Mrs. Bridge : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant character sketch
Review: Connell's extended character sketch is as close to perfect as novels come. His depiction of a mid-century St. Louis housewife haunted by the limitations placed her on society, but too timid to directly confront those limitations (even in her own mind) is both deeply touching and often wildly funny. Connell never lets his humor become mocking, however; he clearly has great love for the character he has developed here. Although the companion novel Mr. Bridge is excellent, this is the better of the two.

Rating:
Summary: compelling portrait of Americana
Review: Denounced in 1959 for not being a 'real' novel, Mrs. Bridge is judged differently these days--and rightly so. The novel is a compelling portrait of American suburban bourgeois life; reading it causes precisely the same claustrophobia Mrs. Bridge sometimes realizes she's suffering from. In a way, this is Sartre's La Nausee moved to Kansas City, but an easier read--almost deceptively so. Closing the book though doesn't really relieve the angst the reader shares with poor Mrs. Bridge in the final section (no I won't give it away)--this book is too real. Don't look for plot, don't look for cheap thrills, but do look for detail, look for the Real peeking into Mrs. Bridge's seemingly perfect life in the Imaginary.

I'll be brief: others have said plenty. Just one quick remark: Connell is a stylist of the highest order. His prose is crisp; style matches subject matter. Example: "It was necessary to be careful among people you did not know." Every sentence is carefully crafted to the point where grammar itself becomes a web of cleanliness, clear and transparent. It may seem nothing special, but Connell is a craftsman. All the more striking, both in grammar and in plot, are the few moments, aporia, where something else could have happened--such as when Mr. Bridge is breathlessly studying, in Paris, "a black lace brassiere with the tips cut off," a moment Mrs. Bridge returns to later with vague uneasiness.

I am glad I was recently introduced to Connell's work. It is a treasure trove, and it's a pity so few of his works are still in print. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more of his novels to read: Deus Lo Volt! is next.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Wrought Fiction of Upper Middle Class Ennui
Review: Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" is one of the truly outstanding works of Twentieth century American literature, a restrained, yet brilliantly wrought fictional portrait of upper middle class married life in the decades surrounding World War II. Connell tells the story of India Bridge in 117 short chapters, each a spare vignette of her enervated life in the perfectly manicured "country-club district" of an affluent Kansas City suburb. Linear in its narrative and meticulously realistic in its style, "Mrs. Bridge" follows India's life from marriage, to the birth of three children, to the rejection by those children of the repressed life of their parents as they grow into adults, to lonely suburban widowhood. While it is, at its heart, a grim tale of one woman's life of repression and, ultimately, loneliness and resignation, Connell's flawless and restrained narrative ultimately leaves the reader feeling exhilarated at the sheer literary achievement of "Mrs. Bridge".

Ostensibly the story of a marriage, Mr. Bridge is noticeably absent from much of the narrative. A successful lawyer, he is a man who is unable to express love or affection for his wife or his children, a man who is focussed on becoming "rich and successful," the epitome of the status-conscious husband and father whose identity lies in material possessions. "The family saw very little of him. It was not unusual for an entire week to pass without any of the children seeing him. On Sunday morning they would come downstairs and he . . . greeted them pleasantly and they responded deferentially, and a little wistfully because they missed him. Sensing this, he would redouble his efforts at the office in order to give them everything they wanted."

Mrs. Bridge, too, is powerfully repressed, unable to articulate her feelings of dissatisfaction, a woman who is beholden to the expectations of respectability and obsessed with appearances. "She brought up her children very much as she herself had been brought up, and she hoped that when they were spoken of it would be in connection with their nice manners, their pleasant dispositions, and their cleanliness, for these were qualities she valued above all others." Thus, she ultimately drives all three of her children from her life, her unthinking obeisance to social convention destroying any thread of relationship that she might have had with them. Her oldest daughter, "curiously dark", flees to New York City, where she pursues her more unconventional dreams. Her second daughter, an accomplished golfer, enters an ill-fated marriage with a college dropout who cannot provide the country club life that she has been weaned to expect. Her son joins the army, asserting an act of individuality that Mrs. Bridge never seems able to accept or reconcile.

It is, most notably, however, in her relationships with her peers-with the other affluent housewives of the "country-club district"-that the grim and vapid nature of Mrs. Bridge's life becomes most apparent. In particular, her friend Grace Barron becomes a kind of outward manifestation of India Bridge's discontent, someone who lives a life of equal desperation, but not so quietly as Mrs. Bridge. Grace Barron "was a puzzle and was disturbing" to Mrs. Bridge. Why? Because she actually questioned the life she led, moving outside the banal, the conventional, if only in her discourse. As Grace once said to Mrs. Bridge: "India, I've never been anywhere or done anything or seen anything. I don't know how other people live, or think, even how they believe. Are we right? Do we believe the right things?"

Unlike Mrs. Bridge, who talked of "antique silver, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, the price of margarine as compared to butter, or what the hemline was expected to do," Grace Barron talked of "art, politics, astronomy, literature." Ultimately, Grace cannot cope with the ennui, the claustrophobia of her life, and she does what Mrs. Bridge ultimately lacks the fortitude to do; in a sense, Grace is a sort of "double" who acts out the dark alternative to Mrs. Bridge's repression. And when Grace does act, all that comes to Mrs. Bridge's mind is something Grace once said to her: "Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale-the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?"

Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Wrought Fiction of Upper Middle Class Ennui
Review: Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" is one of the truly outstanding works of Twentieth century American literature, a restrained, yet brilliantly wrought fictional portrait of upper middle class married life in the decades surrounding World War II. Connell tells the story of India Bridge in 117 short chapters, each a spare vignette of her enervated life in the perfectly manicured "country-club district" of an affluent Kansas City suburb. Linear in its narrative and meticulously realistic in its style, "Mrs. Bridge" follows India's life from marriage, to the birth of three children, to the rejection by those children of the repressed life of their parents as they grow into adults, to lonely suburban widowhood. While it is, at its heart, a grim tale of one woman's life of repression and, ultimately, loneliness and resignation, Connell's flawless and restrained narrative ultimately leaves the reader feeling exhilarated at the sheer literary achievement of "Mrs. Bridge".

Ostensibly the story of a marriage, Mr. Bridge is noticeably absent from much of the narrative. A successful lawyer, he is a man who is unable to express love or affection for his wife or his children, a man who is focussed on becoming "rich and successful," the epitome of the status-conscious husband and father whose identity lies in material possessions. "The family saw very little of him. It was not unusual for an entire week to pass without any of the children seeing him. On Sunday morning they would come downstairs and he . . . greeted them pleasantly and they responded deferentially, and a little wistfully because they missed him. Sensing this, he would redouble his efforts at the office in order to give them everything they wanted."

Mrs. Bridge, too, is powerfully repressed, unable to articulate her feelings of dissatisfaction, a woman who is beholden to the expectations of respectability and obsessed with appearances. "She brought up her children very much as she herself had been brought up, and she hoped that when they were spoken of it would be in connection with their nice manners, their pleasant dispositions, and their cleanliness, for these were qualities she valued above all others." Thus, she ultimately drives all three of her children from her life, her unthinking obeisance to social convention destroying any thread of relationship that she might have had with them. Her oldest daughter, "curiously dark", flees to New York City, where she pursues her more unconventional dreams. Her second daughter, an accomplished golfer, enters an ill-fated marriage with a college dropout who cannot provide the country club life that she has been weaned to expect. Her son joins the army, asserting an act of individuality that Mrs. Bridge never seems able to accept or reconcile.

It is, most notably, however, in her relationships with her peers-with the other affluent housewives of the "country-club district"-that the grim and vapid nature of Mrs. Bridge's life becomes most apparent. In particular, her friend Grace Barron becomes a kind of outward manifestation of India Bridge's discontent, someone who lives a life of equal desperation, but not so quietly as Mrs. Bridge. Grace Barron "was a puzzle and was disturbing" to Mrs. Bridge. Why? Because she actually questioned the life she led, moving outside the banal, the conventional, if only in her discourse. As Grace once said to Mrs. Bridge: "India, I've never been anywhere or done anything or seen anything. I don't know how other people live, or think, even how they believe. Are we right? Do we believe the right things?"

Unlike Mrs. Bridge, who talked of "antique silver, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, the price of margarine as compared to butter, or what the hemline was expected to do," Grace Barron talked of "art, politics, astronomy, literature." Ultimately, Grace cannot cope with the ennui, the claustrophobia of her life, and she does what Mrs. Bridge ultimately lacks the fortitude to do; in a sense, Grace is a sort of "double" who acts out the dark alternative to Mrs. Bridge's repression. And when Grace does act, all that comes to Mrs. Bridge's mind is something Grace once said to her: "Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale-the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?"

Rating:
Summary: An unjustly neglected masterpiece!
Review: I'm writing this review not only because I loved this book but also because I'm not sure many of the other on-line reviewers understood it very well. Mrs. Bridge is not meant to be a heroine -- nor does the author intend to endorse her views and practices. The reason for these misunderstandings is simple: Connell is a brilliant realist who keeps himself and his own judgments carefully out of the way; he has such a light touch, such a deadpan approach, and offers so little help in interpreting the book's events, that he creates one of the most joyously liberating literary experiences I've had; unfortunately, he also opens himself up to radical misinterpretation. For my own part, I'm almost ready to put Connell among the 20th century's finest writers (I don't go in for the usual gang -- Fitzgerald, Nabokov, Joyce ad nauseam are all over-rated and far too cerebral); this is a moving, painful, hilarious, deeply insightful and sometimes satirical look at a middle-class woman whose well-meaning workaholic husband has given her everything and thereby slowly destroyed her life; she's not a thinker or a go-getter, and has only occasional moments of beginning to understand what has happened to her (or failed to happen). Connell pulls this off without condemning her or her lunk-headed husband; it's a powerfully compassionate performance, and one of the best books I've read in the past year. Very highly recommended. (Its companion -- "Mr. Bridge" -- is also excellent, as is the overlooked Merchant-Ivory film of both books called "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.")

Rating:
Summary: The Kansas City Matron
Review: Set in Kansas City of the 30's and 40's the author uses his mother as the basis of India Bridge. She lives in an upper-middle class home in middle America and views her times with detachment born of reliance on her husband -- the subject of a later parallel novel -- and her secure position in the local society. She is comfortable with, but slighly puzzled by the actions and motives of those arround her. She is certain that when all is said and done, everything will turn out all right. The calm and physical and emotional flatness of her surroundings and her life are beautifully developed by Mr. Connell. His precise, intimate but undramatic style is a perfect complement to his subject. I see a whole generation of my female relatives, all deceased, in Mrs Bridge. Satisified, well provided for, devoted to their families, but faintly aware of missing something. They are of a generation that begain to fade away during WWII and had completely disappeared by the Kennedy inaugration. More so than "Mr. Bridge" this novel is an insight into the life and times of an interesting, but nearly invisible segment of our society: the society matron of of urban middle America -- beautifully done and a pleasure to read. They don't make novels, or people, like "Mrs. Bridge" any more.

Rating:
Summary: The Kansas City Matron
Review: Set in Kansas City of the 30's and 40's the author uses his mother as the basis of India Bridge. She lives in an upper-middle class home in middle America and views her times with detachment born of reliance on her husband -- the subject of a later parallel novel -- and her secure position in the local society. She is comfortable with, but slighly puzzled by the actions and motives of those arround her. She is certain that when all is said and done, everything will turn out all right. The calm and physical and emotional flatness of her surroundings and her life are beautifully developed by Mr. Connell. His precise, intimate but undramatic style is a perfect complement to his subject. I see a whole generation of my female relatives, all deceased, in Mrs Bridge. Satisified, well provided for, devoted to their families, but faintly aware of missing something. They are of a generation that begain to fade away during WWII and had completely disappeared by the Kennedy inaugration. More so than "Mr. Bridge" this novel is an insight into the life and times of an interesting, but nearly invisible segment of our society: the society matron of of urban middle America -- beautifully done and a pleasure to read. They don't make novels, or people, like "Mrs. Bridge" any more.

Rating:
Summary: where's the bridge back ?
Review: She brought up her children very much as she herself had been brought up, and she hoped that when they were spoken of it would be in connection with their nice manners, their pleasant dispositions, and their cleanliness, for these were qualities she valued above all others. -Mrs. Bridge

...

Toward the end of the book, their son Douglas heads off to WWII. But where the senior Bridges are tradition bound and deeply conformist, their children and their society are changing rapidly. In 117 vignettes, Evan Connell paints a sympathetic but fairly condescending portrait of Mrs. Bridge as she fights to hold back the tide of these changes. She struggles to preserve proprieties and appearances as her three children grow increasingly rebellious at the stifling social conventions that she seeks to force upon them.

Meanwhile, as the children grow away from her, and with Mr. Bridge completely focused on his legal work, Mrs. Bridge begins to sense an emptiness in her own life. At one point, a friend who later takes her own life asks : "Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tales--the ones who were all hollowed out in back?" This is pretty clearly Connell's point in the book, that Mrs. Bridge, however likable, is indeed hollow, that she is all deference to her husband, service to her children, and conformity to public mores, with no room left over for a unique and genuine person. He conveys this message with great humor and no little understanding, but it can't help but be a pretty harsh indictment of her essentially wasted life.

This is, of course, a rather conventional view of Middle America, particularly the Middle America of the 1910s and 1920s...Unfortunately for the literary class, their dismissive judgment of the...Bridges has proven quite wrong-headed. In retrospect it has become obvious that removing the religious, social, and moral constraints which the Bridge children (and Connell and Lewis and so on) found so laughable has not led to greater happiness and personal fulfillment but instead has produced a society consumed by its own pathologies...

Interestingly enough, Evan Connell, Mrs. Bridge and the Bridge children all seem to intuitively grasp the fact that the world of the Bridges is too valuable to toss away. Connell's portrayal of Mrs. Bridge is entirely too sympathetic for us to seriously believe that he thinks she's wasted her life. Moreover, the three best scenes in the novel all deal favorably with the life she has chosen. There's a moment where she considers voting for the radical Left in an election, but instead :

...when the moment finally came she pulled the lever recording her wish for the world to remain as it was.

Then there are two scenes with Mr. Bridge, the famous one where, having gone to their club to celebrate their anniversary, he refuses to leave the dinner table as a tornado approaches. The twister does indeed miss them, but the episode suggests the solidity of Mr. Bridge and of their marriage, both unyielding even to forces of nature :

The tornado, whether impressed by his intransigence or touched by her devotion, had drawn itself up into the sky and was never seen or heard of again.

And in the most moving scene, Mrs. Bridge, despite having not cooked in years, tries to make Mr. Bridge's favorite dessert, pineapple bread, and biffs it horribly, Mr. Bridge gently tells her, "Never mind", and the next day brings her a dozen roses. Though Mr. Bridge is rarely even present in the book, these episodes capture the strength and essential goodness of the marriage.

Finally, though the children move away, even move quite far away, the most pleasant thoughts of the more rebellious daughter are of home and the other daughter returns whenever there's trouble in her own ill-advised marriage. And the son, Douglas, grows up to be a man very much like his father. They, like Mrs. Bridge, and like the author himself, seem to realize that though the life that the Bridges have made may at first seem emotionally stunted, overly circumscribed, and unfulfilling, upon further reflection, there is something powerfully compelling about it. Will the children of the Bridges' children feel that same internal tug toward home ? And will their children ? One doubts it.

This book is terrific, by turns moving and funny and heartbreaking. But in the end, the Bridges come off much better than Connell intended, and forty years later they look better still. Would that we had a bridge back to the simple values they represent.

GRADE : A-

Rating:
Summary: The Forgotten Classic of American Literature
Review: When I finished this book I started raving about it to all my friends. "What's it about?" they asked. "Um, this housewife in Kansas City." "Yeah, but what happens?" "Er... nothing really. She gets married and has kids and they grow up."

But trying to summarize "Mrs. Bridge" cannot evoke the brilliance and heartbreak of this novel. Evan Connell understands his characters so well that he simply lets them be, allows them to breathe. "Simply" is the wrong word; few writers are gifted enough to pull off an essentially plotless novel. But "Mrs. Bridge" is never boring.

Incidentally, another reviewer writes about wanting to smack Mrs. Bridge's face. Such a reaction is the exact opposite of mine. Yes, she is guilty of class and racial prejudices; yes, she is repressed. All those with no sins cast the first stone, or smack, and get on with your righteous lives. For the rest of us, it's hard not to sympathize with a woman who struggles all her life to do the right thing, despite having a vague sense that she has never learned the right thing. She longs for something else, something more, but she is barely aware of the longing.

Some day this book will achieve its rightful place as a masterpiece of American realist fiction. But you should read it before that.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliantly Wrought Fiction of Upper Middle Class Ennui
Review: When I finished this book I started raving about it to all my friends. "What's it about?" they asked. "Um, this housewife in Kansas City." "Yeah, but what happens?" "Er... nothing really. She gets married and has kids and they grow up."

But trying to summarize "Mrs. Bridge" cannot evoke the brilliance and heartbreak of this novel. Evan Connell understands his characters so well that he simply lets them be, allows them to breathe. "Simply" is the wrong word; few writers are gifted enough to pull off an essentially plotless novel. But "Mrs. Bridge" is never boring.

Incidentally, another reviewer writes about wanting to smack Mrs. Bridge's face. Such a reaction is the exact opposite of mine. Yes, she is guilty of class and racial prejudices; yes, she is repressed. All those with no sins cast the first stone, or smack, and get on with your righteous lives. For the rest of us, it's hard not to sympathize with a woman who struggles all her life to do the right thing, despite having a vague sense that she has never learned the right thing. She longs for something else, something more, but she is barely aware of the longing.

Some day this book will achieve its rightful place as a masterpiece of American realist fiction. But you should read it before that.