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."