The End of the Affair

by

Graham Greene

Mrs. Bertram Character Analysis

Sarah’s mother. Mrs. Bertram didn’t regularly visit Sarah and Henry, as she’s convinced that Henry doesn’t like her. Mrs. Bertram regularly finds excuses to ask Henry for money and even asks Bendrix for a few pounds after meeting him for the first time at Sarah’s funeral. At lunch with Bendrix after the funeral, Mrs. Bertram reveals that she had had Sarah baptized as a Catholic when she was just a toddler out of spite for Sarah’s father, who didn’t like Catholicism and didn’t want Sarah baptized. Mrs. Bertram says she always hoped that the baptism would “take,” and Sarah would become a Catholic one day. She resents that Sarah was not given a Catholic burial but blames Henry for this, not knowing it was actually Bendrix who convinced Henry that Sarah would have wanted a more secular funeral. Mrs. Bertram asks Bendrix not to tell Henry or anyone else about Sarah’s baptism, but she soon decides to tell Henry herself. Upon learning of Sarah’s baptism into the Catholic Church, Henry considers the strange coincidence of Sarah showing interest in Catholicism as an adult without even knowing that she had been baptized.

Mrs. Bertram Quotes in The End of the Affair

The The End of the Affair quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Bertram or refer to Mrs. Bertram. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Love and Hatred Theme Icon
).
Book 5, Chapter 4 Quotes

It’s just a coincidence, I thought, a horrible coincidence that nearly brought her back at the end to You. You can’t mark a two-year-old child for life with a bit of water and the blood. If I began to believe that, I could believe in the body and the blood. You didn’t own her all those years: I owned her. You won in the end, You don’t need to remind me of that, but she wasn’t deceiving me with You when she lay here with me, on this bed, with this pillow under her back. When she slept I was with her, not You. It was I who penetrated her, not You.

Related Characters: Maurice Bendrix (speaker), Sarah Miles, Mrs. Bertram
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:
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Mrs. Bertram Quotes in The End of the Affair

The The End of the Affair quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Bertram or refer to Mrs. Bertram. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Love and Hatred Theme Icon
).
Book 5, Chapter 4 Quotes

It’s just a coincidence, I thought, a horrible coincidence that nearly brought her back at the end to You. You can’t mark a two-year-old child for life with a bit of water and the blood. If I began to believe that, I could believe in the body and the blood. You didn’t own her all those years: I owned her. You won in the end, You don’t need to remind me of that, but she wasn’t deceiving me with You when she lay here with me, on this bed, with this pillow under her back. When she slept I was with her, not You. It was I who penetrated her, not You.

Related Characters: Maurice Bendrix (speaker), Sarah Miles, Mrs. Bertram
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis: