Character development is the strongest element in the novel. We learn about Ellie and Brick’s backgrounds
so we understand the reasons behind the decisions they make, though we may not
agree with them. For example, Ellie is
raised by her paternal grandparents because her parents abandoned her. The choices she makes for her family are
determined by these childhood experiences.
Likewise, Sam witnesses the difficulties in her parents’ marriage, most
the result of Brick’s behaviour, so she vows to avoid her mother’s disappointments.
All of the characters are flawed; no one emerges as totally good or
totally villainous. A man’s choices are reprehensible
but the shattering of his dreams arouses our compassion. A woman may be a home wrecker but her
difficult life after her father abandoned the family cannot but get our
sympathy.
As the title suggests, the focus is on women and how their roles
evolved over 50 years. For generations,
there was a great divide between what women wanted and what was expected and
offered to them. In the 1940s and 1950s
for example, Brick’s mother gives birth to twelve children and lives with a
violent man, but there is no birth control and never a suggestion that she can
leave the abusive relationship though everyone knows about it. Ellie knows that as an unmarried, pregnant
woman, she will be shunned; though she wants to be a nurse, she isn’t even
allowed to graduate high school because she is pregnant. Beginning in the 1960s, the women's movement
and developments in contraception instigated changes in attitudes towards sex and
made sexual equality a goal, so Sam has more sexual freedom and can focus on a
career instead of marriage if she chooses to do so. Ellie speaks of enjoying sex but being made
to feel “’there was something wrong with me.
I don’t want Sam to feel that way.
I want her to know it’s normal.’”
The theme of the novel is that people change because they seldom get
the life they planned. Early on, Ellie
thinks, “Everybody starts out as one kind of person and ends up being somebody
else. Life does that to you, just as a
river has its way with a stone. Even
when you don’t notice it, life is rearranging you.” Later, Sam talks to a friend about the things
that happen in a person’s life: “’They’re
like tornados that pick you up in one place and drop you off somewhere
else. And there’s no turning back, no
undoing it.’” Another woman tells her
adopted son that dreams are always modified by reality: “’nobody gets the life they planned. We get what God plans, and we spend the rest
of our lives trying not to hold it against him.’” Ellie tells Sam much the same thing: “’We want to think there are rules in
life. That as long as we follow them,
everything will be all right. And then
God blows up your plans. Blows them to
smithereens. And you’re left picking up
the pieces and putting your life back together as best as you can.’”
Another theme is the need for friendship amongst women. Ellie muses, “Marriage was often a lonely
business, she was learning. Every wife
needed her women friends to keep her strong.”
Later, a woman tells Ellie that women need women friends: “’We’re with each other from the beginning to
the very end, and everything in between.
We understand each other. It’s
instinctual.’” And Ellie does conclude
that “In her own life, it was women who sustained her. All those coffee hours, the camaraderie of
canasta, the support she got at church.
She still prayed to God and talked to Jesus, but Mary knew her heart.”
The book could use some shortening; there were times when it seemed
overly long. The author does
realistically portray life for the working class in a blue collar town, but she
also seems concerned to add repeated references to historical events like the
assassination of JFK, the Kent State shootings, and the Vietnam War, though
these events have no direct impact on the plot.
There were things in the book that irked me. For example, Ellie complains to Brick, “’I
just don’t understand why you’re allowed to pick up your diploma and I can’t
even clean out my own locker. . . . I didn’t expect to be able to go to
graduation, but I’ve done all the work. I
thought I’d be able to take the final tests and still get my diploma.’” When she says this, no one in their families
knows about the pregnancy so how does the school administration know? Brick never plans where they will live for
the first three months of their marriage and he and Ellie discuss this problem
only on the last night of their honeymoon?
And does everyone have an adventurous, unconventional aunt who will come
to the rescue?
This book reminded me to be grateful to be living in a time when social
mores have changed and women’s options are more in keeping with their dreams
and desires.
Note: I received a digital galley of this book from
the publisher via NetGalley.
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