Bad Marriages, Limited Lives: "The Pumpkin Eater"

"Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater/Had a wife and couldn't keep her./ He put her in a pumpkin shell/And there he kept her very well." I imagine you remember this nursery rhyme; Penelope Mortimer chooses to title her novel "The Pumpkin Eater" (McGraw-Hill, 1962) after it. And yes, it describes a very bad, very dysfunctional marriage. But it also illustrates the larger issue of dissatisfied women in constrictive marriages and limited lives. This novel was published in England about the same time that Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" (which I posted about on 5/3/10) was published in the U.S., and both address these limitations on women's lives in the 1950s and 1960s. The main characters in the two novels are very different. One is English, one is American. One is urban, one is small town. One isn't very concerned with morality; the other is very proper. One is a careless housewife and mother; the other does everything correctly. But each is confused about why she doesn't feel fulfilled or happy, despite having material comforts, a husband, and several children. Both feel oddly lost; both at least briefly consult therapists (at their husbands' suggestions) who are completely useless and even harmful; both have husbands who can't or won't understand what their problems are (although in different ways: Mr. Bridge is clumsy and rigid, whereas Jake Armitage is self-centered and unfaithful). In other words, both women have the condition described by Betty Friedan in "The Feminine Mystique" -- lack of fulfillment and lack of opportunity for fulfillment.

Susan Glaspell

Today I went to the American Literature Association conference here in San Francisco, and attended wonderful sessions all day. I mostly chose talks about women writers, such as Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Fuller, H.D., and Carson McCullers. One of the best sessions (a set of three talks) was on Susan Glaspell (1876-1948), which reminded me of how she is yet another author who was well known in her time, but then much less so, until feminist scholars in the 1970s brought attention back to her writing. Her powerful, very feminist one-act play, "Trifles," is now frequently anthologized. However, her longer plays and her novels are still neglected. It was encouraging to hear the talks this morning, and to find that there is a Susan Glaspell Society, a group of scholars who study, speak about, and write about her work. Long may her work live!

Thank You, Alice Walker

I stopped reading Alice Walker's work some years ago. I admit to sometimes being a bit dismissive of some of her seemingly "out there" ideas of recent years. But I recently heard a radio interview with her, and was - once again - so impressed with her commitment to important causes related to gender and racial equality, and to alleviating suffering around the world. I started thinking about how important and influential some of her work had been over the years. For example, the novel "The Color Purple," read by so many, spoke so passionately of the pain and destruction caused by prejudice and ignorance. And another novel, "Possessing the Secret of Joy," was one of the very first books to bring wide public attention to the issue of genital mutilation of girls and women in many places in the world, including the United States. These novels, and other works by Walker, remind us of the power of fiction to raise consciousness in a large audience in a way that editorial page essays, or publications of political and social organizations, may not be able to do so widely or effectively. So thank you, Alice Walker, for your tireless dedication to making the world a better and more equitable place.

"After the Workshop"

I have trouble resisting novels about writers' lives. "After the Workshop"(Counterpoint, 2010), by John McNally, goes one better: The novelist writes about a novelist who is writing about a novelist. Very "meta." The main novel's main character, Jack Hercules Sheahan, is - like John McNally, and like Sheahan's protagonist - a graduate of the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop. Twelve years later, he still lives in Iowa City, hasn't published anything since his big success - a story in The New Yorker - and now earns his living as a media escort for more famous writers visiting Iowa City on book tours. The book is satirical, funny, and sad. The workshop, writers, and aspiring writers are all skewered. Yet the tone of the novel is, on another level, affectionate as well, and the main character is oddly good-natured despite all his disappointments and the embarrassing things that happen to him. The world of writers and writing still seems the highest calling to McNally and to Sheahan both.

Two Novels about Tragic Loss

I recently read two novels that, coincidentally, centered around tragic losses to the main women characters. This is, of course, an ancient and universal literary theme, but it never loses its dreadful fascination. We all have either suffered such losses, or can imagine, with great fear, the occurrence of such losses. "February" (Black Cat, 2009), by the Canadian writer Lisa Moore, tells the story of Helen, a woman widowed young by the sinking of an oil rig on which her husband worked. The book is a novel, but the Ocean Ranger oil rig disaster off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982 actually happened, and is eerily timely in light of the oil rig catastrophe in the news now. The novel alternates chapters on the horrible disaster with chapters on the same character and her family in the present (2008), when she finally finds happiness again. The second novel is "Every Last One" (Random House, 2010), by Anna Quindlen. In this one, the main character, Mary Beth, lives a very comfortable and mainly happy life, although she has some family worries. But in the middle of the novel, a shocking event occurs that devastates the family and almost destroys Mary Beth. Only very slowly is she able to bring herself back to any semblance of a "normal" life, although she will be marked forever by the tragedy. Both of these novels are very well-written; neither uses the central event of her book just for shock value. Both main characters are very believable and sympathetic, but complex and very human. "Every Last One" has a whiff of the "popular" novel, but Quindlen's writing keeps getting better with each novel. Moore is a new author to me, but because I am impressed by "February," I plan to read her other works as well.

Red Flag Words in Book Reviews

I make many of my decisions about what to read or not to read based on book reviews. Certain words and phrases are consistently red flags for me; when I see these in reviews, I almost automatically decide that a book is not something I want to read. Of course this is very individual; everyone's tastes are different and therefore everyone's red flag list would be different. A few such off-putting words and phrases from my personal list are as follows:
-science fiction
-fantasy
-thriller
-fast-paced
-hard-boiled
-action-packed
-noirish
-ominous
-nightmarish
-magical realism
-postmodern
-experimental

On the other hand, words and phrases that pique my interest include the following:
-character-driven
-well-developed characters
-women's lives
-marriage
-urban
-sophisticated
-witty
-funny
-social comedy
-drawing room comedy
-British
-Manhattan
-San Francisco

Cold, Creepy, and Claustrophobic

Brrrr! I thought I would go back to Iris Murdoch, after many years away from her, and see if I still had a slightly uneasy feeling about her novels. The answer is: Emphatically, Yes! I just finished "The Time of the Angels" (Viking, 1966) and found it cold, creepy, and claustrophobic. The characters are cold, even when they are ostensibly passionate, and to emphasize the cold, the weather in London is constantly freezing throughout the novel. The atmosphere in the house where most of the story takes place is creepy and claustrophobic, as are the main characters, especially the horrible - even evil - Carel, who controls all around him from his dark room. There are glimpses of human warmth in two characters, the Russian refugee Leo and the sad, orphaned housekeeper Pattie, but even they are so damaged by life and by Carel that they can't keep up that warmth for long. I have to say that I kept reading to the end, although I now often don't continue reading a book I don't like, so there was some psychological fascination that kept my attention. I was relieved, however, when it was over and I was released from the cold and the creepiness.