“Living well is the best revenge”

The expression “Living well is the best revenge” gives Lissy and Emma Corrigan a shared moral answer to Jemima’s demand for retaliation. Invoked amid a disagreement over how to respond to a personal wrong, the maxim favors preserving one’s dignity over making an offender suffer, but the conversation does not settle whether that requires silence or simply a different kind of response.

Meaning and Attribution

Lissy quotes the aphorism as a principle she and Emma have long shared: “Living well is the best revenge.” George Herbert. Its force in the scene comes not only from its familiar claim that a good life can answer an injury, but also from Lissy’s description of the moral ground on which she and Emma prefer to stand. Revenge, in her formulation, risks sacrificing that position even if it promises to make the other person pay.

The phrase is therefore more than a general observation about success after hardship. Lissy uses it to resist turning another person’s wrongdoing into a mandate for retaliation. The proposed alternative is not presented as a detailed plan for what Emma should do; it is a standard against which the desire for revenge can be judged.

Dispute with Jemima

Jemima argues that walking away would neither teach the offender a lesson nor make him regret what he has done. Lissy counters that revenge is undignified and invokes the shared maxim in support of keeping the moral high ground. Their disagreement is practical as well as ethical: Jemima measures a response by its effect on the person who caused harm, while Lissy emphasizes what the response would mean for Emma and her own conduct.

The maxim does not end the dispute. Jemima stares at Lissy blankly, then turns back to Emma and offers help, describing revenge as one of her specialties. That immediate turn keeps Lissy’s principle from functioning as a settled resolution: it establishes her position, but Jemima continues to make retaliation available as a course of action.

Relation to Emma’s Conduct

The phrase’s importance lies partly in the tension between restraint and direct confrontation. Elsewhere, Emma tries to manage a difficult workplace exchange by adopting a relaxed, professional manner while asking Doug Hamilton to recap what has been said. In a different encounter, she insists that her disclosures to Jack Harper on the plane were made under duress and did not express what she truly meant. Later, she confronts Jack over the romance she believed in and accuses him of using her for research. These episodes show that Emma’s responses range from tactful self-presentation to forceful accusation; they do not establish that she simply withdraws when wronged.

Against that broader pattern, Lissy’s use of the aphorism is best read as a claim about the terms of response, not as proof that Emma must remain passive. It articulates an ideal Emma and Lissy have reportedly shared, while the surrounding exchange leaves unresolved how that ideal can coexist with anger, accountability, and the wish to make an offender understand the harm done.