So Awfully Happy

"Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?"

"Divorced---?" Susy threw her head back against the pillows and laughed.  "Why, what are you thinking of?  Don't you remember that I wasn't even married the last time you saw me?"

"Yes; I do.  But that was two years ago." The little girl wound her arms about Susy's neck and leaned against her caressingly.  "Are you going to be soon, then?  I'll promise not to tell if you don't want me to."

"Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think so?"

"Because you look so awfully happy," said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.

---Edith Wharton, The Glimpses of the Moon (1922)

Wharton's novel about the possibility of love in a culture of divorce.  Here, a child who has been abandoned (for all practical purposes) by her mother, mistakes newlywed bliss for the exuberant freedom of the soon-to-be divorcee. 

Twilight Love

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon these boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed where on it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by
          This thou perceivst, which makes thy love more strong
          To love that well, which thou must leave ere long

--Shakespeare,  Sonnet 73

Shakespeare on love and impending loss.  The best of his sonnets, in my opinion.

Dream House Part II: Islands

"'T was the same little house her father had built him when he was a bachelor, with one livin'-room, and a little mite of a bedroom out of it where she slept, but 't was neat as a ship's cabin.  There was some old chairs, an' a seat made of a long box that might have held boat tackle an' things to lock up in his fishin' days, and a good enough stove so anybody could cook and keep warm in cold weather....Joanna had done one thing very pretty.  There was a little piece o'swamp on the island where good rushes grew plenty, and she'd gathered 'em, and braided some beautiful mats for the floor and a thick cushion for the long bunk.  She'd showed a good deal of invention; you see there was a nice chance to pick up pieces o'wood and boards that drove ashore, and she'd made good use o'what she found.  There was n't no clock, but she had a few dishes on a shelf, and flowers set about in shells fixed to the walls...."

---Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)

In this section of Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) we hear the painful story of Joanna Todd, the cousin by marriage of main character Almira Todd.  Jilted by her fiance, Joanna is so distraught over her fate that she determines that she can no longer reside within the community.  Relocating to "Shell Heap Island," she takes up residence in her father's bachelor house, were she lives as a hermit until her death.  As she explains, her extreme bitterness and complete loss of "hope" not only make her "want to be alone" but make her unfit for social life.  Joanna's makeshift efforts at domesticating her home, as recorded above, evidence her innovation, but also the loss of the true creative power which is inextricably tied to hope--the idea that the future will be better than the past.  Joanna understands such hope as a prerequisite for community life.   

Joanna's island home is a dream home not because it represents something utopian, but because it represents something universal.  When the narrator of the story makes a pilgrimage to Shell-Heap Island, decades after Joanna's death, only a foundation of stones from her home and a few flowers from the garden remain.  Yet as her commentary suggests, this kind of island home resides in all of us in the more figurative sense: "In the life of life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong."  Our fellows of the cell....love that, Jewett. 

Let The Air In

"I said the mountains looked like white elephants.  Wasn't that bright?"

"That was bright."

"I wanted to try this new drink.  That's all we do, isn't it--look at things and try new drinks?"

"I guess so."

The girl looked across at the hills.

"They're lovely hills," she said.  "They don't really look like white elephants.  I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees."

"Should we have another drink?"

"All right."

The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.

"The beer's nice and cool," the man said.

"It's lovely," the girl said.

"It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig," the man said.  "It's not really an operation at all."

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

"I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig.  It's really not anything.  It's just to let the air in."

The girl did not say anything.

"I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural."

"Then what will we do afterward?"

"We'll be fine afterward.  Just like we were before."

"What makes you think so?"

"That's the only thing that bothers us.  It's the only thing that's made us unhappy."

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.

"And you think then we'll be all right and be happy."

"I know we will. You don't have to be afraid.  I've known lots of people that have done it."

"So have I," said the girl.  "And afterward they were all so happy."

"Well," the man said, "if you want to you don't have to.  I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple."

"And you really want to?"

"I think it's the best thing to do.  But I don't want you to do it if you don't really want to."

"And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?"

"I love you now.  You know I love you."

"I know.  But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you'll like it?"

---Ernest Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants"

It isn't the unnamed operation that is the subject matter of this quote that interests me, but its painful recognition of the ephemerality of any moment of well-being or balance.  That desire to return and recapture an earlier idealized state--things "like they were"--  is universal.  Flinging open the window, or here in this passage, "let[ting] the air in" in the more clinical sense, seems to promise to end stuffiness, to restore simplicity and clarity.  The girl knows better.  Returning to the ideal state once the line has been crossed is a near impossiblity. 

It's A Match

     Leo had led Salzman to the only clear place in the room, a table near a window that overlooked the lamp-lit city.  He seated himself at the matchmaker's side but facing him, attempting by an act of will to suppress the unpleasant tickle in his throat.  Salzman eagerly unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a thin packet of much-handled cards.....When Leo's eyes fell upon the cards, he counted six spread out in Salzman's hand.
     "So few?" he asked in disappointment.
     "You wouldn't believe me how much cards I got in my office," Salzman replied.  "The drawers are already filled to the top, so I keep them now in a barrel, but is every girl good for a new rabbi?" 

     ---Bernard Malamud, "The Magic Barrel" in The Magic Barrel (1958)

In the title story of Bernard Malamud's National Book Award winning collection, a rabbinical student, Leo Finkle, secures the services of a "commercial cupid"--the marriage broker, Pinye Salzman.   Salzman cleverly limits his options, initially presenting him with the potential match of "Sophie P." a twenty-four year old widow; "Ruth K." a nineteen year old beauty with a lame foot; and "Lily H." a woman he insists is only twenty-nine (Leo's brief meeting with her confirms that but she is at least thirty-five and "aging rapidly"). Rattled by his date with Lily, who believes him to be a true man of God,  Leo gives up on the notion of an arranged marriage. At this point, Salzman offers his a packet of photographs of clients, which Leo leaves unopened for many months. Finally, in a miserable state, he examines the images, and falls in love with one very familiar image.  Rushing to Salzman, he asks him to arrange a meeting with this woman.  Salzman protests, insisting that this image was left in the packet only by accident.  Pressing him, Leo learns that this is a photo of Salzman's daughter--a woman of a very questionable past who is now "dead" to her father.  Suspecting that Salzman had been scheming to arrange this match all along, Leo nonetheless falls for the woman, seeing in her weary yet compelling face, his own salvation.  

This is a story of immigrant culture but also and more importantly of the nature of love. I am most drawn to the image of the "magic" barrel--referred to only as a barrel in the text, and one that exists only in the imagination.  The contrast of the  limitless possibilities of the barrel--the thing we think we want--and the slender options that Salzman strategically presents is the locus of fascination for me. The perfect match (people, objects, situations) always resides in the future of the distance---it is always unidentifiable, or inaccessible, or unobtainable.  Salzman cleverly creates a match that presents as the match--someone who suggests to Leo what love means: "he examined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle.  Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking.  She might, perhaps, love him."

Longing

Take note of Edith Wharton's use of punctuation marks and italics in this quote which captures the sharpness of intense longing and reunion:


"Do you know-- I hardly remembered you?"


"Hardly remembered me?"


"I mean: how shall I explain? I--it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.

--Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)