chapter VIII: "you really do hate me, don't you, Edith?"

By the time his parents died, Stoner had already begun the process of forming an intentional, deliberate self. In reflections on previous chapters I'd pointed out Stoner's apparent lack of intention or real integrity; in his youth, self knowledge came as a surprise and direction came from external forces. 

Edith was much less well prepared than her husband was in the face of death. Edith's father's suicide awakens Edith. She looks at her own life and tries to grasp its meaning and direction. She destroys in secret all the things her father ever gave her. In the two months she stayed with her mother, away from Stoner and their daughter, Gracie, Edith cultivated a new style for herself. She had her hair cut short in a fashionable (if not altogether flattering) bob; she learned to smoke and how to apply makeup. She burned her old clothes and took out a loan from her mother to buy an entirely new wardrobe so she could be a new woman. 

Who hasn't hoped at some point that a new look could transform you into a new, more powerful, more resilient, more attractive version of yourself?

Armed with a bold new look, Edith began to be more aggressive in her relationships with her husband and daughter. When Stoner's students came round, she insisted on serving them tea and snacks--and then turning the conversation to herself so that they became confused and embarrassed and stopped their visits. When Gracie and her father shared a moment of loving, joyous laughter between them, Edith began to monopolize all of Gracie's time so as to eliminate the possibility of a flourishing father-daughter relationship. 

Edith's self-creation could not be more different than Stoner's version. Stoner, growing into himself, begins to teach with a passion and excitement that had previously eluded him. He plans a new book project and begins his research with pleasure. He loves caring for his daughter, building the relationship between them. In short, as Stoner develops himself, he becomes creative and interested and as a result, he becomes increasingly interesting. When she returns to Columbia in her "improved" guise, Edith dabbles in the arts--painting, piano-playing, sculpture, community theater. But Edith does not create; Edith cultivates a destructive orientation and she carefully aims her sabotage wherever her husband has begun to create. 

Does Edith see this in herself? This is what I want to know. She wants something different, something more powerful and purposive. She gets that, certainly. But is it destruction and sabotage that she wanted? Does she use them to strike at what terrifies her? Does she just want control instead of any real power? Watching Edith is heartbreaking. Edith--you never had to do this. You never had to choose this. 

Chapter VI: "So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study."

I confess that I find this novel uncomfortable to read. It is so bare, so honest and forthright. It is not that it lacks polish, because the language is pristine, perfect. It is rather that this limpid language presents such a direct and unromantic picture of a life and the relationships in it. "It's too much," I keep thinking to myself, "I shouldn't be seeing this, shouldn't be a witness to this."

Since the wedding of William Stoner to Edith, every time the narration turns to Edith, I feel such heartbreak: I want to sit her down and preach at her, "You don't have to do this, Edith. You don't have to choose this." She refuses, down to the core of her, to let herself be loved by her husband. Her marriage is a deal she has struck with ...Stoner? her parents? the universe? And because she has made a deal, she puts in the work, scrubbing the floors clean of invisible dirt until her fingers crack and bleed, laboriously and ineptly sewing and hanging childish curtains, pushing herself to anxiety attacks to entertain guests she despises. When her husband, noting her excessive work, her loneliness, her sadness and disappointment, tries to help, she grows colder and more distant. Maybe she would respect or admire him more if he held himself cold, aloof, and demanding. But he tries. Earnestly, clumsily, haltingly, but he tries. And every time he tries, I wonder at the risk and the hope in him. The narrator tells us that after a year he stopped hoping his marriage would improve, but the narration shows this for a lie: when Edith wants a child, he hopes; when the child loves him, he hopes; when he makes assistant professor, he hopes.

Maybe that's really what disturbs me in this novel--all this groundless, naked hope. It is so hard to hope. Hope, I think, in our current collective imagination, is just a high-sounding word for fantasy, for weakness, and for wishing. You hope things will work out, but what, we sneer, are you doing about it? But hope is already doing. The hoping is itself the doing. Hope is not the relinquishment of achievement, but rather its ground. Hope is already an achievement. This is why Kierkegaard can write, earnestly, that "Love hopes all things and--yet is never put to shame."

post on chapter IV coming soon!

One chapter sets up a whole failed marriage. We've only seen the beginning but what a breathtakingly difficult beginning it is. More in a day or so--

Chapter III: "Her moral training, both at the schools she attended and at home, was negative in nature, prohibitive in intent..."

My mother must be one of the least selfish persons I know. I am humbled to recall how hard she worked to keep our family solvent on my father's not-quite-large-enough paycheck. She grew berries and vegetables in the back yard so she could can the vegetables and put up jars upon jars of jam and jelly. With the next door neighbor, a comfortable Latvian grandmother, she put up quarts of garlicky dill pickles, apple sauce, apple butter, pears and plums. She scoured all the thrift stores in the Milwaukee area to find clothes for us that were as fashionable as possible. She bought antique tables, desks, dressers, and chairs for pennies at estate and rummage sales and refinished them so they would be beautiful and functional. She (and I) spent hours pouring insulation into the walls of our house by hand to reduce heating costs and save on the labor costs of hiring a professional. For all this she reserved very few luxuries for herself: She always had cigarettes. She always had a reserve of peanut M&Ms that we were never to touch. And she drank little else but Tab, a diet cola most people have long forgotten.

I am not sure my mother sees her hard work as sacrifice. If I were to thank her for all she did, she's make some joke and laugh it off. If I insisted, she'd become uncomfortable. If pressed, I think the most she could say would be something along the lines of "What else was I going to do? Anyone would have done that." It is not true that anyone would have done it. My father, for example, was only pushed into it by my mother's firm lead. And many who might have worked so hard and enjoyed so few treats might still have complained or made a martyr of him- or herself or made those for whom he or she worked to feel guilty for benefiting from that work.

Nevertheless, when I look back at my upbringing and when I think of my moral training (such as it was), I see very little that was positive in nature. What positive rules or values was I taught? My mother was absolutely amazing at personal finance. (Before she married, she drove a Mustang. She had two, one after the other. She paid for both in full in cash. On factory wages. Badass.) But I can't recall a single conversation either of my parents had with me or my siblings about how to create a budget or how to follow one. Maybe they thought we'd just pick it up naturally, without having to be taught, much like the way I learned how to read.

Being good was a matter of not doing: don't hit your brother or sister; don't talk back; don't get bad grades; don't touch things that aren't yours; don't say naughty words. Etc. I have no recollection of positive moral training. Be this kind of person. These kinds of attitudes are good ones. Pay attention to these sorts of things. Instead of "Do this, for these reasons," I remember learning "Don't do this"--and not many reasons.

What are we to make of Edith, then, except that she is beautiful and without much personality? At the end of the chapter, after it has been determined that Edith and Stoner will marry, Edith runs after him and, her face pale with emotion, calls Stoner by his given name for the first time: "I'll try to be a good wife to you, William. I'll try." Were you touched when you read that? Did you feel for Edith a little? She's not a wicked person. Not a bad or malicious person. She can articulate a desire and intention to be a good wife. Remember this.