esrosedotblog

There are no classes in America except when there are.

The upper middle class segment of society is not the part of the middle class that is disappearing. They are alive and well.

College educated, probably professional, slightly suburban or mid western, the women are what used to be called "matrons". Slightly plump guardians of the status quo. In charge of raising the brood of a professional man or a man who is newly rich from some entrepreneurial effort.

This is why the two books that I just re-read are still so apt and have become pillars of American Twentieth Century Literature (whenever those words are capitalized like this. This, despite the relative obscurity of their author.

Mrs. Bridge (1959) and the companion novel Mr. Bridge (1969) by Evan S Connell

These people are insulated from the world, society and each other. Also their children and even their friends who are close but not too close.

I like these novels for just what they are, a good read. But also because they are a good study of couple-hood and the traps that might ensue after the initial excitement of conventional marriage.

I might add that gay men are not immune from some of the same observations.

These are two people who married for reasons a bit beyond the romantic. Convenience, class (even though there is none in America) and most of all the ability not to roil the waters. To let one partner run things and the other stand by as the help meet.

It is also a portrait of a family which is well to do because of the intensity of the breadwinner's devotion to work over any consideration of partnership or parental involvement.

It is easy at one level to mock the Bridges but Connell makes that impossible.

They are presented sympathetically and in a way that engages the reader even beyond his desire to get involved with these people. They are not mockable because they have substance and foibles and their relationship while stiff and distant most of the time is blessed with mutual respect and admiration.

Their relationship to their kids in changing times (pre WWII) is strained with the difficulty of societal change. Instability.

The eternal values the Bridges were brought up with have shifted and old expectations and mores are not very effective.

I am their kids. My time was just in time to be there for all of this post WWII stuff.

And there we have a nub of it.

Even though they are of a different class they are my mother, at least, and my father.

This alone makes the reading worthwhile. A new basis for understanding.

I was the misunderstood son. The unappreciative daughter. The rebel against what is right and wrong.

What great books!

A film was made combining the two novels in one production starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. A perfect vehicle. I do remember seeing it. But I would not bother now. The novels have it down. I do not see the Newmans when I see this Bridge couple. I see them as Connell has painted them.

Connell is an interesting guy. A late bloomer who only wrote one other popular work, something about Custer and Custer's Last Stand. Pretty far away from the Bridges.

Connell got lost as a literary hero or icon but his works remain as standards for writing about the American family or the American marriage.

Labels: America, books