Read Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge

by Margaret McGuire

What does it mean to be loved, and what kind of sacrifice does love entail? These are the central questions around which Elizabeth Goudge’s Green Dolphin Street revolves. Within this saga of two sisters and the man they both love, Goudge explores the love of families, the growth of love from childhood to maturity, married love, and the love of God for humanity.

Marguerite and Marianne LePatournel are sisters in this pre-Victorian setting. Marianne is the epitome of worldly wisdom and cunning, while her sister Marguerite takes the world lightly and finds herself drawn to a higher, spiritual world where “the air is clear and cold, and there aren’t any lies or subterfuges.” And yet joy is the hallmark of her character, and it upholds her through all the trials and tribulations of her journey.

Marianne both respects and is exasperated by her sister’s lightheartedness, yet loves her deeply, and shares that same sense of being on a journey.

And it is their respective journeys, differently shaped by their own desires and personalities, that influence their beloved William. Marianne’s ambition helps propel William to success, while Marguerite’s spirituality becomes his benchmark for goodness.

The seeds of true love were present from the beginning in all of our main characters. One vows to “be a perfect wife to” William, and means it with all her heart. But she unknowingly mixes her own self-seeking desires with her desire for his good: she wants him to be the best man possible for her own satisfaction as well as for his own good. This is a natural human failing, but a dangerous one if not corrected.

And corrected it is, but only after a lifetime of struggling, failing, and starting over again. Mrs. Ozanne’s capitulation to grace is accompanied by tears of both penitence and love inspired by an unvarnished reflection on her life:

“William! William!” she cried, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. How desperately hard it must have been for him. What a price he must have paid for her salvation! That was what love was—the paying of a price. That was the key that she had always been feeling after and had never found...and always longed for.”(492).

The love explored in Green Dolphin Street is no Hollywood love story. This love is both exquisitely divine in origin and painfully human in expression. The arc of the main characters reveals both what love truly entails and how hard humans must struggle, even with grace, to find redemption.

Throughout this story, realistically written as the lifetime journey of a man and a woman, the themes of self-sacrifice, grace, and redemption weave together. There are no magic spells, quick fixes, or immediate solutions in Green Dolphin Street; there is only the love and grace that patiently waits to redeem all humanity and draw us to Himself.

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