Thursday, December 18, 2008

William Trevor's "The Woman of the House"

My intention in writing this blog is not just to comment on stories I have read, but to explore basic characteristics of the short story, identifying issues that might be controversial or debatable enough to stimulate conversation with my readers. I probably will discuss new stories or new collections for the most part, because I hope to encourage my readers to read new stories. Otherwise, the short story as a form will continue to remain largely neglected and unread.

One of the most important sources of new short stories in American publishing continues to be The New Yorker. I stopped my subscription to The Atlantic when they decided after so many years to stop publishing short stories. The special summer fiction issue, since it is not available to subscribers, but must be searched out on the Barnes and Noble or Borders magazines racks, does not reach as many readers as the regular monthly issue of The Atlantic. I still cannot understand why they do not have space for one story per issue. I continue to subscribe to Harpers, who still publish one story per issue.

One of the great pleasures of getting The New Yorker each week is the occasional publication of a story by the Irish writer William Trevor or the Canadian writer Alice Munro, who, in spite of advancing age, continue to publish in The New Yorker because the magazine has first refusal rights for their work.

I have yet to read a critic or reviewer who does not agree that Trevor and Munro are the two greatest short-story writers still publishing. However, no one has ever really talked about what it is that makes these two such masters of the form. I have an article in the Canadian journal, the Wascana Review about why I think Alice Munro is so good at the form. “Why Does Alice Munro Write Short Stories?” Wascana Review 38 (2003): 16-28.
I will talk about Munro another time, hopefully when she publishes her next story in The New Yorker.

The Dec. 15 issue of The New Yorker has a story by Trevor entitled "The Woman of the House." I thought I would try to suggest a few of the characteristics of this story that are unique to the short story.

The plot of the story is quite simple. Two young men are hired by a Irish man to paint his house. Before they finish painting the house, the Irish man disappears and it seems clear that his wife hides the fact of his death so she can continue to receive his pension check. The two men finish the house painting job and leave. That is all that actually happens in the story. Not only is the plot minimal, but we do not know much about the characters. What we do know is this: The two young men are European and speak little English. They are usually taken to be Polish, but they are not. The Irish man is crippled and restricted to a wheel chair. The "woman of the house" may be his wife, but this is never specified. In the past, she has often had sex with the butcher in the village in exchange for free meat. Now, she is obese and getting older and less attractive to him.

So what is the story about? Not the plot, which is mildly interesting, but not engaging. Not the characters, who we know too little about them to really be involved with them. Then what?

To discover what this short story is about, we must look at details repeated so often in the story that they creates a thematic pattern. I suggest the following.

The two young men seldom speak, communicating by nods and gestures.
When the woman of the house goes out to the shed to be fondled by the butcher, they do not speak.
She never tells the crippled man about the money she gets back from the butcher, hiding it in a Gold flake tin.
When the crippled man disappears, what is noticed by the two young men is the silence in the house.
When the two young men investigate the newly dug garden, "They did not say this was a grave, or remark on how the rank grass, in wide straight path from the gate, had been crushed and had recovered."
The story ends with the woman, and the two young men, keeping silent about the disappearance of the crippled man, knowing no one would miss him for no one ever comes to the house.

So, what does this all add up to? What is the story about?

I think it is about silence, about not saying, about the basic mystery of human personality, about Chekhov's famous comment that in the short story, it is better to say too little than too much, even though he admitted he was not sure why that was true. The story is a fine example of the short story form's focus on basic and universal human characteristics, even though I know that the word "universal" is not appreciated by postcolonial and other cultural critics, who seem more concerned with what separates us than what unifies us as human beings.

I hope you read the story and offer your own comments on what the story is about and what makes it such a great story.

19 comments:

Rolf said...

Isn’t it odd how the December New Yorkers seem to be such winners? Last year it was Raymond Carver’s original submission to Gorden Lish of the story, “Beginners,” later retitled and rightfully acclaimed as “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” It also had Carver’s letters to Lish about the story. For what it’s worth, I think I like Lish’s edit better. (It was extreme) Carver didn’t agree.

By the way, I just noticed New Yorker didn’t have a winter fiction issue this year. I wonder?

I wanted to add a thought to your discussion of the Trevor story appearing in the December 15th issue. And please pardon me, I am obsessing about unlimited 3rd person, in other words, omniscience. So it tends to drag my conversation a bit.

I’m with you, Charles, about multiple readings. The reason one has to read a story at least twice is to get the sorts of things Trevor weaves into his work. I’m with Robert Boswell in believing that some things not fully realized as one breezes through a story the first or even second time, but they yet resonate as the quality of the work (the mythology you might all it, Charles)—finds itself revealed.

What I like about this in Trevor’s work is this very adept omniscient narrator who pegs the resonating elements throughout the work and in thsi story, I think, supports the very silence and mystery you talk about.

For instance, early in the story there is the paragraph where the non-Polish brothers, told to leave by the cripple, are depicted by the narrator as follows:

“They didn’t go, as if they hadn’t understood. It was a ploy of theirs to pretend not to understand, to frown and simulate confusion because, in any conversation, it was convenient sometimes to appear to be at a loss.”

This lends a splendid resonance and presages the idea--, actually installs the idea in our minds unconsciously… that these guys will keep a possible murder to themselves. That and the reiteration of it through the story makes us accept their silence in the end.

If we didn’t have this sort of characterization, delivered by an omniscient narrator, we would not believe they would finally leave as the last line says, “Tomorrow they would travel on,” never revealing this knowledge of the garden’s true contents.

Trevor’s narrators do this all the time. And after time, some of these things begin to resonate between his stories. For instance, the trick of pretending to not hear the other spouse reflects the very same cruelty witnessed in the story set in the story “Cheating at Canasta.” A husband pretending not to hear his wife, a wife ignoring statements of the husband. In "Woman" it comes out like this:

“The slightest sound—of dishes or cooking, the lid of the kettle rattling—and he said he couldn’t hear her when she spoke. But she knew he did.”

In ‘Canasta’ the same cruelty is observed from a limited 3rd person POV. The protagonist, Mallory, is overhearing a young couple bicker when they say:

‘You’re tired.’
‘Not really.’
‘I keep not hearing what you’re saying.’
‘I said I wasn’t tired.’
Mallory didn’t believe she hadn’t been heard her husband was closer to her than he was and he’d hear the ‘Not really’ himself.

(By the way, the eccentric use of apostrophes for quotation marks above comes from the story in collection where all the stories employ it. New Yorker made him use the standard punctuation on the ones he published with them.)

So the story goes beyond just silence, I think. It goes to the will between people to communicate and reflects a lot of his other work that way. The brothers communicate where they must with the outside world, but speak with wonder to each other… “They guessed and wondered, supposed, surmised.” The others do not.

And even more interesting to me is the brothers’ hope “…that there might somewhere be a life that was more than they yet knew.” They did not find it looking in the windows as they painted over that house.

Later, Rolf

Charles E. May said...

I agree with you, Rolf, that Lish's edit of Carver's story is better than Carver's original submission. I have talked about this in another place, an essay in vol. 31 (2001) of "The Yearbook of English Studies," entitled "Do You See What I'm Saying: The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story "in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver." I did not discuss "What We Talk About," but here is a quote:

Critics who have scolded Carver for his minimalist shortcomings have done so for the same reasons that in previous generations they criticized Poe, Chekhov, and Sherwood Anderson. Clearly, those who spent much of the eighties scorning Carver's so-called cryptic tales for the same reasons that previous critics have criticized the short story in general, were more comfortable with the later, more explanatory versions of such stories as `The Bath' and `So Much Water Close to Home'.

However, Carver adds explanatory information to `A Small, Good Thing' that adds nothing significant to the original version entitled `The Bath'. For example, in `The Bath' the parents are trying to fasten on to some term that will categorize and thus normalize the son's condition, but each time they use the term `coma' the doctor simply says `I wouldn't call it that'. In `A Small, Good Thing', Carver puts into the doctor's mouth a verbatim definition of a coma from Webster's New World Dictionary of as a state of `deep, prolonged unconsciousness', which does nothing to clarify the essential mystery of the boy's inaccessibility. In `The Bath', when orderlies come in to get the boy for a brain scan, `they wheeled a thing like a bed'. However, in `A Small, Good Thing', Carver uses the word `gurney'--certainly a more informative term, but one that loses the sense of disorientation the parents feel.
This addition of such bits of information serves polemical purposes in the long version of `So Much Water Close to Home'. In the short version, when the wife reads about the death of the girl in the newspaper, she sits thinking and then calls and gets a chair at the hairdresser's. In the long version, we are told what she is thinking:
Two things are certain: 1) people no longer care what happens to other people; and 2) nothing makes any difference any longer. Look at what has happened. Yet nothing will change for Stuart and me.

Chekhov would never have approved of the added explanation, complete with parentheses, that sounds more like a freshman composition essay than the muddled emotions of a woman who has identified with the image of a dead girl floating just beneath the surface of the water."

Lee said...

Forgot to mention that Link's first collection Stranger Things Happen is available as a free download:

http://www.lcrw.net/kellylink/sth/

Kerry said...

In this story, as little is said as possible, and the author develops a tone that is very factual. We don't hear a lot about what the characters are thinking. In addition to this being about silence, this story also has something to do with freedom. The main character, after the crippled man dies, finds herself on her own with money. She no longer has to listen to him ask about her name, and she's not obligated to take care of him any longer. Responsibility can be exhausting, and the main character revels in having none. This speaks to human nature in general, and our want to be able to avoid it, as well as our constant strive for freedom from other people. It is invigorating to be on your own.

Alexis said...

I agree that there is a significance to the silence of the characters. Do you think that there is a significance to the fact that the painters leave to do another job for 9 days and the woman doesn't seem to notice/care? It is also at that time that she stops talking to them. Maybe she is so focused on keeping the death of the crippled man a secret that she doesn't want to bring attention or conflict to anything. Also, I believe the crippled man was her cousin. And who knows maybe they were just plants in the garden.

Ari said...

The story does display the universal characteristics of humanity. Most readers, like myself assumed that "the woman of the house" had something to do with the disappearance of her husband who was also her cousin. It is also assumed that she just wants his money by taking care of him, so that when he's gone she can take it. It is so easy for people to assume the worst with such a lack of detail. It really makes the reader think about how selfish people are.

Andrew said...

Agree with the above comment regarding silence. What Trevor leaves out in terms of dialogue, he makes up for with his descriptions of everyday things around the house. By doing this, he really makes the reader think about the underlying message of the story. The simple plot further enhances the message. Ciao.

Alanna said...

I do agree with the initial concept of "silence", but only to an extent. More so, I think this story is a lot about miscommunication. There are many instances, such as some that Rolf stated, that embody miscommunication: "They didn't go, as if they hadn't understood," and "I keep not hearing what you're saying." As it has been previously stated, the plot and the characters are very simple and straightforward. The very thing that makes this story complex and so enthralling is the lack of communication between all of the characters. The longer the "woman of the house" continues to avoid communicating with the painters, the longer she will get away with keeping the pension checks. With miscommunication comes a lack of understanding, and if the people around her remain to not understand her goals and her intentions, the longer she can do what she wants to do. I think that leaving the story so simple and so vague was the best possible way to keep the characters (and the readers) from fully understanding the intentions of the woman. A lack of understanding opens the gates for secrets to come in to play, and that is how the woman stays in control. She is getting her way by keeping everyone around her confused enough to not realize her intentions, and that is where her power comes from: not from words, but from lack thereof.

Alanna said...

I do agree with the initial concept of "silence", but only to an extent. More so, I think this story is a lot about miscommunication. There are many instances, such as some that Rolf stated, that embody miscommunication: "They didn't go, as if they hadn't understood," and "I keep not hearing what you're saying." As it has been previously stated, the plot and the characters are very simple and straightforward. The very thing that makes this story complex and so enthralling is the lack of communication between all of the characters. The longer the "woman of the house" continues to avoid communicating with the painters, the longer she will get away with keeping the pension checks. With miscommunication comes a lack of understanding, and if the people around her remain to not understand her goals and her intentions, the longer she can do what she wants to do. I think that leaving the story so simple and so vague was the best possible way to keep the characters (and the readers) from fully understanding the intentions of the woman. A lack of understanding opens the gates for secrets to come in to play, and that is how the woman stays in control. She is getting her way by keeping everyone around her confused enough to not realize her intentions, and that is where her power comes from: not from words, but from lack thereof.

Anonymous said...

Noelle said...
I can see how the story can be about silence but i think that it's trying to show the power that the woman has. Prior to the events of plot, the woman would frequently have sex with the butcher for free meat. She's satisfied with this because she is taken care of and doesn't have to worry about much. However, when he didn't want to continue this, she didn't have that financial support anymore. When she comes up with the idea that she will live off of the crippled man's pension, she then takes full control of the plot. From here on out she is the only one with a solid voice in the story and thus, the control and power.

Rhianna said...

My interpretation of the meaning of the story is survival, sometimes this comes at a cost. In this story she hid the truth, by not coming out with the fact that the man of the house had died. This way she was able to continue collecting the pension. While he was still alive she slept with the butcher as pay, storing the money for herself. I think that she knew that eventually he would die and if she couldn't work, or wouldn't work, she would need some way to ensure that she got to keep the house and get her necessities. This is what brings in the survival portion of it. Depending on the time frame the story took place in perhaps an older woman of her age wouldn't be able to get a job. Therefore once the man of the house died there would be nothing left for her, no where to go, and no money for which to care for herself or find a place in which she could live with the small amount of savings that she had acquired over the years. She was smart, as well as brave taking this risk. In the end she had recieved what she had deserved for the years of caring for the cripped man.

Emily said...

I agree that part of the story is about silence, but I also believe that it is partially about freedom. The woman, while the man of the house is living, doesn't have full freedom. Instead she has to sleep with the butcher for free meat in order to save her money for her own use. She keeps her money hidden in order to have something that is definitely own. Another aspect to freedom is the painters. They, even though they are working on a big job, have the freedom to go away for nine days and then come back and have it not be a big deal. Once the man of the house dies, the woman of the house is free. Freedom seems to be a big part of this short story.

Pat said...

My opinion is that the story mostly portrays a power struggle between the woman and the crippled man. Though the woman is the protagonist, the man has control over her throughout the story because he makes all the choices for the household. The theme of silence comes in here because silence can be seen as submissive. When the man is assumed dead at the end, the woman is "freed" to be strong and independent in the house. Interpretation is key in this story though, because other view points could revolve looking at everything through the eyes of the uninvolved painters, where nothing is certain.

Chris said...

After reading "The Woman of the House", I also noticed that silence is of importance in the story. I think that the language barrier between the European men and the old man in the beginning of the story foreshadows the silence that occurs later in the story. In stories where dialogue is minimal and plot is basic, I usually think there is a level of interpretation to the story, but in this case, I didn't feel that way. I think that this story is actually very straightforward, but I think the silence leaves some room for discussion about what the story is really about. After all, why would she right this story if the plot was so dull and lacking of a climax? Ultimately, I think the silence in this story shows that people remain secretive about personal or touchy issues (such as collecting pension, money, payment, love, etc.)

Anonymous said...

Chi says...
i agree with the idea of silence and also with the comment about miscommunication but maybe it simply is about poeple and their simple resons. sometimes i think that poeple readtoo much into the story and overthink so much when infact lifeis all about the simple things. the woman was greedy and wanted the money and the easiest way was get rid of the crippled man. the painters then, when they notice the silence tehy would rather stay out of the trouble that comes with confronting a killer so rather than saying anything they go on as if they just dont understand and go on with their life. i know personally i have gone without saying something for the simple reason of avoiding conflict so who know maybe the trevor is simply displayinghow not everything needs to be anaylized and human nature is just to fufill your own wants and need, wether it's to avoid conflict or aquire easy money.

Cheyenne said...

I agree with Emily's comment for the most part. Freedom appears to be a major theme in this short story in addition to silence. In order to one day achieve freedom she must assert herself and go through means of earning a touch of freedom under-the-table while she is still bounded under the restraints of the man. When people aren't in power the means they must go through to obtain what they desire is often not pretty. (The girl sleeping with the butcher for meat) She resorted to an unfavorable means because in the silence she felt she had to. Many social rules and restrictions are never stated but undoubtedly there... Once in a while someone raises their voice for change but most people are passive and adjust to unfavorable conditions they don't feel they have the power to change.

Mark said...

I think the story is about how people use people to get what they want for no work. Everyone in the story is somehow using someone else for there own benefits and they do not have to work for it. Like how the butcher gave them meat just for having sex with him. It is a corrupt and unfair work system that while others have to work to substance a house they just feed of the wealth of a dyeing man and even when he dies they will continue to take his money for themselves. The story could also show how women are having more responsibility in modern short stories. -Mark

Charles E. May said...

I really appreciate this group of comments on the Trevor story. I reckon they are from students in someone's class. That's fine with me. The one thing I miss most since retiring is interacting with students in the classroom. I cannot respond to individual comments here, but I very much like the engagement in the story. I will only add that it was not my intention to write a full interpretation of the story, but rather to suggest those aspects that seemed to me to be typical of the short story as a form. And one of those central aspects is how stories are often about the mystery of what motivates people to do what they do; and one of the aspects of short story style is that when dealing with mysteries of personality, often there is more silence than talk because, well, because, sometimes explanation just will not suffice. Thanks again for these comments. It was a genuine pleasure to read them. If you would like to read a great story that exemplifies how silence communicates more than talk, read Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants."

Anonymous said...

Kelsey K.-

I do agree that this story is about silence. However, I think the woman in this story being the main character is severely significant. It is not likely we find in many situations men feeling inferior to women. But in this story, the two men do not speak of the strange things they act so oblivious to happening in the house. They may not admit that they are aware of what is going on, but we know that they do. As much as this story is about keeping quiet on things you know nothing about, it is also about how women have grown to be respected as well as men. THe phrase, "curiosity killed the cat" also is somewhat clear in this story. The two men know that there is something going on that should not here, but they know they should not say anything. They have the option to venture into the woman's business, but they choose not to in fear of causing trouble in their own lives'. While this story may have been about keeping wuiet, I think there was an even deeper underlying message when the author made the main character a woman, and an unfaithful one at that.