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Illustrated portrait of The married teacher and his wife

A character in A Boy's Own Story

The married teacher and his wife

Intellectual mentors whose respectable household makes denial look like a possible adult solution.

What they want in White’s narrator’s account

To guide the narrator toward the cultured, respectable life they understand.

The book

Cover of A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
A Boy's Own StoryEdmund White, 1982

A boy learns shame early and tries every available way to turn himself into someone else.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

The cultivated couple welcome the narrator into a book-lined adult world. The teacher’s claim that marriage, religion, and discipline carried him beyond homosexual desire gives the boy false hope.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • CultivatedBooks and conversation make their home an intellectual sanctuary.
  • WarmTheir welcome makes the model emotionally persuasive.
  • RespectableMarriage gives the teacher’s story the appearance of social success.
  • AmbiguousThe example may show discipline, concealment, or both.

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