Re: Help me understand this phrase, please.

Paul Burke wrote: 
Molly Mockford wrote:


I'm not so sure - I think it just means "death" in this case. It's used in this sense in, for instance, the National Morbidity Statistics - stats on the causes of death.


I took the phrase as in "to take a morbid interest in". This to me describes (what I took as ) the unhealthy interest that the orphan had for the cemetery; however, I agree that the writing could be more subtle, and include overtones about expetion from death itself.

What's the title of the book (in English)? I get the feeling that the woman is beginning to realise that it's HER fascination with death that is at the heart of the problem. A detail: were the bodies lying unburied, or was she exhuming them for reburial?

Paul Burke

The title is "The Widow of the South" by Robert Hicks. My quote is taken from the prologue, which is set in 1894. Please, read this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446500127/103-6898971-3624660?v=glance

(It's surely a better and clearer English than mine, I'm afraid). IMHO, the author means she has spent so much time with death (her daughters died young, then came the war with thousands of young boys dead) she now hopes her loved ones to be spared her same burden (= she doesn't want her loved ones to even see or hear of a dead person, as it's written in the previous sentence). But, to me (and I'm Italian, not English nor American), the word morbidity also suggests some kind of fascination overtones... This is way I asked your (the NG's) help. =)
Here is the quote again:
«She'd have made it so that ne never went into any cemetery again and never heard of or saw a dead person the rest of his life. She'd done plenty of time with the dead, more than enough time to **exempt the people she loved from morbidity**».
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