The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance — Text and Context

Opening in a Close Chapel

The novel begins not with a grand landscape but with a stifling interior: "The little chapel had been so close and hot during the morning service." This initial setting establishes a pattern of physical and emotional confinement. Lucy Josling, betrothed to John Baines, listens to his farewell sermon before his departure for Africa. The heat and closeness of the chapel become a metaphor for the pressures of expectation and the suffocation of choice. Johnston uses the chapel as a threshold: it is both a place of public commitment and a space where private doubt festers. The opening paragraph immediately signals that the story will be concerned with interiors—rooms, minds, relationships—that are under strain.

Recurring Images of Heat and Vermin

Once Lucy arrives in Unguja, the narrative becomes saturated with oppressive physical details. Her bedroom is described as "hot ... hot ... hot," with "dreadful insect swarms" and a mosquito net that offers the only refuge. Rats fall from rafters; scorpions lurk in floorboards; cockroaches attempt to breach the curtain. These recurring images of vermin and heat do more than evoke a setting—they externalize Lucy's internal state of guilt and paralysis. The bed, meant for rest, becomes a trap. The mosquito net, a symbol of fragile protection, sags under the weight of rats. Johnston's attention to these details creates a claustrophobic texture that contrasts sharply with the open landscapes of the Happy Valley sections later in the novel.

Movement Between England and Africa

The novel's structure is built on a series of journeys: from England to Unguja, then up-country, and later back to England and again to Africa. Each movement resets the social and emotional dynamics. The chapter titles—"The Voyage Out," "Letters To and Fro," "Back to the Happy Valley"—emphasize transit and correspondence as drivers of plot. Johnston uses letters as a device to bridge distances and to reveal characters' private thoughts. The movement is not merely geographical; it also shifts between public and private spheres. In England, Lucy dreads Lady Silchester's mockery; in Africa, she fears the judgment of the mission community. The constant travel underscores a restlessness that none of the characters can fully resolve.

Lucy's Interior Monologue and Self-Division

Johnston gives Lucy a layered inner voice. The excerpt shows her "upper consciousness" asserting that she must never see Roger again, while her "innermost intention" is to stay in Unguja hoping he will marry her. This split between what she tells herself and what she truly wants is rendered through a technique of self-address: "the 'speaking to one's self' (which we almost do sometimes aloud, as if to an audience)." The narrative follows her thoughts as they spiral from guilt to self-pity to memories of John's kindness and Roger's solicitude. The passage is punctuated by physical reactions—"choking sobs, hiccups, almost a loud wailing"—that break the flow of rationalization. Johnston uses this interior fragmentation to show a woman caught between moral obligation and desire, without offering easy judgment.

The Role of Minor Characters as Catalysts

Minor figures like Halima, the maid, and Mr. Callaway, the missionary, serve as mirrors and irritants. Halima's neglect—she is preoccupied with marrying a Goanese cook and converting to Roman Catholicism—highlights Lucy's isolation. Callaway, with his "harsh voice, and effluent piety, and bad table manners," repels Lucy even as he tries to help. These characters are not mere background; they actively shape Lucy's decisions by their presence or absence. Halima's selfishness forces Lucy to confront her own dependency; Callaway's well-meaning intrusions push her further into withdrawal. Johnston uses these secondary figures to create a social ecosystem in which every interaction carries weight, and no comfort is uncomplicated.

Readers attentive to structure will notice how Johnston balances long stretches of interior reflection with sudden, dramatic events—the attack on the station, the Boer War interlude—that punctuate the narrative. The novel's title, The Man Who Did the Right Thing, invites speculation about which character earns that description, but the excerpts suggest that the answer may be less straightforward than it seems. Pay attention to the moments when characters act against their own stated intentions; those are where the romance's moral complexity resides.

That rainy afternoon, the heat in Johnston’s pages felt almost unbearable, a sticky weight pressing against the story’s attempts at escape. The constant confinement made me long for air, for movement, for a different kind of restlessness. Afterwards, I found myself drifting toward Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage — Inside the Classic, curious how another era handled its own trapped feelings.