<p>And no “poor ignatius” here. I actually like “Gravel” and everyone in it despite - well, despite the story and everyone in it. </p>
<p>Actions seem to come less out of the blue. I understand the characters and empathize with them. Evidently I need to be able to do that. </p>
<p>I understand the little girl (oops, or boy) not running for help. (S)he’s young with a sister older enough to seem omnipotent.</p>
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<p>Running for help becomes less a priority and more just part of Caro’s game - a game (s)he isn’t interested in playing anyway.</p>
<p>I like Neal’s answer to “What do you think Caro had in mind?”: Neal said, “It doesn’t matter.” And it doesn’t really. No one will ever know and the hands of the clock can’t be turned back. </p>
<p>Taking a minute to wave “welcome back” to CBBBlinker. It’s interesting to see that you read the last lines (“To Reach Japan”) as belonging to Greta rather than Katy. It did not occur to me - I should have at least paused to wonder.</p>
<p>Yes, welcome back CBBBlinker! We missed you during your hiatus. </p>
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<p>I wonder if seducing ministers and/or their sons was Leah’s way of striking back at the religion that dominated her childhood. It seemed like she had a pretty awful time of it growing up: a timid and frightened mother and a cold, controlling father (“he got into a rage about his wife’s going out like that when she did not have permission to leave the house” [p. 74]).</p>
<p>In hindsight, there is one point where I think Ray’s notions about Leah and religion are off-base. This is the scene where he runs into her on the street and then they encounter the new, young minister (with whom Leah has an affair):</p>
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<p>Looking back now at her conversation with the minister, who “hid his discomfort as well as he could,” I’m wondering if Leah was trying to make arrangements for…something other than Sunday School, if you catch my meaning. I’m not as convinced as Ray that she was intent upon instructing her children in the ways of the faith.</p>
<p>Back to “Gravel”…I thought it was interesting that the only two plays we know of in which Neal performed were the tragedies Oedipus Rex and MacBeth. The men in those plays are married to pretty fierce women, Jocasta and Lady MacBeth, both of whom commit terrible sins and then are wracked with guilt and die. </p>
<p>Neal’s take on tragedy: “Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, and you’re just there, going along easy in the world” (p. 108). The kind of life Neal leads–no long-term commitments, no ability to provide help when needed (“I was stoned”)–makes him a man of little substance, “a solid ghost,” just like the character he played in MacBeth.</p>
<p>Yes! Of course. Good observation! And as kind of a lapsed or straying Christian, she probably got under the new minister’s skin pretty quickly. It wasn’t as if she was utterly beyond the pale. Her background made her familiar with his language.</p>
<p>I do think the Sunday School thing was mostly for social reasons. </p>
<p>Sorry I am late to the discussion! I am really looking forward to reading everyone’s comments. I liked the stories much better as I went on.
I was totally mystified why anyone would feel romantic about Mr. Fox-especially right after he had been very cruel to the young girl Mary.
I wanted to shake some sense into some of these characters. It was hard to see what many of the women saw in the men. It was almost like they didn’t make a conscious choice when they entered into an affair-there was this strange inevitability about it.
The writing was beautiful and really did echo a specific place.</p>
<p>Oh drat - I just lost a post! Anyway, thanks for the “welcome backs” - it’s nice to be missed.</p>
<p>Ignatius - I, on the other hand, never considered that the last sentence in “Japan” could be about Katy. After I read it again, though, I see where it could be interpreted like that. I’m sure Munro intended it to be ambiguous and open to interpretation. (Or else she just wanted to drive readers nuts!)</p>
<p>NJTheatre and Mary - your points re: religion and ministers make sense. And thanks for the interesting article, too.</p>
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I agree, PATheater! The writing is truly wonderful.</p>
<p>Part of me does understand why a young child wouldn’t necessarily run for help, but while reading the story, the other part of me wanted someone to prevent the inevitable. The guilt the narrator carried must have been enormous.</p>
<p>I like the writing very much, and the sense of place. I just wish I liked hanging out with her characters better! The stories did stay with me. I found myself mulling over each one. Wondering about the choices, the strange endings, the ambiguity. The not really knowing what just happened.</p>
<p>I thought it was funny that Neal’s big part was Banquo’s ghost. I thought it interesting that Munro tells us he was visible as the ghost, as though that was the only part he was in the play. Banquo is sort of a catalyst for Macbeth going off the deep end, both there and he’s right there at the start of the play with the three witches. They are both critical scenes in the play, though of course he’s a fairly minor character.</p>
<p>As an aside, a couple of years back I saw what I thought was the most brilliant solution of how to stage the ghost scene problem. (The production had Patrick Stewart as Macbeth - swoon - but I digress.) Anyway right before the intermission they showed the scene with Banquo visible. Then when we came back from intermission, they played the scene again exactly the same but without Banquo. It totally worked.</p>
<p>The best way for me to comment on “Haven” is to lift a quote directly from CBBBlinker, changing only the names:</p>
<p>“Uncle Jasper was a first-class jerk and Aunt Dawn was somewhat of a wimp.”</p>
<p>I found Jasper insufferable and Dawn in need of serious assertiveness training. Unlike most of the other stories, “Haven” is set in the seventies. By that decade, there was simply no excuse for a woman to say things like, “A man’s home is his castle” (p. 125). </p>
<p>I underlined only one sentence in this story: “Devotion to anything, if you were female, could make you ridiculous.” With the exception of Isabel, all the women in the first five stories–Greta, Vivien, Leah, Caro’s mother, and Dawn–devote themselves to the wrong type of men. Over and over, Munro’s female characters make poor choices. Sometimes, I think Munro is, to quote Jane Austen, “so severe upon her own sex.”</p>
<p>^^^ Although, Mary, the narrator does say at the beginning, " … though in that town and other small towns like it, the seventies were not as we picture them now, or as I had known them even in Vancouver." Sort of insulated from the happenings in larger, more urban cities, I guess. I grew up in a mid-size town in western MA. Yes, the 70s happened, but not to the same extent as in NYC, or even Boston.</p>
<p>I agree with your/my description of Jasper and Dawn - which is why I was actually surprised that Dawn “took the risk” of inviting not only the neighbors, but also the musicians, for coffee and snacks. That Jasper would show up at home early seemed inevitable, but I sure was rooting for Dawn and her seemingly small act of rebellion.</p>
<p>I so thoroughly disliked the aunt and uncle in Haven, I had a hard time with this story. Some interesting tidbits though. </p>
<p>“Devotion to anything, especially if you were female, could make you ridiculous.” The narrator is talking about Mona, but it seems to fit her aunt so much better.</p>
<p>Sex often seems to be more important than real relationships in these stories. This is not the first story where a child hears adults making love. In this case her aunt and uncle seem to have a more vigorous sex life than her own parents - who come off as a little cold. (Really her parents couldn’t have taken her to Africa?)</p>
<p>This is one of the stories where I really just didn’t get what the transformation was supposed to be at the end. I don’t really get why it was such a big deal that Jasper had to sit in front, having bullied everyone into singing what he wanted to sing. Maybe some hint at a future separation between him and his wife? Who can’t quite keep up with the bullying this time? Who has already transgressed once and realized slowly perhaps what her life is missing? Just what it is it she doesn’t care about?</p>
<p>I’m not rereading this story. It made my dislike list.</p>
<p>I didn’t like the characters. Like Doctor Fox, Jasper seems like a good doctor and works well with people. Apart from that, he’s unlikeable. Is he abusive? Dawn certainly walks on eggshells, so I wonder what’s happened in the past between them.</p>
<p>What’s the deal with Jasper and his sister anyway? Plus Dawn’s actions seem strange and out-of-what-little-character I know. It makes no sense for her to contact the estranged sibling and plan a secret soiree while Jasper’s gone for a few hours. There is no way Jasper would not know, even if he hadn’t arrived home. Munro loses me here. I just don’t buy it.</p>
<p>I need character development, not just to be plopped down in a scene and expected to care.</p>
<p>Re ignatius’ comment, maybe Dawn did know full well that Jasper would find out, despite her quaking and clearing dishes. We only see a glimpse of their lives through the narrator, but it could be a series of such small battles.</p>
<p>It occurs to me that Dawn welcoming her 13 year old niece into the house for a full year was also an act of rebellion. The curmudgeonly Jasper could not have wanted that, and even the narrator would agree:</p>
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<p>But to give credit where credit is due, Uncle Jasper is not unkind to his niece-by-marriage and accepts her as part of the household – although he does use her as a pawn sometimes when seeking support for his side of an argument.</p>
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<p>I hadn’t thought of that – you’re right! Who leaves their 13 year old for an entire year? This is not a two week jaunt. That made me think about the title, “Haven.” For whom is this home a haven? Despite the Jasper-Dawn dysfunction, maybe it’s more of a true home to the narrator than she will admit.</p>
<p>I thought the narrator in Haven was a great observer and I found myself drawn in as she described her impressions of her new environment vs. her own family. It was interesting how she began to see some of the benefits of living in the Jasper/Dawn household, reminiscent of the theme of “child protection” we have seen in To Reach Japan and Gravel. The confusion of changing women’s roles…where can women find a haven?..is a big theme. I know it’s the 70s and social roles were changing, but the stay at home mom vs. working mom controversy was active even when my own kids were small. I liked the symbolism at the end of Jasper not being able to find his space…individuals competing for personal space…and the feeling that change in the air. And again, the concept of flawed but not evil characters is shown in Jasper’s unbearable at-home presence vs. all the good he does as a doctor.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Mary, that taking her niece in was a small act of rebellion by Dawn. The niece had grown up in a different kind of household. Maybe being around her subtly influenced Dawn? In addition, was the niece’s mother Dawn’s sister? If so, what was their parental home life like? Dawn could not have learned her “proper” ways entirely from Jasper. Maybe (reaching) she and her sister had grown up in an uber-proper home that the niece’s mother rebelled against.</p>
<p>Reaching even further, it’s possible that the niece’s dad was also somewhat controlling of his wife, and had dragged her off to Africa, insisting on leaving the child?</p>
<p>I think in many ways Jasper was like Dr Fox. Controlling in his intimate relationships, but very “normal” at work, and highly dedicated professionally. And good in bed! Which I think implies a degree of considerateness. (Maybe his and Dawn’s presumably happy sex life contributed to her being a bit less afraid of crossing him.)</p>
<p>Dawn lets herself be trapped. She goes out on a limb with the soiree because she feels trapped by a social obligation to the neighbors. Jasper feels trapped when he has to sit down front in the church.</p>
<p>ignatius, I was thinking of it as an adjective rather than a verb, as it seemed to aptly describe your exasperation with the little creatures. :)</p>
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<p>I agree. I wondered, though, whether or not she was giving us a complete picture. Even though “Amundsen” and “Gravel” were both written in the first person, it is only with “Haven” that the question “reliable narrator?” crossed my mind. Partly because she’s 13—that’s pretty young—and also because she is new to the household. And partly because we already know that she writes her parents letters “full of sarcastic descriptions and complaints” (p. 126). Could a little of that be rubbing off in her narration?</p>
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<p>NJTheatreMOM, that line gave me pause because I served chili at the last party we had. Out of Corelle bowls instead of clay pots, but still. I started to question my entire value system. :)</p>
<p>Yes, the niece’s mother was Dawn’s sister: “…hard to think of her as my mother’s sister, because she looked so much younger and fresher and tidier, as well as being given to those radiant smiles” (p. 112). </p>
<p>Good thought about the narrator’s mother going to the opposite extreme from Dawn as a revolt against their upbringing. The line that immediately follows the one above makes me wonder if the narrator’s mother might be trying too hard to show that she doesn’t have a submissive bone in her body: “My mother would talk right over my father if she had something she really wanted to say, and that was often the case.”</p>
<p>^^^ LOL My mind is in the gutter then. Adjective didn’t occur. And you are so right: the frolicking skunks did exasperate me. </p>
<p>Mary points out that the women in the stories make poor choices. We’ve briefly noted that any mention of religion seems less than positive. Going further, both doctors so far have the same strengths but away from their medical practice are cold and controlling men. The men in artistic professions - Greg and Neal - come across as good for one-night stands or brief affairs but not for anything sustained. In “Gravel” Neal and the narrator’s mother and daughters have to move on the outskirts of town - as in not accepted. In “Haven” the arts and the conservative lifestyle of the small town doctor go more head to head. Mothers abandon children either physically or emotionally. In “Haven” Dawn has no children and fills in for her sister who “abandons” her child to go to Africa.</p>
<p>Dawn seems so isolated. I feel sorry for her. Perfection is hard to maintain.</p>
<p>psychmom: your posts come across as insightful with hints to the “psych” in your screen name. I particularly liked ("Gravel):
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<p>I hadn’t looked at it that way and could really see that.</p>
<p>ignatius, The more we discuss it, the more I “enjoy” this book, even though it lacks joy. Now don’t get me started on last night’s TV showing of The Sound of Music! (The whole thing made me nostalgic for the movie.)</p>
<p>Back to Haven… Munro sets up extreme situations between Dawn and her sister and between Jasper and his sister. The narrator, raised in a Bohemian type of setting with an assertive mother, has a brother '“who said he was thinking of becoming a Muslim so that he could chastise women.” Is Munro saying that in the nature vs. nurture battle, nature is a bigger influence? IOW, is how we are inherently wired more important than our environment?</p>
I’m not as convinced as Ray that she was intent upon instructing her children in the ways of the faith.</p>
I think he liked “Gravel” more than “Amundsen” as he only read that story three times.</p>