narrator keeps referring to Oscar as his great-grandfather, and says that for himself to be born, these two have to declare themselves to each other (thereby setting in motion the chain of events that has Miriam seducing Oscar in the outback), NOWHERE does he refer to Lucinda Leplastriere as his great-grandmother. The narrator calls her exclusively by her name. Very clever misdirection.

Question about Mrs. Chadwick and the ending **spoilers!**

Question about Mrs. Chadwick and the ending spoilers!