Characters Who Move Towards Redemption

In A Certain Justice, Janet Carpenter is provocative character because she is a woman who exists within the framework of Christianity yet she uses her understanding of her faith to enact “a certain kind of justice,” which is really revenge, on those who have hurt her. Due to the devastating death of her family, her faith has been destroyed. Yet there is a working back towards redemption at the end of her life that James explores in this novel. A Certain Justice considers how Carpenter attempts

113 _{Death in Holy Orders 429.} 114 _{James, Interview.}

through revenge to right the wrongs done to her family. Although she believes that her pain will be appeased by enacting a complicated revenge scheme on the lawyer who saved her grand-daughter’s killer from serving a prison sentence (only to set him free on the streets to rape and murder another young girl), Janet realizes that her revenge does not satisfy her.

Carpenter first intends to meet her co-conspirator in St. James’s Church. The place, however, becomes something else for her. At the church, she meets Father Presteign and realizes that she can still find answers in the Christian life. Eventually, she forgives those who harmed her and becomes redeemed.

St. James’s Church is significant to the spiritual healing of Carpenter. During her deliberations regarding her revenge scheme, the church is the place where she first realizes that she has not become completely numb to Christianity. Although she believed that she no longer held Christian convictions and that God had abandoned her, her encounter at the church demonstrates that she has not abandoned God.

The turning point for Carpenter occurs as she confesses, “I found, despite my loss of faith, that I had a reluctance to use a sacred building for a purpose I knew in my heart to be evil.”115 Carpenter claims that she had lost her faith yet in the same sentence she recognizes that something deeper “in her heart” compels her actions, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Carpenter’s change of heart and naming of the evil that she had allowed to direct her actions demonstrates her willingness to let go of revenge and to seek reconciliation.

Carpenter goes even further than refusing to meet her co-conspirator in a church; she must confess to a priest. In her letter to Father Presteign, she admits, “That is why I came to you, Father, and made my confession. That had to be the first

step. The second will be no easier. You have told me what I have to do and I shall do it, but in my own way. You said I must go at once to the police…I shall go to see her.”116 Carpenter’s acknowledges that confession and penance are both necessary steps in working back towards her faith. Father Presteign counsels her to confess and to ask for forgiveness from the one she sinned against.

Janet Carpenter is both a complicated and sympathetic character. Ever since the murder of her grand-daughter and the subsequent suicide of her daughter-in-law, Janet has been unable to return to the Christian community in which she once functioned; however, she still lives with its system of rights and wrongs—sin and guilt as well as forgiveness and absolution, embedded within her. Her spirituality obviously determines much of her behavior. She believes in justice. The legal system has failed her; therefore, she will pursue her own form of justice. The theme of justice and how it is rightly and wrongly played out through the novels of James is a theme that we will explore further in the last chapter of this dissertation.

A Taste for Death introduces one of James’s most complex and fascinating characters, Paul Berowne. However, he is dead before the novel begins. All we know of him is filtered through other characters’ stories and recollections. Dalgliesh is able to deduce that Berowne had recently converted to Christianity. Dalgliesh must determine what factors have led to his brutal murder in St. Matthew’s Church.

James inundates her readers with Christian symbols, allusions, and references in A Taste for Death. Yet her portrayal of the church throughout the novel is complex. The ineffectual Father Barnes performs Mass to an empty sanctuary. Only one church member, Emily Wharton, who brings her young companion, Darren, with her, attends church each day to prepare the flowers. Paul Berowne is perhaps the

most complex and saddest symbol of Christianity within the novel. Berowne is a powerful Member of Parliament plagued by political and financial scandals, the breakdown of his family, infidelities (his wife’s and his own), threats of blackmail, and, of course, violence that ends with his death. Before his death, Berowne had allegedly experienced stigmata and converted to Christianity. Because of his conversion, his mother and wife reject and mock him. Also, because of the conversion, Berowne decides to end an affair with his mistress. This affair was his only loving and fulfilling relationship.

Paul Berowne’s murder brings James’s readers into the compelling world of the London church. A successful and powerful MP goes to an empty church to ponder life’s complexities. Yet it is in that same church where Berowne also finds his death. We may believe that Berowne died finding the answers that he sought in the church. However, his death is a pointless one, and no solutions are offered that justify it when A Taste for Death concludes.