Emotional Detachment

[Truthlover]

I wonder if Isabel Archer could have survived her marriage to Gilbert Osmond through the kind of therapy used in Co-Dependents Anonymous, specifically through "emotional detachment." I have attended 12-step meetings for a year and a half, and in them I have met women who have triumphed over ugly feelings about their husbands through emotional detachment. They appear to me to be among the happiest women I have ever met in my life. I would even say that they may be the happiest persons on earth, because they have transcended themselves. At the end of the novel, Isabel Archer went back to Rome. If I were to continue the story, I would have her attain emotional detachment and literally enjoy life more than most of us because of her acquited ability to transcend not only Gilbert, but herself (especially her insistent search for independence).

[Gladys]

I wonder if Isabel Archer could have survived her marriage to Gilbert Osmond through the kind of therapy used in Co-Dependents Anonymous, specifically through "emotional detachment." ... At the end of the novel, Isabel Archer went back to Rome. If I were to continue the story, I would have her attain emotional detachment and literally enjoy life more than most of us because of her acquitted ability to transcend not only Gilbert, but herself (especially her insistent search for independence).

Isn't the essence of Isabel Archer's return, an ethical determination to live with integrity no matter what hand fate deals her? If so, perfecting an "emotional detachment" constitutes an erosion of her halcyon integrity. She is already transcendent.