Aidanvale: Book Club

Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants:

Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest
Naomi of Consumed by Ink
Rebecca of Bookish Beck
Kay of What Me Read
Marianne of Let's Read

Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Mrs Bridge is set in middle-class Kansas City in the years between the late 1920s and the post-war period, and quietly follows the life of India Bridge, a respectable, well-off wife and mother living exactly the life she is supposed to want.

The story unfolds through a series of small, precise vignettes which show moments in India Bridge’s life that, when taken together, give you an almost perfect sense of her character and her world. We meet her in her late teens and then follow her through her children’s younger years, their adolescence, and later, as they leave home and begin lives of their own.

She lives a lonely life, with a husband who works almost constantly, and within social expectations that quietly but firmly shape everything she does. She couldn’t necessarily articulate that sense of restraint, but she clearly feels disconnected from herself and from her own life. Early on, she reflects that as a young woman she had felt marriage and family life might not be for her but she wasn’t taken seriously. That life simply wasn’t presented as a real option. Women (and men, to a lesser extent) were given one narrow path: marriage, children and domesticity. Mrs Bridge falls into what is expected of her, and from there she keeps rolling forward, never quite feeling like she is steering. She is always the passenger, never the driver. This idea is beautifully and painfully captured in the final scene of the book.

I felt a little disconnected from her as a character but I think Connell does this deliberately. We feel removed from India because she is removed from herself. There are moments when she comes close to recognising what is missing and trying to do something about it, like when she leaves a potentially controversial book lying around, hoping it might start a conversation with her husband. But she always retreats. It is as though she is too afraid to follow these flickers of awareness through, too frightened to really confront the emptiness she senses in her life.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this. She may be afraid of what she will discover if she looks too closely. Or she may simply never have been given the emotional language or life skills to identify and act on her own needs. This is a time when women were barely acknowledged as having needs at all, let alone encouraged to take them seriously.

One of the most unsettling moments in the novel is her strangely muted response to a friend being killed by their own child. It feels as though she is frightened of strong feeling itself. Possibly she knows that if she faces the horror and pain she not be able to contain herself.

There is also an undercurrent of casual, unquestioned racism running through the novel that feels entirely of its time. It appears in off-hand remarks, in social assumptions, and in the way people who sit outside Mrs Bridge’s world of comfort and respectability barely register as fully realised lives. The prejudice is not loud or dramatic; it is simply absorbed into the background of everyday life. In a way, this mirrors Mrs Bridge’s own emotional blindness. Just as she rarely interrogates the limits placed on her as a woman, she also never questions the social order that places her so securely in it and others so far outside it.

So much of what Mrs Bridge does, she does because she thinks she should. Hosting cocktail parties. Hiring a maid. Keeping special hand towels for special occasions that she hopes no one will use and no one ever does. These rituals of correctness become substitutes for meaning. They are how she measures whether she is succeeding at her life.

Her relationships with her children are shaped in exactly the same way. She is deeply invested in what they should be doing, what they should care about, and how they should behave. She is so focused on the “shoulds” that she misses the quiet, ordinary pleasure of discovering who her children actually are and of building relationships with them that are genuinely mutual.

What does Mrs Bridge say about being a wife?

What Mrs Bridge ultimately says about wives, and about women like Mrs Bridge, is so beautifully restrained. It shows how a life can be carefully constructed, socially admired, and still feel profoundly uninhabited or empty. Marriage does not ruin Mrs Bridge and Mr Bridge isn't cruel to her or her children. Mrs Bridge shows something something more insidious: a world that trains women to be accommodating, pleasant and grateful, while preventing them from coming to know themselves and be themselves.

This is a wonderful novel. It is short yet perfectly crafted. I really can’t fault it and I would recommend it to everyone.

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants:

Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest
Naomi of Consumed by Ink
Rebecca of Bookish Beck
Kay of What Me Read

The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor

I have to begin this review by admitting that not only had a I never read anything by Elizabeth Taylor, I had never heard of this author before. I want to begin by acknowledging that is one of the things i hav eenjoyed the most about joining the Literary Wives Book Club - it's making me step outside my comfort zone and read books that I wouldn't have otherwise chosen myself.

Onto the review.

My first observation of about the The Soul of Kindness is that Taylor did an excellent job of writing about every day life while still having a go at the characters and the society in which they live. The Soul of Kindness seems very polite and straightforward. There is a lot of polite conversation, pouring of tea, living a very English life from times gone by. At times, I admit, I found this a little slow. But this book is also a very sharp look at marriage and about the roles women get pushed into, especially wives.

What does The Soul of Kindness say about wives or the experience of being a wife?

There are probably a lot of different ways to think about wives in The Soul of Kindness, but I am going to tackle it by thinking about two of the characters, Flora and Barbara. Both say something quite different about what marriage can do to people and if I am honest it was Barbara's relationship with Percy that I found most interesting and modern.

Understanding Flora

Flora is the centre of the book, or at least it starts that way until the cast of characters and their stories start to grow around her. She is beautiful and adored. Everyone talks about her as if she is pure goodness and she (narcissistically) even believes this about herself. But her version of kindness comes from never thinking too hard about anyone else’s perspective. She drifts along through life, assuming that people welcome her and that everyone will fall into line with how she sees things and what she watns. She is completely incapable of putting herself in the shoes of others or seeing things from a different perspective to her own. There is Flora and Flora alone in her world.

That's how she causes harm that complete blankness to another person's perspective and experience. Flora genuinely thinks she is helping when she steers people into choices they do not want. She encourages a friend's borther Kit to pursue acting even though he is not suited to it. She pushes her husband's father and his long-term lover Barbara into marriage because she cannot imagine a long term relationship that doesn’t follow her blueprint. She is the sort of wife who looks perfect from the outside but who causes strain and stress whenever she is in the room.

The message around Flora seems to be that being a good wife isn't about sweetness or prettiness or the right sort of manners. Flora has these things, but is she a good wife? I think Taylor is trying to say that kindness without any self awareness, or awareness of others, can be incredibly damaging. To be honest, I think calling it kindness is a stretch. It feels more as though Flora does these things because it suits her ego to feel that she is 'helping' others.

Flora’s marriage to Richard feels almost like a performance. He sometimes seems besotted with her but she never really sees him or understands him. The result is a marriage that looks lovely but has very little real connection inside it. Interestingly I see paralells here with the last two books, Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins and The Constant Wife by W Somerset Maugham. These all have in common marriages where there is a lack of connection.

Barbara as an accidental wife

Then there is Barbara, who quietly provides a completely different picture. Before Flora meddles in their lives, Barbara and Percy are living in a comfortable, slightly unconventional arrangement. They enjoy each other, they spend time together, but they also have their own lives and their own space. It works for them. They allow Flora to pressue them into marriage, and everything shifts for them. What was once easy and light becomes forced and heavy. Without marriage they were free to live their lives in a way that felt more authentic to them. In marrying, they fell into more traditional roles that didn't suit them.

It is such an interesting contrast. With Flora, marriage becomes a stage for her self image and narcissism. She can be admired as a lovely person and wife. With Barbara, marriage becomes a disruption. It pulls apart something that was working and replaces it with a version of togetherness that neither of them actually wanted.

So what does this book say about wives? I think Taylor is saying that the concept of 'wife' can be incredibly limiting if it is defined by other people’s expectations. Flora tries to be the perfect wife but there is no real connection in her marriage and she ends up causing harm through her lack of empahy.

Barbara never set out to be anyone’s idea of a wife at all and ends up struggling once she is forced into that shape. Earlier I referred to this as modern. What I mean to suggest is that I feel like it's a modern idea that relationships don't need to end in marriage. They can be successful, loving and full of meaningful connection without marriage. Once upon a time marriage was a necessary condition for long-term relationships. Women needed to pass from man to man and fulfill the role that society laid out for them. Perhaps Taylor was starting to wonder how necessary this was anymore.

Conclusion

In the end, the book suggests that marriage only works when people actually connect with each other in a way that is authentic to themselves. Both couples in this novel lose that. Flora cannot see anyone clearly, including herself. Barbara and Percy lose the easy rhythm they once had the moment they try to formalise it.

Did I enjoy the book?

I have to say, though, that while I can see why Elizabeth Taylor’s writing is so admired, I didn’t really connect with this one on a personal level. The writing is clearly skilful but overall I found the book a bit slow. I never quite clicked with the characters, even though I understood what she was doing with them. It’s one of those novels I can appreciate more than enjoy. I’m glad I finally read her, but I probably won’t be rushing out to pick up another any time soon.