The Heart of the Matter

Louise is Scobie’s wife. She is a devout Catholic who regularly expresses concern over Scobie’s religious laxity, encouraging him to attend mass and communion. She is referred to sardonically as “literary Louise” due to her love of poetry and literature, but she consistently demonstrates a capacity for perceptiveness, clear-thinking, and practicality. Despite being a lover of poetry, Louise resists Wilson’s romantic overtures, in part due to her commitment to Scobie but also out of pragmatism.

Louise is deeply unhappy in the colony and unable to make friends. Although she is smart and insightful, she also obsesses over appearances and is desperate to be liked. Her request to be sent to South Africa sets in motion Scobie’s moral crisis and criminal involvement with Yusef. Despite her perceptiveness, Louise is absolutely dependent on her husband, and she is seen by Scobie as a nagging wife. Unlike Scobie and Wilson, readers are not given access to Louise’s inner thoughts, and she is seen exclusively through the eyes of Scobie, who pities her ugliness and laments her existence.

Wilson is a British counterintelligence agent sent to spy on Scobie and the colonial security administration. He likes to read poetry, but he doesn’t admit it because romantic literature is considered effeminate. However, in part because of his poetic affinities, Wilson is an idealist and a romantic, albeit a severely impractical and myopic one. Furthermore, he has a penchant for making empty proclamations of love. He is diffident, unconfident, and petulant. He falls in love with Louise merely because she pays attention to him. This unrequited love makes Wilson increasingly irascible, but he continues to pursue Louise out of loneliness.

It is implied through Harris, a cable sensor and Wilson’s friend, that Wilson has had a miserable past. Like Wilson, Harris is also a graduate of The Downham boarding school. Harris speculates that Wilson also must have had a horrible time if he ended up stationed in the colony. At a certain point, Wilson longs for a time “when he had not noticed a black skin” (158) and he is described by sex workers at a local brothel as a “tethered animal” (161). As a spy, Wilson is adept at lying, yet he also makes violent threats to anyone who does not give him “true information” (156). In a testy interrogation, Wilson repeatedly warns against lying, which is described by the narrator as a “wearisome recital” (157). Despite his self-loathing, Wilson is a talented spy and the first to suspect Scobie’s suicide.

Father Rank is a slightly eccentric and garrulous priest who has deeper character insights than the colony realizes. As a priest with confessional obligations, he is an ironic character in his penchant for gossip, but he is equally compassionate and well-intentioned. He does not read much except for some religious tracts and hagiographical books about saints. Scobie holds him somewhat in contempt, describing him as “a man without resources” (76) and full of “pious ejaculations” (77). Yet Father Rank is very perceptive; he identifies Scobie’s lack of contrition during confession and denies him absolution as a result. Most importantly, Father Rank’s eccentricity should be understood within the theological conflicts that arise in The Heart of the Matter. Father Rank’s assertion that the Church doesn’t know the human heart or the ways of God’s mercy, thus allowing for the possibility of God pardoning Scobie’s suicide, is heretical in orthodox Catholicism. Father Rank thus represents a vision of Catholicism that is more anti-institutional and belief-centric.

Helen is a 19-year-old shipwreck survivor and Scobie’s mistress. Scobie is attracted to her ugliness and pitiable nature. As a young widow, she is frequently jealous, emotionally brash, and immature, but she is also practical in her quest for financial and marital security. She is not entirely idealist or ambitious, as she attempts to sever relations with Scobie several times due to the couple’s unhappiness. Although she is the daughter of a chaplain, she is not religious herself and doesn’t believe in heaven or hell. She finds Scobie’s religiosity to be two-faced and fraudulent. She accuses him of using religion to avoid divorcing Louise, even as he commits adultery which, in Catholicism, is also considered a sin. Unlike other characters, Helen is less concerned with the truth, and on multiple occasions expresses her comfort with lying and duplicity, perhaps due to youthful recklessness.