In Charlotte Bronte's Villette, Lucy Snowe is given a Catholic booklet she finds unconvincing. For one thing, it says it's comforting to pray for your beloved dead in Purgatory. "The writer did not touch on the firmer peace of those whose belief dispenses with purgatory altogether."
No Purgatory for anyone, Lucy? Infuriating Paul, who gave you the booklet? Devious Madame Beck, shallow Dr. John, ditzy Ginevra? Whoever it was that made your teens a "shipwreck"? Yourself with your pathological tendency to withhold information? Everyone who's not downright wicked, as is, for all eternity.
Look, Lucy, if your average person goes straight to Heaven, then nobody really goes to Heaven, just a version of Earth that never ends.
What does it mean when you find yourself wanting to pray for the conversion of a fictional character? Maybe it'd be good to say a quick one for the repose of the soul of Charlotte Bronte, a great writer and in many ways a wise woman, cut off early by morning sickness.
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