"Flower Garden": In which we find another us/them country/city situation.
After living in an old Vermont manor house together for almost eleven years, the two Mrs. Winnings, mother and daughter-in-law, had grown to look a good deal alike, as women will who live intimately together, and work in the same kitchen and get things done around the house in the same manner.
Remember that episode of Six Feet Under where Nate comes home and his mother and Lisa are doing the dishes together and they swing around at exactly the same time and they're both wearing aprons and smiling and he just looks like he wants to turn around and start running and never, ever stop?
• "Eloquent hands". I like that.
• I had no idea that was where the story was going. How depressing. Stories like that make my stomach hurt. For a while, I thought maybe Mrs. Winning might come around, if only in her head -- because she was wistful about the bond between Mrs. MacLane and her son, the life that Mrs. MacLane and her son were creating in that cottage, because the cottage and its inhabitants represented the bright color that it seemed like Mrs. Winning longed for -- but that she wouldn't be able to voice it because it would mean going up against everyone she knew. I even could have understood (not justified, but understood) the times when she felt that she needed to make it clear that she sided with the rest of the people in the town. But the bit where Mrs. Winning realizes that she's enjoying Mrs. MacLane's discomfort and pain -- that, I thought, made it pretty clear that she was like the rest of them. I don't think it was a matter of her not standing up because she was afraid or because it was too hard -- I think it was a matter of her not standing up because she didn't want to.
"Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors": In which sailors are boogeymen. Or something.
• Okay, I admit it. I'm at a loss here, maybe because most of one side of my family is military, and heavily Navy. Was this a common thing, worrying about sailors?
• I felt that this story, more than most of the others, had a very specific sense of time and place.
• It did feel like the women equated the sailors with sex (especially when the narrator got lost and afterwards the mother shook her and said, "Aren't you ashamed?"), scared that they would say something or do something to destroy the girls' innocence -- or that maybe just being around them would somehow turn the girls into wantons. And the fear rubbed off on the girls, but it was more of a shapeless fear that gave me that boogeyman feeling.
• And again, a view of the lines that divide adults and children.
"Colloquy": Which means a conversation or dialogue, and yes, I looked it up.
• I don't have much to say about this one, other than that I feel for Mrs. Arnold.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
Patti at Fickle Words
Gail at Original Content
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Previously:
"Afternoon in Linen"
"After You, Dear Alphonse" and "Charles"
"The Witch" and "The Renegade"
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
The only military in my family on my mother's side, anyway, is Navy, and so the whole sailor thing isn't quite as understandable, except for the phrase "A Girl in Every Port." Sailors are allegedly notoriously ...friendly. I'd certainly say that all of my uncles always have tons of girlfriends and friends all over, but it's the 50's version of this that she must be dealing with. Interesting.
Posted by: TadMack | 17 November 2008 at 09:09 AM
Well, yeah. And I remember the sailors being in town one night out in Boston and they were... friendly. But not scary. Not like these ladies made them out to be, anyway. But, different time, different place. And I do think that it was more that the sailors represented a threat than actually were a threat. Or something.
Posted by: Leila | 17 November 2008 at 09:22 AM
"Sailors" were a replacement for, say, Vikings, or marauders. They were a threat to virginity and "nice girl" status, metaphorically. But yeah, weird when read today.
I should go back to your Dickens posts for this, but I'll tell you here: S (15 and reading A Tale of Two Cities for Honors English) really liked your posts.
Posted by: Kelly Fineman | 17 November 2008 at 11:04 AM
Yeah, that was how I read it -- I'm not usually that great at metaphor as I'm pretty literal minded -- but it did make me wonder...
Posted by: Leila | 17 November 2008 at 01:23 PM
I could see that bit about sailors, even though they had sailors in their own family.
Here in Portland, Oregon we have both those myths surrounding our Rose Festival which includes glorification of the ships and sailors coming in.
A dark feminist thread is that the prostitutes must work way over time, an average of (some number physically impossible unless they take 6 at a time) tricks a day. A dark gold-digger thread is that young women come to the Rose Festival specifically to find a sailor to hook up with and trick into marriage.
I think both those threads are myths that may have the tiniest bit of truth as their seed, but are so overblown because of the distorted view of sex. And they could have as seeds such myths as these that go way back and have been passed from mother to daughter.
Posted by: Heidi | 17 November 2008 at 04:37 PM
I felt "Flower Garden" was one of the most successful of these short stories, in terms of what I've read a short story should be. The protagonist is changed by the action of the story. She gives up what she craves, a relationship with the woman who is living in the house she always wanted, a relationship beyond the family she married into, for the sake of conforming to the community. She gives up her chance at something more in life because she can't live separately from the community.
As a writer, I tend to be interested in those little slice of life stories, which I've never been able to sell. Reading all Jackson's tiny little slice of life things and then this real short story really illustrates the difference between the two types of writing.
Looking back, I think "Charles" is probably a more complete story than the others in that we can assume the parents' perception of their child must change as a result of what happens in the story.
"Dorothy and My Grandmother, Sailors, Whatever"--This almost read as memoir to me. I wondered about Jackson's childhood. The scene with the girls in the theater reminded me of my mother who told me I shouldn't go to movies by myself because Helen Markowski went to the movies by herself back in 1949 or thereabouts and a strange man sat down next to her. Plus, I had no problem at all with the concerns about the sailors. Come on! Aren't those guys legendary? "The fleet's in?"
I think "Colloquy" is more like a scene than a short story.
Posted by: gailg | 17 November 2008 at 09:18 PM
For some reason, when I read "Dorothy and My Grandmother and Sailors" I thought of Lydia Bennett and her obsession about the militia... and look what happened to her. Let that be a warning to young women who associate with sailors. LOL
But seriously, I got kind of peeved when the grandmother just made them afraid instead of making them smart. I'm so glad that I'm living now instead of back then.
I think "Colloquy" would make a great play.
Posted by: Patti | 17 November 2008 at 11:01 PM
Yes, I remember hearing fearful things about sailors, including the old expression "spending money like a drunken sailor" which my grandmother used to say. There was definitely a legend about the chaos that would ensue when the fleet came in.
Posted by: OolooKitty | 18 November 2008 at 02:09 AM