This was a remarkable paragraph, I thought, that seemed to sum up the predicament of marriage that Munro writes about.
Young husbands were stern, in those days. Just a short time before, they had been suitors, almost figures of fun, knock-kneed and desperate in their sexual agonies. Now, bedded down, they turned resolute and disapproving. Off to work every morning, clean-shaven, youthful necks in knotted ties, days spent in unknown labors, home again at suppertime to take a critical glance at the evening meal and to shake out the newspaper, hold it up between themselves and the muddle of the kitchen, the ailments and emotions, the babies. What a lot they had to learn, so quickly. How to kowtow to bosses and how to manage wives. How to be authoritative about mortgages, retaining walls, lawn grass, drains, politics, as well as the jobs that had to maintain their families for the next quarter of a century. It was the women, then, who could slip back -- during the daytime hours, and always allowing for the stunning responsibility that had been landed on them, in the matter of the children -- into a kind of second adolescence. A lightening of spirits when the husbands departed. Dreamy rebellion, subversive get-togethers, laughing fits that were a throwback to high school, mushrooming between the walls that the husband was paying for, in the hours when he wasn't there.
This, in particular, may be what drives most of Munro's men: How to kowtow to bosses and how to manage wives. The feeling of loss of control at work makes the men compensate as ogres at home.
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That is a remarkable paragraph and, as you said, its boundaries go outside of this one story.
I didn't really get that Munro was saying that the way men were treated at work was largely responsible for the way they in turn treated their wives (although there's definitely an element of exerting power over what you can). I understood it more as there's this whole gender-based stereotype that people are expected to fill and that your worth in our culture is largely based on how well you fill it, and that cultural expectations of men precluded their having loving emotional lives. The fact that her stories are not filled with June and Ward Cleaver types, but their opposites, says a lot about what she thinks of those cultural expectations — they're bad for individuals and they're bad for marriages.
What I saw in most of the marriages in this book was not an overt kind of sexism but something more insidious — a sort of unspoken expectation that the man was the center of the family and that the wife's primary role was to support him emotionally and in his career, to advance his interests, to always be there for him and to expect very little in return. It's no wonder that their moments of sweetness in life mainly came from outside the home.
The last story in the collection is told from the point of view of a husband, and it's really fascinating.
And this part of it: It was the women, then, who could slip back -- during the daytime hours, and always allowing for the stunning responsibility that had been landed on them, in the matter of the children -- into a kind of second adolescence. A lightening of spirits when the husbands departed. Dreamy rebellion, subversive get-togethers, laughing fits that were a throwback to high school, mushrooming between the walls that the husband was paying for, in the hours when he wasn't there.
I remember coming home from school and seeing my mom in the kitchen with her women friends. And they would be carrying on like teenagers, in a way I never saw my mom act around my stepdad. There was something subversive about it, like these women's "bosses" were away so they could breathe easier, lighten up, be themselves.
That's a real tragedy for both the women and the men in those stultifying unions.
As dominating and critical my father was of my mother, I really can't imagine being in such a relationship myself. The husbands in Munro's stories have no love for their wives, and often no love for anything. That's part of what makes these experiences with other men so satisfying for the wives -- they get to feel and glimpse real care from a real human while they're married to a brick wall.
Erin and I have our problems and at this point in our life together I wouldn't consider myself a good husband, but there is a huge difference in attitude between myself and these husbands. I truly care about Erin and try to be good, but my illness and my personality flaws get in the way. I am doing better, though, and I will always have her as a role model for the kind of spouse I should be.
It's a tragedy for both spouses, yes. That's maybe what I liked most about this paragraph. In a lot of the stories, you feel sorry for the wife and think the husband is an ass. This paragraph shows that the husbands weren't happy either. They thought they had to act a certain way -- serious, disapproving, grown-up -- and were almost jealous of their wives and the fun they were allowed to have.
(Ben, you're a fine husband, really.)
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