Sooey Says

I recently read another Anne Tyler book.

SPOILER ALERT!!

This one was called, "The Amateur Marriage" and it was quite good. Of course, I like Anne Tyler's books. For some reason, the characters are sufficiently "other" to me that I can read her without taking any of it personally. I'm like that. Even about books. I think EVERYTHING is critical.

Of me.

Anyway, I was prepared NOT to agree - yet again - with Ms. Tyler's views on marriage, but she surprised me by having the couple divorce. This in spite of the fact that, well, read the two posts below that were made on my forum and you'll have a better idea of why I was surprised by the divorce. The first is by Idler, the second by me:
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Idler: I liked The Amateur Marriage even though the couple was written as a bit cliched. Him: repressed, censorious, quiet. Her: voluble, emotional, romantic.
Onset of the Sixties with a capital letter - daughter runs off to San Francisco.
Good read I agree, like all her books.
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sooey: i said that same thing to a man who happened to be sitting across the table from me at dinner just the other evening. that her genders are real cliches. always. and he's like "well, there must be some variance or why would you continue to read her books?" so i shrieked, "i'll show you variance!" and grabbed his dinner and tossed it off the balcony.

because normally, you know, they stay married in spite of the mismatch. but in the amateur marriage, they don't.
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Those two posts pretty much sum up why I was surprised. Her characters are cliches, but they are cliches who stay married. Usually. That's why I like, "The Amateur Marriage". Because she mixed it up a bit by having them divorce. And guess what? Nobody died.

No wait...

The divorced wife died. Okay. Scratch that. But it's not like she had much point in living much longer without a husband to be voluble, emotional and romantic without, anyway.

But that's just it, isn't it. Some people are just meant to be married and they may as well be married to each other as to wreck two other lives. OR is it the combination of personalities that makes for those particularly gruesome marriages that the rest of us must get through when invited over to dinner or somesuch social occasion. Because so often I think marriage is just a matter of time and place. You happen to be with whoever when the mood strikes and that's who you pledge to remain with for the rest of your life.

No wonder the divorce rate is so high. We divorce because we can. I mean, what are the odds that a marriage decided on at a certain time and place will last in another time and place.

Not great. Obviously.

But Ms. Tyler had another development in this book that I don't recall in previous ones. She had a rebellious teen go absolutely A.W.O.L. Back in the 60s. And it was really quite interesting because it's not often I think of the post-war generation as having had a rough time with their kids and yet they would have had the ROUGHEST time with their kids. Because that was when the Patriarchy really started breaking down and parents knew - for the first time ever - that they didn't really have any control over their offspring. That they couldn't make them do what they wanted.

What was interesting for me, was that the hardest thing in both instances for the main characters in the book, Michael and Pauline, was the shame. The shame of their daughter leaving home. And the shame of their marriage not lasting until death did them part. And whereas Michael keeps it in but manages to move his life forward, Pauline lets it out but never gets anywhere.

And I guess the message in the book was that you were really on your own. That other people didn't want to hear about your failures. Or didn't want to think that your failures might affect/infect them, at any rate.

And nothing's really changed in that regard. People who might be affected by your failures, really don't want to hear about them. They want you to keep on keeping on and not do anything that might compromise them in any way. Now, I don't know if that's true for all of my readers, but it is certainly true in my experience. That people do not really care whether you're happy or not - as long as they're happy. And that's kind of the bottom line of life. That every time you do what you want in life, it makes someone else a little less happy. And usually, it's someone who should care about your happiness.

I guess that's why we have a status quo and that the main message we're given from the get-go is: "Don't mess with the status quo."

Well, heck. If Anne Tyler can have a couple of cliche characters suddenly up and divorce after the millionth fight over nothing...

Of course... the wife paid for that one by way of a fatal car crash, so...

Okay. Well. I guess you take your chances, then, when you mess with the status quo.

True enough. And yet it's always worth it. So why don't we do it more often? Leave marriages, quit jobs, DO WHAT WE REALLY WANT TO DO!

What is that incredible force that keeps us from taking on the status quo?