The Mortal Sin

Summary

George Anderson, a writer teetering on the precipice of both literary ambition and physical collapse, dedicates his nights to crafting “The Mortal Sin,” a novel exploring a wife's profound sacrifice of her honor to save her tuberculosis-stricken husband, only for him to return, discover her truth, and, remarkably, forgive her. By day, George endures the drudgery of a clerkship for the cynical publisher Emmet Standish, a man whose worldview is antithetical to the very ethos of Anderson’s narrative. As George's health rapidly deteriorates, mirroring the plight of his fictional protagonist, a doctor's stark diagnosis — a restorative trip west or certain demise — casts a grim shadow over his impoverished existence. His devoted wife, Jane, steps into the breach, replacing him in Standish’s office, a desperate measure to sustain them. Encouraged by Standish’s initial, deceptive amiability, Jane dares to present her husband’s manuscript, only to be met with the publisher’s brutal dismissal of its core premise as “untrue to life,” a cynical assertion that no man would ever forgive such a transgression. He rejects the novel, offering Jane a more insidious form of patronage. Spurned and enraged, Jane quits, embarking on a fruitless quest to find another publisher, eventually resorting to posing for the artist Rambeau as the Madonna, a stark irony given her escalating moral compromises. Destitute and receiving increasingly desperate letters from her ailing husband in the west, Jane is cornered by Standish. In a harrowing pact, she agrees to become his mistress if he will publish George’s novel. To make the story palatable to Standish’s jaded sensibility and the public's appetite for conventional retribution, Jane agonizingly alters the ending: the returning husband, rather than forgiving, brutally murders his 'unfaithful' wife. The revised novel becomes a runaway success, funding George’s recovery and enabling his unexpected return, a man transformed, healthy and eager to surprise his wife. His arrival at the address Jane provided, however, leads him to Standish’s opulent home, where he learns of a ‘Mrs. Standish.’ Consumed by suspicion, George hides, witnessing Standish’s possessive demeanor towards Jane. Confronting her, George, blinded by rage and convinced of her infidelity, refuses to hear her desperate pleas of sacrifice and enduring love. In a chilling echo of the novel’s tragic climax, he chokes her to death. The narrative then shatters, revealing this entire harrowing descent into betrayal, murder, and impending execution to be a feverish dream, a nightmarish projection of George’s anxieties about his novel, his health, and his wife’s potential sacrifices. Waking to Jane’s worried gaze, George renounces his morbid manuscript, vowing to prioritize his health, thereby preempting the very 'mortal sins' his subconscious had so vividly conjured.