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Soames is very interesting. He is totally decent to most people (as far as we know) and even loving towards his closest family (his father, his mother, his sister, his daughter). He's not a bad husband to Annette either. But when it came to Irene, it was like he just lost his head. She drived him wild, but he was only repulsive to her. So it could only end with tragedy. And he is also very rude and vindictive towards some people, who rub him the wrong way or threaten the family name or his marriage to Irene: Jolyon, June, Bosinney...

Is he a narcissist though? I think I would rather label him as a sociopath/pyschopath, maybe. Unless I'm totally mistaken, narcissists will be totally self-absorbed all the time and not notice the people around them. And even though Soames shows shades of this during his doomed marriage to Irene, he shows it only with her. And I don't think that that is not enough to make him a narcissist.

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Again, I don't believe that narcissism is the correct label. It is true that Soames grew up as the spoiled only son in a wealthy family (he had three sisters, but I sense that James would have given the only boy his extra attention) and became a successful solicitor. So yes, that would have given him a sense of self-worth. And I don't even need to tell you how badly he handled his marriage to Irene. Of course, parts of that can be blamed on the general culture of the Victorian era. Soames was not the only man in the 1880s, who expected his wife to be hardly more than a pretty ornament with no wishes of her own. But that is not what Irene wanted to be for the rest of her life, so that could only end with a huge disastser. However, I don't believe that Soames really showed any signs of narcissism at other occasions. He was even really kind to his second wife (Annette) after she too had cheated on him.


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I agree. While Soames had some narcissistic traits, he wasn't a narcissist, nor a sociopath. A sociopath is worse than a narcissist, and cannot feel remorse, or love. Neither types would have agonized the way he did over having to make the awful decision to choose between the likelihood of being responsible for the death of either his wife or child.

And, as you pointed out, he was kind to Annette, even after she'd cheated on him.

He was obsessed with Irene, from the moment he first saw her. As his obsession grew, it caused Irene to become increasingly repelled by him and want to withdraw, which only further fueled the fire of his obsession, until he acted, well, nuts.

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