Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” thematizes the relationship between fate and free will not as a binary opposition, but as a complex and ambiguous interplay. Almost as soon as he receives the reading from Mr. Podgers, Lord Arthur appears to relinquish his free will in order to fulfill his fate—even, or especially, because that fate is so antithetical to his self-conception. Lord Arthur’s response is manifestly excessive; the other characters who have their palms read do not have similar reactions, as they understand that Mr. Podgers is at the party as a curiosity rather than an authority. Yet Lord Arthur is immediately convinced that committing murder is an inevitability. His belief in fate immediately overtakes his free will.

However, Lord Arthur’s initial response to his palm reading has much to do with the eerie London night, where “murder grinned at him from the roofs of the houses” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 2). By the next afternoon, he has come to terms with his fate and is proceeding to carry it out in the most calm and discreet way possible. By this point, it is more difficult to see Lord Arthur as a helpless victim of destiny:

For a moment he had a natural repugnance against what he was asked to do, but it soon passed away.