“WHAT IS IT?” EXPLORING THE ROLES OF WOMEN THROUGHOUT
RAYMOND CARVER’S SHORT FICTION
A Thesis by
Brian Charles Seemann
MA in English, Wichita State University, 2006
BA in English, Stephen F. Austin State University, 2003
Submitted to the Department of English
and the faculty of the Graduate School of
Wichita State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts.
May 2006
“WHAT IS IT?” EXPLORING THE ROLES OF WOMEN THROUGHOUT
RAYMOND CARVER’S SHORT FICTION
I have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it
be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts with
a major in English.
____________________________________________________
Richard Spilman, Committee Chair
We have read this thesis
and recommend its acceptance:
____________________________________________________
Chris Brooks, Committee Member
____________________________________________________
Ramona Liera-Schwichtenberg, Committee Member
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DEDICATION
To my mother, father, and brother
For the books, the determination, and the ideas
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ABSTRACT
A majority of critics examine Raymond Carver’s fiction in terms of minimalism,
but in this thesis, I highlight the themes in Carver’s work rather than emphasize the
format. Many women in Carver’s work contrast the futility of their male counterparts by
showing a determination to move on with their lives. By looking at each of Carver’s
major collections of short stories, one may find a progression in the way women react to
the hopeless situations in their lives. Carver’s early stories, found in Will You Please Be
Quiet, Please?, show women who are capable of handling situations, yet unproductive in
finding true autonomy. Later stories in Cathedral and Where I’m Calling From find
women working with men and eventually finding their own independence--a
characteristic that begins to develop in Carver’s second collection, What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? ……………………………………………………… 3
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love ……………………………………… 14
Cathedral …………………………………………...………………………………...... 28
New Stories, Where I’m Calling From ………………………………………………… 47
Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………… 57
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Although critical consensus generally focuses on Raymond Carver as a minimalist
and concentrates on the form and style of his writing, a particular aspect unrecognized
throughout his work appears in the relationships between men and women. In many of
his stories, Carver presents males and females in conflict with one another, and many of
these encounters result from the general apathy of men. These men retreat inside homes
to find an alternate world in television, alcohol, and violence, and in the process
withdraw from conventional masculine roles. Females emerge as the stronger individuals
in the relationship, often taking on the roles their male counterparts have abandoned.
They have the jobs, they seek progress, and in many cases, they prove to be the stable
character in the story.
Raymond Carver’s short fiction provokes much debate over the style of his prose
and the depiction of individuals who toil in a landscape of destructive behavior,
alcoholism, infidelity, and moral and monetary bankruptcy. Carver presented characters
who fail to acknowledge and understand problems that exist before them, and he often
did so by forgoing customary details that would aid reader’s perceptions. Because of
this, critics have labeled his work as minimalism, and they point to the collection What
We Talk About When We Talk About Love as the preeminent piece of minimalist fiction.
To classify Carver’s work as just minimalism is to fail to acknowledge the work that
followed the minimalist stage of his career. Cathedral and the final stories found in
Where I’m Calling From show that Carver expanded beyond simple minimalist
approaches. These later stories still concentrate on the same category of people, but
rather than simplifying the exhausted despair, Carver turns a glimpse into a portrait to
provide narratives that display the more pronounced resolution absent in earlier works.
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The evolution of style makes for an interesting task when examining Carver’s
writing. Since each major collection can be singled out as an influential stage in his
career, one must consider each volume of stories as part of an ongoing progression in the
growth of his fiction. The length of stories grows from thin to generous, yet the themes
of ineptitude and hopelessness remain throughout.
Characters react to conflict and
despair in an assortment of ways, but one identifiable trait in many stories throughout
each collection is the determination and intuitiveness of women. Many women in these
stories become figures of action because their male counterparts (husbands, ex-husbands,
boyfriends) have grown stagnant and accepted their reduced status. In early stories found
in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, women recognize predicaments in their
relationship and make an effort to take care of their problems. Later stories show women
progressing beyond simply trying to take care of problems, as women actually seem
capable of discovering moments of autonomy. By Cathedral, women act as guides for
men to realize small moments of possibility. Throughout this development, women adopt
traditional roles once played by men, proving their capacity to take control during
decisive moments in relationships and to strive under strenuous circumstances.
Andrew Fletcher remarks that “Carver’s protagonists are marginal in many
senses” (253). While there are no heroic figures in Carver’s stories, some seek something
beyond mere survival. Women often are these hopeful characters, forced into making
critical decisions because the men in their lives have suffered setbacks that leave them
overwhelmed and enervated.
Determination and assertiveness appear in women
throughout each of Carver’s major collections, and in each collection, women take on a
different role to demonstrate these attributes. Where a story in Will You Please Be Quiet,
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Please? features a woman sent by her suicidal husband to sell their sports car to escape
bankruptcy, a story in Cathedral has a woman introducing her blunt husband to a man
who forces the husband to acclimate his behavior and change his perception of life. The
feminine impact evolves throughout Carver’s work, and looking at these women creates a
better awareness of the effect gender has in Carver’s stories.
Carver’s status in American literature comes from the credit he receives for
rejuvenating the short story in the latter part of the twentieth century alongside other
writers admired for their realistic viewpoints and the inclination to capture an arresting
essence of life drawn from classic realism. Other writers--Carver’s close friends Tobias
Wolff and Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason, to name just a few--along
with Carver introduced stark representations of ordinary people, and in Carver’s first
major collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, he highlights a disharmony between
men and women that many contemporary writers found worthy of attention.
Opportunities are limited for the characters in this collection, and failure causes discord
between men and women. With a title that pleads for silence, and in turn submission, the
collection is comprised of voices longing to be heard, and those voices often belong to
women who attempt to control their lives after men have irrationally left them to take
responsibility.
In their oft-cited critique of the collection and its theme of dissociation, David
Boxer and Cassandra Phillips analyze the separation of self and identity, defining
dissociation as “a sense of disengagement from one’s own identity and life, a state of
standing apart from whatever defines the self, or of being unselfed” (75). For Will You
Please Be Quiet, Please?, and a majority of Carver’s work, dissociation functions to
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separate men from women, as the detachment men experience leads women to seek better
situations. If men were at one point expected to provide for a family and be the main
source of income in a household, these stories refute those ideals by presenting men who
fail at maintaining such appearances. “They’re Not Your Husband” presents a man
between sales jobs, his wife working as a waitress to support them. “Collectors” has a
man out of work, separated from his wife, confronted by a vacuum cleaner salesman
knocking at the front door. “What Is It?” sees a man on the verge of bankruptcy, sending
his wife to sell a car because he cannot face the possibility of living a life void of luxury.
These men, and others in the collection, are displaced from customary environments, and
as Boxer and Phillips note, given “sudden, hideously clear visions of the emptiness of
their lives” (75). This is not to say women do not suffer similar fates. They languish
beside their men; however, in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? some women tire of
these bleak circumstances, and so they attempt to change their condition.
A prime example of this comes in “What Is It?,” a story filled with typical Carver
characteristics. Leo and Toni have squandered their savings and are days away from
bankruptcy unless they can find a buyer for their sports car. Carver begins the story in
familiar fashion, highlighting only the important details while eschewing unnecessary
background:
Fact is the car needs to be sold in a hurry, and Leo sends Toni out to do it.
Toni is smart and has personality.
She used to sell children’s
encyclopedias door to door. She signed him up, even though he didn’t
have kids. Afterward, Leo asked her for a date, and the date lead to this.
(208)
“This” can be interpreted to be several things, including the deal for the sports car, but it
also refers to the turmoil the couple finds themselves in. In a succinct manner, Carver
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outlines the conflict in the relationship before delivering the first signs of marital tension
between Leo and Toni. The two have decided Toni will attempt to sell the car, and as she
dresses, spending ample time on make-up and hair and finding new clothes to wear, Leo
stands to the side, forced to watch her prepare as he stays home. Neither wishes for such
a transaction; both yearn for the good days, where they bought anything they wanted-cars, records, trips, pets--and felt content. Leo admits that Toni looks attractive in her
clothes and jokes that, given the opportunity, he would buy a car from her. Her reaction
is telling, for it not only reveals the truth, but hints at a deeper issue:
“But you don’t have money,” she says, peering into the mirror. She pats
her hair, frowns. “And your credit’s lousy. You’re nothing,” she says.
“Teasing,” she says and looks at him in the mirror. “Don’t be serious,”
she says. “It has to be done, so I’ll do it. You take it out, you’d be lucky
to get three, four hundred and we both know it.” (209)
Teasing aside, Toni says what they both know is true. Leo is practically worthless, and
furthermore he could not succeed in selling the car, a duty one might conventionally
envision a man taking on. It disillusions Leo to the point that he follows Toni around the
house, gauging her readiness and imploring her to sell the car in a manner he might if
given the chance. Outside, reminded of his past infidelity upon seeing his neighbor
across the street, Leo gets the feeling Toni might do more than just sell the car, and as he
wishes her luck in the driveway, he notices that “she is already gone, already negotiating”
(211). His words and actions do nothing, and as she drives off, he yells promises of
better things to come. Leo can feel a separation developing in the way Toni ignores him
--already planning her proposal to possible buyers--and this is the dissociation Boxer and
Phillips describe: Leo realizes just how idle and useless he has become. Once this begins
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to set in, he returns inside the house, where he does what many Carver men do in order to
avoid the pressures in life. He turns on the television and takes to drinking.
Alcohol is a constant throughout Carver’s work, and just a casual glance at the
majority of his stories will point to the effect it has on many characters and plotlines. A
less talked about malady that figures prominently in several stories is television, which
draws the attention of those craving diversion from their daily lives. Mostly men are the
ones who plant themselves in their living rooms glaring at the television for long periods
of time. After Leo fixes himself a drink, he confines himself to the living room, flipping
channels in desperation, but finding nothing that will take his mind off Toni, who has
gone into a world of communication and fearless individuals to do a job Leo cannot. “He
understands he is willing to be dead,” Carver writes, and with these words, one
understands the extent to which Leo has been emasculated (213).
Kirk Nesset
summarizes Leo’s anguish by noting his growing sense of worthlessness combined with
the impending possibility of losing his wife. Nesset writes that “the temporary absence
of his wife, underlining monetary and sexual inadequacies in equivalent terms, is a loss
for him as comprehensive as it is intense; he would rather ‘be dead’ than have to wholly
confront the psychic contours of his bankruptcy” (21). The phone rings and Toni relays
the information that the car is about to be sold, the one hang-up being that Toni’s
excursion into the world of automobile sales includes dinner and drinks with the buyer.
The car, the representation of a once steady lifestyle, is no longer the sole item up for
bidding, and Leo perceives that he may lose more than money. By drifting away in a sea
of booze and false reality, Leo attempts to forget his troubles, but the issues weigh on him
too much, and he waits for Toni, who does not arrive home until the following morning.
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Stumbling into the house, she screams at Leo, who forms a fist but fails to strike her.
Toni’s proof of infidelity sits outside; the buyer has brought her home and dropped off
the makeup purse she forgot at the front door. Leo steps outside to face the buyer, and
with the only words he has left, again reiterates that better times are on the way:
“Monday” (218). The buyer fails to understand, however, and Leo only diminishes
further into irrelevance.
“What Is It?” proves an interesting story because, for the majority of it, Leo is the
central figure. Yet despite the attention given to a man wallowing in angst and suffering
from paralysis in his relationship, the story is a revealing look at the function of women
in early Carver’s stories. Despite the confidence she owns at the onset of the story while
preparing to negotiate, Toni stumbles at the end of the story, her boldness taken over by
reality. Upon returning home to Leo, Toni loses her facade as he peels the clothes from
her body, the hours dedicated to making herself look presentable wasted as she mumbles
and sways through the house, screaming “Bankrupt!” (216). She too feels the wrath of
financial and moral bankruptcy, and worse, she lies naked in bed while her husband runs
his fingers over the stretch marks on her body. The symbolism is rich; the marks indicate
the wear and tear of Toni’s life. When the buyer asked Leo in the driveway if the
odometer reading were actual miles, it was as if he were assessing not only the car but
also the woman.
Seeing Toni in this manner, as if she were a used car sold in order to stay afloat,
hardly seems like an ideal way to consider her a woman of assertive behavior; however,
strong characteristics remain in her personality that suggest a determined and capable
individual. Toni leaves the house, and in Carver’s world, this step is one most privately
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fear. In Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, many characters choose to stay behind the
curtains, as it were, and to peak into the outside world. Such is the issue that Boxer and
Phillips discuss, noting the voyeuristic pleasures many characters cling to. The outside
world can ravage a character; in the title story, Ralph Wyman leaves home only to enter a
world full of brutality, immorality, and drunkenness, and in “Neighbors,” the couple
taking care of the apartment next door all but lose their identity at the doorway of their
neighbor’s apartment. Toni’s journey into the outside world also ends badly, but she
takes the chance to do what she feels necessary. As she prepares to leave the house, she
does so confidently: “‘I know them [the buyers]. But don’t worry, I’ll get out of it,’ she
says. ‘I can handle it’” (209). Her voice exudes assurance, a far cry from the indolence
Leo displays throughout the story. Her willingness to succumb to unfaithfulness also
speaks for her assertiveness, even in its baseness. Such is the rationale for these early
stories. Women give solid evidence of being resolute and insistent in their actions, yet
the conflicts and their consequences still weigh heavily on their lives.
Suffering with loss and fearing the worst, Leo makes for a typical Carver male,
his failure to play the traditional masculine role supplying the gap required for Toni to
seek an experience beyond the household. In her article about contemporary men and
“What Is It?,” Vivian Gornick reflects upon “a certain kind of American
story…characterized by a laconic surface and a tight-lipped speaking voice. The narrator
in this story has been made inarticulate by modern life. Vulnerable to his own loneliness,
he is forced into hard-boiled self-protection” (1). Such a description appears over the
course of many of the stories found in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, and as these
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qualities are embedded into men, women repeatedly emerge competent in confronting the
malaise.
One of Carver’s strengths includes establishing a trace of uncertainty in his
stories, concealing the pitfalls in relationships while describing the seemingly innocuous
moments that lead to tension. Such an episode evolves in “What’s In Alaska?,” when
two couples experience an evening filled with conversation and marijuana. Carl and
Mary have been invited to Jack and Helen’s house for the evening to celebrate Jack’s
birthday and to test Jack’s new birthday present, a water pipe. Home from work early
and fresh from buying a new pair of shoes, Carl bathes before the party, and Mary enters
the bathroom to announce that an interview earlier in the day might lead to a job in
Alaska. “I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska,” admits Carl, and at the beginning of the
story, Carver provides the framework for a potentially volatile situation: although Carl
indicates an interest in Alaska, Mary offers no encouragement. Once they have arrived at
the party, Mary declares that “Carl’s on a little bummer tonight,” an unprovoked
declaration that sets, for Carl at least, the mood for the remainder of the party (80). Mary
replies: “I was just teasing. I was just teasing, honey” (80). But Mary’s comment
borders on ridicule, and it baffles Carl. This is not to say that women cause, as Gornick
suggests, vulnerability in men, but they certainly intensify it in their speech and activity.
As the evening progresses and the two couples continue to smoke from the water pipe,
Mary shows further signs of moving on. With all four comfortably under the influence of
marijuana, Jack announces that he is going to the kitchen for more snacks:
“I’ll come with you,” Mary said.
Carl watched them walk to the kitchen. He settled back against the
cushion and watched them walk. Then he leaned forward very slowly. He
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squinted. He saw Jack reach up to a shelf in the cupboard. He saw Mary
move against Jack from behind and put her arm around his waist.
“Are you guys serious?” Helen said.
“Very serious,” Carl said.
“About Alaska,” Helen said.
He stared at her.
“I thought you said something,” Helen said. (85-86)
The scene offers insight into Carl and Mary’s relationship, as Carver simultaneously
offers the potential for unfaithfulness and the hope for unity. Carl, although upset by
Mary’s earlier words, appears content, if a bit naïve, with his relationship, even to the
point of suggesting his seriousness about Mary as she clutches to another man.
Conversely, Mary carries out her own initiative in the other room, her actions a strong
suggestion that she shares very little of what Carl feels and would rather take up with
another man.
Like Toni, she is inclined to recognize the lifelessness in her male
counterpart and seek more promising avenues.
Unlike Toni, Mary owns a more
promising future. Her job opportunity in Alaska is a possible exit, and considering her
actions with Jack, and her subsequent slip of the tongue in calling him “honey,” Mary
may end up taking Jack with her to Alaska instead of Carl.
Leaving Jack and Helen’s house, the couple strolls home, Carl’s new shoes, damp
from spilled cream soda, serving as an unpleasant reminder of the night, while Mary has
recollections she seems eager to forget: “When we get home, Carl, I want to be fucked,
talked to, diverted. Divert me, Carl. I need to be diverted tonight” (91). As in “What Is
It?,” a moment exists where both male and female appear equally vulnerable, and Mary’s
plea to have Carl take her mind off what has transpired indicates that even though she
appears poised, she is insecure. The final images of the story reinforce much of the early
interactions between Carl and Mary and emphasize the influence Mary has in the
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relationship. Lying in bed, she orders Carl through the house, and once he brings her a
beer and lies beside her, Mary wants him out of bed yet again:
“I forgot to take my pill,” she said.
“What?”
“I forgot to take my pill.”
He got out of bed and brought her the pill. She opened her eyes and he
dropped the pill onto her outstretched tongue. She swallowed some beer
with the pill and he got back in bed.
“Take this. I can’t keep my eyes open,” she said.
He set the can on the floor and then stayed on his side and stared into the
dark hallway. She put her arm over his ribs and her fingers crept across
his chest.
“What’s in Alaska?” she said.
He turned on his stomach and eased all the way to his side of the bed. In
a moment she was snoring. (92-93)
In a story filled with dialogue (several pages are devoted strictly to conversations at Jack
and Helen’s house), the concluding moments offer less dialogue, and in its place, more
nonverbal indicators of a mounting separation between Carl and Mary. Desirous of sex
one minute, Mary changes her mind, and the implication is that Mary just might be
thinking of Alaska and a new life without Carl and the baggage he might provide. Hence,
she asks for her birth control as assurance that she remains protected from possible
pregnancy and a confined life with Carl. When Mary rebuffs Carl’s advance, she is
clearly in control and one day closer to a promising life in Alaska without Carl.
“What Is It?” and “What’s In Alaska?” feature self-doubting and naïve men,
whose only approach to relationship turmoil is withdrawal. The women take inventory of
their lives and appropriate the male role; they go outside and sell the car and they find
promising employment opportunities with the potential for something better. These goals
do not always involve separation; in fact, some stories in Will You Pleas Be Quiet,
Please? present women whose strength materializes in the resolve they keep in the
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company of men. Feminine decisiveness takes on less noticeable forms in these stories,
where the inadequacy and lack of recognition shown by men fortifies the perseverance of
women.
On first glance, a story like “They’re Not Your Husband” would not encourage
the theory that women maintain any semblance of autonomy in their relationships with
men. Cynthia Whitney Hallett comments that the story is one “in which Carver combines
the implication that voyeurism is an inherent element of the human condition with his
persistent theme of marriage as a union always on the verge of collapse or as a feeding
ground where men and women feast on one another’s weaknesses” (56). Earl Ober
certainly feasts upon his wife’s weakness, as he insists she lose weight after seeing two
men ridicule her body at work. His decision surprises Doreen, who complains that her
weight has never been much of an issue, and Earl, whose current unemployment gives
him time to consider such things, suggests that until now, her weight was never been
much of a problem. Carver surveys Earl’s true intentions, hinting that “He tried to pick
his words” (24). For Earl does not wish to be labeled a “joker,” the term the two men at
the diner used to describe any man who would desire Doreen’s figure, and he delicately
persuades her that losing weight would be a good thing. But in his care with words, Earl
not only illustrates the futility of communication Carver highlights throughout the
collection, but he exhibits a lack of self-judgment, as he succumbs to the insults he hears
from the diner patrons. Doreen accepts Earl’s suggestion and begins to lose weight, and
in two weeks, her co-workers take notice of her increasing weight loss and imply she
might be losing too much:
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“What is wrong with losing?” he said. “Don’t you pay any attention to
them. Tell them to mind their own business. They’re not your husband.
You don’t have to live with them.”
“I have to work with them,” Doreen said.
“That’s right,” Earl said. “But they’re not your husband.” (27)
Earl’s continual reminder to Doreen that he is her husband signals a need for an identity,
as he clings to the only role he seems capable of holding onto. The role is not one he
particularly is well suited for, however, as his thorough watchfulness over Doreen’s
weight and inability to secure a job make for traits undesirable for most men. Likewise,
instead of feasting upon Earl’s weaknesses, Doreen proves to be the stable force in the
relationship, capable of keeping a job and providing the means necessary for the family
to stay afloat. Recognizing strength and influence in her personality becomes a hard task
because in many ways, those traits have long since vanished; almost all of her resilience
has been stunted by Earl’s stubbornness and failure to accept his obligation as a husband
and a man.
“They’re Not Your Husband” reads as a story where Carver puts two individuals
in a dismal situation and wonders if either of them can ever find a way to stumble upon
fulfillment, albeit in its smallest form. Granted neither character seems to have found an
opportunity to get out of their situation, but at the end of the story, Doreen recognizes a
bit of the joker in Earl. After Earl points out Doreen’s figure to a man at the counter,
another waitress asks Doreen if she knows him, if she knows who this joker may be:
Earl put on his best smile. He held it. He held it until he felt his face
pulling out of shape.
But the other waitress just studied him, and Doreen began to shake her
head slowly. The man had put some change inside his cup and stood up,
but he too waited to hear the answer. They all stared at Earl.
“He’s a salesman. He’s my husband,” Doreen said at last, shrugging.
Then she put the unfinished chocolate sundae in front of him and went to
total up his check.” (30)
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Reluctantly, Doreen finally admits that Earl is her husband, but not before expressing her
dismay by shaking her head and first introducing him as a salesman. For in the end, Earl
acts more like a salesman, although a poor one, than a husband, and he exhibits qualities
of desperation not far removed from those shown by Leo. Doreen, though not the
cunning woman Toni and Mary sometimes are, attempts to separate herself from an
oafish character. “They’re Not Your Husband” proves to be an early example of a story
where the woman distinguishes the problems that exist within her relationship and
continues to endure the situation. Latter works intensify the struggle between couples
and explore just how women assert themselves and adopt less traditional household roles.
In “Raymond Carver’s Monologic Imagination,” Miriam Marty Clark reacts to
the voices in Carver’s stories, concluding that a single voice permeates most stories.
“Raymond Carver’s stories make their way toward single voices: the ‘I’ in retreat from
the domestic babel, the ‘he’ or ‘she’ recoiling from a noisy world” (240). Furthermore,
Clark insists that Carver, “in a calculating way,” buries the difference between male and
female voices and believes that “There is, significantly, no discernible difference between
men’s speech and women’s in most series” (241).
Although she allows for some
exceptions, Clark believes that a majority of characters in Carver’s fiction have their
voices unified, thereby extinguishing any chance of autonomy. Speech, and the lack of it,
figures prominently in Carver’s second major collection, which, like his previous
collection, evokes a kind of identity in the title. What We Talk About When We Talk
About Love concerns individuals seeking to converse with one another amidst the
limitations that communication causes, and it also presents a group of female characters
who take more assertive stances in their relationships. In an act of defiance toward the
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men in their lives, these women express themselves with strong voices that rise above a
singular voice and in essence deflate the notion that most voices in Carver’s fiction
converge into one. In this collection, the emergence of women contrasts with the futility
of men more prominently that in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, and while the
disharmony of relationships continues, the consequences for women are not as selfdestructive as in earlier stories.
“A Serious Talk” follows the aimless Burt returning to the scene of yet another
embarrassing moment in his recently solitary life: Burt finds himself at his wife’s house
the day after Christmas, which is also the day after he threw five logs in the fireplace
before storming out of the house. Recounting much of Burt’s previous evening at his
wife’s house, Carver presents Burt as a quintessential male figure in What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love, who unleashes his rage through a string of incidents that
serve only to alienate his family and further separate him from his natural surroundings.
The story focuses on Burt, yet by the end of the story, when Burt leaves the house
without a hint of dignity, one can clearly see that the female has undertaken the
responsibility of keeping the household intact--sans Burt--and attempted to regroup and
form a stable environment for those remaining.
As he pulls into the Vera’s driveway the day after Christmas, Burt spots the pie he
dropped when he angrily left the night before. That night, Burt had come to visit and
share gifts with his family next to the Christmas tree, enjoying the time he was able to
share with Vera and their children. The family exchanged gifts and the children ran
through the house, and Burt reminisced about a time when such happier occasions might
have been the norm in the household. Burt, granted visiting privileges by Vera, had
15
given her a cashmere sweater and insisted she try it on: ‘“It’s nice on you,’ Burt said, and
felt a welling in his chest” (106). His emphasis hints at the affection he still holds for
Vera, yet her lack of response suggests a discontent that explains Burt’s evening. While
Vera appears to have moved on, Burt remains stuck with recollections.
After exchanging presents, Burt soaks in the environment and finds comfort in the
familiarity of what was once his house: “Burt liked it where he was. He liked it in front
of the fireplace, a glass in hand, his house, his home” (106). His recollection of the past
argues for another instance of disassociation in Carver’s males; just as Leo stares at the
empty spot in the driveway where the convertible once sat, Burt sits in a house where he
once felt secure and at home. These men have distanced their former selves from their
present condition, and as a reaction, they turn to violence, not dialogue, and in turn
isolate themselves from family and society. While Leo raises his fist at Toni when she
returns home, Burt drops five wooden logs in the fireplace and leaves the house, six pies
from the kitchen counter in hand.
Burt’s anger stems from Vera taking up with a new
man, leaving Burt as the replaceable figure reduced to having his visiting hours stipulated
by Vera. “Vera had warned him beforehand. She’d told him the score. She’d said he
had to be out by six o’clock because her friend and his children were coming over for
dinner” (105). The potential of another man in the house threatens Burt because the new
man is not just coming over for dinner--he is moving into Burt’s role as the male head of
the household. By moving on with her life and finding someone new, Vera emerges as
the determined individual in contrast to Burt, who seems unable to accept the end of his
marriage. Vera has little need for Burt anymore, and her introduction of a new man into
16
the household demonstrates her ability to control the environment, something Burt was
incapable of doing.
Burt and Vera talk, but the conversation features two people moving in different
directions. Burt offers apologies for the previous night, yet he cannot find the words to
explain himself: “There were things he wanted to say, grieving things, consoling things,
things like that” (111). While Burt mulls over his thoughts, Vera busies herself around
the house and prepares for her flute lesson. She also seems prepared to carry on with her
life, minus Burt, who has taken to being a nuisance around her:
“Jesus, Burt. What’d you want to talk about, anyway? I told you I have
someplace to go. I have a flute lesson at one o’clock.”
“Are you still taking flute?”
“I just said so. What is it? Tell me what’s on your mind, and then I
have to get ready.”
“I wanted to say I was sorry.”
She said, “You said that.” (109)
As Clark has noted, Carver’s stories do not contain distinguishable voices, but in this
instance, Vera possesses considerable influence on the conversation. Her voice proves
distinct by her willingness to communicate, as she expresses confusion and a wish to
move forward beyond her life with him. Unquestionably fed up with Burt’s antics, she
presses him to communicate, and all he can offer are words that have already been
spoken, words that have lost their meaning long ago.
As the story draws to a close, Burt remains at the kitchen table inspecting the
ashtray and leftover food from the dinner to which he was not invited. The phone rings,
and with Vera in the other room getting ready for her lesson, Burt answers and speaks to
someone looking for Charlie (presumably Vera’s other man). As he did the previous
night, Burt allows his anger to intensify and he slices the phone cord. Vera, who had
17
taken the call in the other room, returns to the kitchen and, with resounding authority,
commands him to leave. Her conviction firm, she makes the bold step to eliminate him
from her life forever. ‘“Son of a bitch!’ she screamed. She screamed, ‘Out, out, where
you belong!’ She was shaking the phone at him.
‘That’s it! I’m going to get a
restraining order, that’s what I’m going to get!’” (112). Burt responds only by picking up
the ashtray; his words are useless, and as Charles May observes, “talk achieves nothing”
(43). Vera’s words do accomplish something, however, and her admonishment of Burt
attests to the stability she maintains. The marriage has crumbled, and Burt’s outbursts
not only cement the end of his relationship but stress his failures as a man.
Burt believes his outbursts have demonstrated something and thinks things
between Vera and him can improve:
He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but he thought he had
proved something. He hoped he had made something clear. The thing
was, they had to have a serious talk soon. There were things that needed
talking about, important things that had to be discussed. They’d talk
again. Maybe after the holidays were over and things got back to normal.
He’d tell her the goddamn ashtray was a goddamn dish, for example. (113)
He shows no sign that he understands what has transpired, and the fact that he believes he
has achieved something--that the two can get together to talk--only indicates that
comprehension eludes him and that he remains incapable of possessing the basic skills of
human interaction. Meanwhile, Vera perseveres and maintains a lifestyle that affords her
the opportunity to continue without Burt, as a house, a new man, and music lessons will
attest.
Her control of the situation and forceful removal of Burt from the house
demonstrate her influence in the relationship and exhibit an authority that begins to
develop in the women found in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
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In Echoes of Slammed Doors: Resonant Closure in Raymond Carver’s Fiction,
Jack Bedell and Norman German elaborate on the impact of Carver’s conclusions, noting
how the abbreviated endings sometimes denote more than the story has provided:
“Detachment is, in fact, one of the fictive stances by which Carver achieves his most
startling effects” (87). Bedell and German imply that wherever the endings may occur,
what invariably surfaces are situations of disconnection between individuals, and often
this separation comes between husband and wife. This is evident in “A Serious Talk” as
well as another story of marital disharmony in What We Talk About When We Talk About
Love, “One More Thing,” where L.D. finds himself at the conclusion of the story forced
into leaving his house, helpless in finding words to express himself. The circumstances
in “One More Thing” make for a rather dysfunctional family: Rae, the daughter, has been
absent from school for weeks, while her father, L.D., stays drunk at home most of the
time. L.D.’s wife, Maxine, seems to be the only one who leaves the house, returning
each night from work to witness “another tragedy in a long line of low-rent tragedies”
(156). The tag “low-rent tragedies” sums up much of Carver’s work and provides critics
the opportunity to simplify the work without investigating beyond the obvious themes of
despair and silence. As Michael Vander Weele observes, however, the tragedies extend
beyond these themes and grow from a lack of awareness:
The tragedy of Carver’s “low-rent tragedies” is not, finally, the broken
marriages or drunken violence we meet in his stories, but the characters’
inability to go beyond their puzzlement over the significance of such
events. They have neither the understanding nor the conditions for such
speech. It remains an unrealized desire. (111)
In the case of “A Serious Talk,” Burt overlooks the simplest of details, right down to his
clutching the ashtray as he tries to drive away from Vera, and concentrates on a plan to
19
talk sometime in the future. His plan lacks rationale, much like L.D.’s family situation,
where drunken violence and broken marriages have upset any conventional household
ideals. Upon arriving home from work one night, Maxine again finds L.D. and Rae in an
argument:
He hit the table with the flat of his hand. The ashtray jumped. His glass
fell on its side and rolled off. “You’re crazy, Rae! Do you know that?”
“Shut up!” Maxine said.
She unbuttoned her coat and put her purse down on the counter. She
looked at L.D. and said, “L.D., I’ve had it. So has Rae. So has everyone
who knows you. I’ve been thinking it over. I want you out of here.
Tonight. This minute. Now. Get the hell out of here right now.” (156)
Maxine’s voice bears similarities with Vera’s, as both women take initiative to remedy
the households destroyed by the brutish behavior of their husbands. Once L.D. collects
his things and returns to the living room, he finds Maxine and Rae waiting for him to
leave forever. “‘Go,’ Maxine said. She took Rae’s hand. ‘Haven’t you done enough
damage in his house already? Go on, L.D. Get out of here and leave us in peace’” (159).
Maxine takes a defiant stance against her husband, one that illustrates an authority in the
relationship. Although not in a remarkably better situation, Maxine still clutches to the
possibility of recuperation and hope, things not available with L.D. in the house. As the
story comes to a close, the final scene allows for the contrast between male and female
voices to resurface:
He put his suitcase down and shaving bag on top of the suitcase. He
drew himself up and faced them.
They moved back.
“Watch it, Mom,” Rae said.
“I’m not afraid of him,” Maxine said.
L.D. put the shaving bag under his arm and picked up the suitcase.
He said, “I just want to say one more thing.”
But then he could not think what it could possibly be. (159)
20
And so the story ends with a man left only with a suitcase and shaving bag, any remnants
of identity all but gone. Bedell and German believe “L.D. wants to inflict pain with his
final words, but can only offer booming voice and banging fists,” and indeed, his silence
says more about his embattled condition than any words could (88). Like many others in
Carver’s work, silence becomes L.D.’s only form of communication. Contrary to L.D.’s
verbal paralysis, Maxine is undaunted by any possible threats, standing unafraid of her
soon to be ex-husband. Remarking on the conclusions of “A Serious Talk” and “One
More Thing,” William Stull notes that the stories “end not with a bang, but a whimper, a
hasty retreat, a failure to connect” (5). This failure evolves from the incompetence
exhibited by men, an indisposition that compels their female opposite into action. Both
Vera and Maxine desire to rid themselves of their biggest problem--their husbands. By
responding with action to the inactive men in their lives, these women demonstrate an
empowering strength absent in their male counterparts. While Burt and L.D. leave their
comfort zones with pies and suitcases to go into a world of uncertainty and isolation,
Vera and Maxine endure the collapse of their relationships. Their voices resonate with
determination and authority, characteristics that begin to thrive in Carver’s second major
collection.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love brought more attention to
Carver’s work than anything before it, and much was made about the minimalism of the
stories. The pared stories created “a strong, nearly clinical collection of fugue states” that
Donald Newlove branded as “Hopelessville,” a community of oblivious individuals
finding themselves displaced from customary environments and in constant search of
rediscovery (77). “After the Denim” exacts that kind of imagery with its portrayal of a
21
couple seemingly uprooted from their normal evening at bingo. When James and Edith
Packer arrive at the community center for bingo, they find their usual parking spot
already occupied, and once inside, they find a young couple has taken their regular spot
at the table. This absence of familiarity prompts James to concede any possible winnings
for the evening: “I don’t feel lucky tonight” (70). Edith appears less frustrated about the
situation than James and tries to look past the mere inconveniences, yet when she returns
from the bathroom to tell James she has begun spotting again, it ruins his evening.
James’ frustration denotes a problem common with many Carver males: change. When
presented a situation that requires adjustment and understanding, most of Carver’s male
characters cannot grasp that idea. When James assumes his luck has vanished because of
the young couple at his customary spot, he gives in and soon returns home. While Burt
and L.D. resort to thundering voices that fail to accomplish anything, James retreats to an
extra bedroom in the house after Edith falls asleep and picks up his needlework. Like
L.D. with his wife’s eyelash curlers, James takes possession of an item foreign to men,
and proceeds to find solace in something beyond normal rationale. These men harvest
the hopelessness by their unwillingness to take on their problematic issues; while
conversely, the women take action--overlooking the incident at bingo, finding a stable
partner, or evicting the unstable and volatile male.
“Why Don’t You Dance?” provides What We Talk About When We Talk About
Love with an introduction that establishes the hopelessness found throughout the
collection. The unnamed man, whose namelessness speaks to the kind of lonesome
figures dwelling in Carver’s fiction, bears a resemblance to Leo in the way he stares out
the kitchen window at the furniture in his front yard. In fact, as he looks at the furniture
22
that once decorated the inside of his house, the man could easily be Leo desperately
waiting for Toni to return home from another rendezvous with a car buyer.
Such
similarity suggests the disassociation and futile nature of many of Carver males,
regardless of what story collection they reside in. A careful reading of the story and the
simple depiction of setting--the “his side, her side” description of the bed, for example-exposes the loneliness and marital separation that has encumbered the man, although the
narrative never specifies the exact malady troubling him. Instead, the story revolves
around a boy and girl encountering the furniture and offering to buy it. The young couple
plans to furnish an apartment and upon spotting what appears to be a yard sale they begin
to shop, despite the fact that no one else is in the yard. The girl checks the bed, an item
of sexual possibilities, as the boy inspects the television, an object of sterility already
shown in “What Is It?” to be an obstruction for men. The relationship between the two
already seems tense, evident in the boy’s refusal to kiss his girlfriend as they wait:
He lay down on the bed and put the pillow under his head.
“How does it feel?” she said.
“It feels firm,” he said.
She turned on her side and put her hand to his face.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“Let’s get up,” he said.
“Kiss me,” she said.
She closed her eyes. She held him.
He said, “I’ll see if anybody’s home.”
But he just sat up and stayed where he was, making believe he was
watching the television. (5)
The girl displays a liveliness that evades the boy, whose concerns lie in the unfamiliar
location.
His apprehensions mirror those of other men bothered by change and
ambiguity, and he finds comfort in the chance to get up from the bed to see if anyone is
home. The girl’s playfulness and desire to be kissed indicates a need for affection that
23
the boyfriend fails to reciprocate. What may seem a simple refusal of public affection
could actually evolve into something more substantial, and the trivial conflict suggests
future ramifications because parallels exist between the young couple and the man whose
lawn they currently inhabit. According to Nesset, the resemblance between the couple
and the man is a strong one:
In the most obvious sense, the boy and girl are symbolic stand-ins for the
couple who bought the bed and shared it before. Less obviously, the
conversation betrays tension in their own relationship, hinting at tensions
which may or may not have precipitated the break up of the older couple-most visible in the girl’s eager sexual overtures and in the boy’s reluctance
to act in a potentially embarrassing way. The tensions here, filling the
interstices of a conversation they conduct lying down, of all places, on a
bed, are grounded in sexual politics. (38)
Sexual politics sculpt much of the story, as many of the interactions between the girl and
boy revolve around sex, or the possibility of it. Aware that they are alone in the yard, the
girl fancies an idea: ‘“Wouldn’t it be funny if,’ she said and grinned and didn’t finish.
The boy laughed, but for no good reason. For no good reason, he switched the reading
lamp on” (5). Her sexuality contrasts his reserved behavior, and in hesitation, or perhaps
insecurity, he laughs and walks to the porch, which is where he stays until the man
returns from the store with food and alcohol.
The man offers drinks to the couple and fields their offers on the furniture. The
bids consistently undervalue the man’s belongings, and in turn, his worth. Making the
check out to cash and routinely undercutting the prices the man suggests for each item
(an act the girl precipitates), the boy sees the man as no more than a collection of used
furniture--a gesture “equating his host with the monetary worth of his domestic goods,
the accumulated baggage of a life that the man now deems utterly and irreversibly
worthless” (Nesset 39). After settling on prices, the man begins to play music on an old
24
record player and encourages the couple to dance. ‘“I don’t think so,’ the boy said. ‘Go
ahead,’ the man said. ‘It’s my yard. You can if you want to’” (8). Eventually, the boy
dances with this girlfriend, albeit reluctantly and briefly, pleading drunkenness as an
excuse to stop. Again, his reluctance to touch his girlfriend hints at preexisting problems
between the couple, yet his initial refusal to dance is aimed at the man. Perhaps an
attempt to undermine the man’s hospitality, the boy rejects the man’s suggestion to dance
as a way of enforcing a dominate position. This fails, however, once the boy quits
dancing, and the man, by request of the girl, replaces him in the dance. At this point, the
boy is nothing more than an expendable item, and his tenure as boyfriend will most likely
not last as long as the furnishings they purchase.
In Carver’s world, men rarely leave the house, and in “Why Don’t You Dance?”
the house has simply expanded into the front yard, where everything resembles what it
was inside and an extension cord from inside the house connects everything. Watching
the couple interact, the man has the opportunity to relive his own broken relationship, and
when given the chance, he accepts a dance from the girl. Through the dance they share a
conversation ripe with innuendo, and the girl senses something in him: ‘“You must be
desperate or something,’ she said” (9). According to Adam Meyer, “For her part, she
senses his sadness and wants to comfort him. She also seems to realize that, if she and
her beau, represent what he used to be, then he represents what they might become” (88).
At no other point in the story does a character speak so clearly of the situation. Weeks
later the girl still recalls the incident: “Look at this record player. The old guy gave it to
us. And all these crappy records. Will you look at this shit?” (10). Like other Carver
characters, the girl tries to talk of the situation until it becomes understood, yet at one
25
point she can go no further, and “After a time, she quit trying” (10). With that in mind,
Ewing Campbell asserts that Carver allows the girl the opportunity to grasp what the
encounter holds for her future: “He brings the girl to the threshold of understanding that
dreams gone sour often manifest themselves in desperate acts and that this desperate man
must have been in love when he was her age and starting out in a relation like hers” (45).
Campbell describes the girl as “uninstructed,” as though she cannot fathom the
significance of the occasion, but upon closer inspection, the conclusion offers a shift in
point of view; the story no longer centers around the man and his furniture as it did at the
onset, but instead on the girl and her comprehension of the event. “With the shift in
perspective, a final comment provides us with something new: a confirmation of the
man’s worthlessness, now through the eyes of the girl” (Nesset 39). The man is not the
only worthless individual at the conclusion, however. The absence of the boy, and the
girl’s sudden disregard for him, suggest he has been cast aside and deemed irrelevant.
The only character to surface unscathed at the finale is the girl, for she endures the
scattered furniture and drunken dance partners to become consciously aware that
something influential has happened.
In most of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, females affirm their
livelihood as their male counterparts suffer defeat, but like a large part of Carver’s early
work, disaster does not recognize gender. Holly and Duane have the verbal equivalent of
a boxing match the morning Holly discovers Duane’s infidelity in “Gazebo,” and the
couple locks themselves in a second-story motel room in an effort to confront their
dilemma. In the midst of arguing, Holly relates an incident years before, when, on a
drive in the country, the couple had stopped at an old couple’s house for water and seen a
26
gazebo. For Holly, the memory conjures up images of what she thought her life should
have been. “I thought we’d be like that too when we got old enough. Dignified. And in
a place. And people would come to our door” (28). Holly and Duane had seen a
possibility for their future, and it was one that failed to come true; instead of a nice
country home, they welcomed people as managers of a motel.
Holly realizes the
despondency that has infiltrated their lives, yet her awareness can do little to improve the
situation. “Thus ‘Gazebo’ sounds the same self-pitying refrain that dominates the entire
collection” (Saltzman 108).
Holly’s acknowledgment of the instability in her life is an undertaking other
women experience throughout Carver’s early volumes of stories. At times, these women
share Holly’s bewilderment, but often this confusion leads to revelation and action, as
Vera and Maxine demonstrate. Women do not fully emerge from the wasteland of
hopelessness. They do begin, however, to respond to the absence of competence in men
by adopting fixed and confident positions in relationships. In “Everything Stuck To
Him,” when the young husband prepares to go hunting while his young daughter suffers
from illness, the wife gives him an ultimatum between family and hunting: “You heard
what I said….If you want a family, you’re going to have to choose” (133). Such words
point to the fortitude and confidence in speech that evolves in women throughout
Carver’s second major collection, and when the husband opts to remain at home, he bases
his decision on the influence of his wife. For it seems she understands the importance of
familial cohesion. This unity, in time, dissolves, as the ending of the story reveals the
couple’s eventual split; however, the togetherness they briefly share, and the breakfast
27
she cooks for him, hints at the kind of positive moment that will flourish in Carver’s next
major selection of stories.
Regarding Carver’s various styles, Meyer compares the shift in Carver’s career to
the shape of an hourglass--“beginning wide, moving through a narrow stage (during his
‘arch-minimalist’ period), and then widening again” (30). What We Talk About When We
Talk About Love further reduced what was found in Will You Please Be Quiet Please?,
but Cathedral widened beyond most everything in Carver’s canon. With the exception of
the title story in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Carver’s stories had never been as
long or provided as much insight and background into character’s lives as the ones found
in Cathedral. In addition to the expansion in length, a generally positive outlook, unseen
in Carver’s earlier work, develops in Cathedral. Surveying Carver’s early work, May
insists that the “first two collections can truly be called shocking, for both in their subject
matter and in style, they assault the reader with the violence of their characters and the
reticence of their language” (76).
Conversely, Cathedral distances itself from
Hopelessville with characters searching to form connections, albeit minor, with others.
The expansion between What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral is
best observed in the changes Carver employed in turning “The Bath” into “A Small,
Good Thing.” Much critical work has explored the alteration of minimalist style into
fuller narrative, and one prominent aspect is the attention given to the baker and the
conclusion of “A Small Good, Thing.”
Whereas the ending of “The Bath” seeks
ambiguity in the mysterious phone call placed in reference to the boy in the hospital, “A
Small, Good Thing” allows people to meet and share in their predicaments. As the
parents of the recently deceased young boy confront the baker who had placed several
28
menacing calls concerning Scotty, something happens. The baker relates his struggles to
the parents, who, still suffering their own loss, find a connection in the baker’s story.
With a union formed, the baker feeds the parents bread, for eating is “a small, good
thing.” The image of breaking bread, an obvious Biblical allusion, ties the baker and the
parents together and serves as an optimistic concluding element.
The longer ending of “A Small, Good Thing” denotes a change that occurs
throughout Cathedral.
The baker encourages a communion, and throughout the
collection, similar bonds are formed, most of which prosper at the hands of women. No
longer harboring the intent to rid themselves of their incapacitated and silenced opposites,
these women assert their influence to alleviate the problems that have existed in their
relationships for so long. This awareness of crisis and the attempt to resolve it troubles
some critics, who, although they recognize the expansion of the stories, see the shift in
perspective as too great and too idealistic. In his criticism of Cathedral and the new style
of American short stories Carver fostered, Madison Bell remarks that “Carver abuses his
characters, presenting them as utterly unconscious one moment and turning them into
mouthpieces for his own notions the next.
The characters come to resemble rats
negotiating a maze that the reader can see and they cannot” (67). Bell applies his premise
to “The Bridle,” one of the weaker moments in Cathedral, its weakness stemming from
the overt use of the bridle as a metaphor to illustrate the restraint forced upon two
families occupying a rundown hotel (Carver employs symbolism effectively elsewhere in
the collection). Bell’s theory suggests Carver’s characters lack the capacity for speech
necessary to arrive at conclusions, and that Carver seemingly enters the text to solve
dilemmas the characters cannot.
Closer readings will show, however, that moments
29
exist where characters possess the power to arrive at conclusions with the assistance of
others. In these cases, women are the conduits that transform the inexpressible into
coherency and optimism.
One of Cathedral’s highlights, “Where I’m Calling From,” centers on two
stereotypical Carver men passing their time at a “drying-out facility;” their years of
drinking and recklessness a prelude to the long days spent sharing stories on the front
porch of the clinic. The unnamed narrator has treaded this path before--he is here for the
second time--but J.P. has only just arrived, and after three days, he already has begun to
shake. “I tell him I sympathize,” the narrator says. “I tell him the shakes will idle down.
And they will. But it takes time” (127). The sparseness in voice is recognizably Carveresque and it stays that way throughout the story; this narrator is more willing to listen
than to speak and in J.P., he has found someone eager to talk. While J.P. tells a story
about his experience trapped in a well, the narrator urges him to continue: “Keep talking,
J.P. Then what?” (130). The experience at the bottom of the well leads to a new
perspective in viewing life--“everything about his life was different for him at the bottom
of that well” (130)--and from that anecdote J.P. moves to his first meeting with Roxy, a
chimney sweep. Instantly, he fell in love and after dating, he and Roxy married and
embarked on what was to be a happy life together. But for Carver’s characters, happiness
is only temporary, and soon J.P.’s casual drinking turns chronic, leading to the kind of
abuse in the relationship common in earlier Carver works. The retelling of these events
draws the narrator closer to J.P., and at every pause, another plea to continue comes from
the narrator:
J.P. quits talking. He just clams up. What’s going on? I’m listening. It’s
helping me relax, for one thing. It’s taking me away from my own
30
situation. After a minute, I say, “What the hell? Go on, J.P.” He’s
pulling his chin. But pretty soon he starts talking again. (134)
A level of comfort begins to settle for the narrator as he has found an ally, someone who
can share common experiences and take his mind away from the problems outside the
facility. Days before he arrived at Frank Martin’s drying-out facility, the narrator’s
girlfriend received her Pap smear results, and the prognosis was not good.
This communication with someone else acts to soothe the narrator’s worries, but
the arrival of Roxy days after the New Year begins serves as a true act of catharsis for the
narrator. Subscribing to the idea that chimney sweeps bring luck with a kiss (a belief J.P.
relays in his story), the narrator requests Roxy to bring him some luck: “‘I need some
luck,’ I say. ‘No kidding. I could do with a kiss myself’” (143). No longer a chimney
sweep, Roxy still consents: “She’s looking right in my eyes. ‘Good luck,’ she says, and
then she lets go of me” (144). The kiss does something to the narrator, for after the kiss
he thinks back to his first marriage and a morning when he awoke to the sounds of
something outside the window. Upon inspection, the noise is coming from the landlord
painting outside the bedroom. As the narrator peeks out the window at the old man,
something happens inside him: “Goddamn it, I think, if he isn’t a weird old fellow. And
a wave of happiness comes over me that I’m not him--that I’m me and that I’m inside this
bedroom with my wife” (145). Roxy’s visit and kiss prompt the narrator to recall a
relatively stable and happy moment in his life, a type of memory he has been unable to
invoke throughout the story. “Roxy’s kiss marks a turning point, as if by asking for the
kiss of luck he [the narrator] is acknowledging his condition and is willing to change it”
(Campbell 69). The final image of the narrator’s recollection is of the landlord picking
up his bucket and climbing the ladder, and as the story closes, the narrator initiates his
31
own ascension, as he makes plans to call his girlfriend and ex-wife. He understands that
he will be forced to tell his ex-wife where he is calling from, but he accepts that and a
transformation at least becomes a viable option for this once despondent man.
“Where I’m Calling From” is one of many stories from Cathedral that helps
“create the book’s overall feeling of generosity,” and in that story it can be attributed to
the role of Roxy (Campbell 70). Roxy, and other woman throughout Cathedral, pacify
men’s predicaments, and as Nesset proposes, “Roxy’s kiss underscores the degree to
which women provide him much-needed security” (60). The narrator recounts the story
sitting on the porch, a location firmly between the outside world in front of him and the
world of Frank Martin’s treatment center behind him; the appearance of Roxy, someone
from the outside world, and the luck that she provides, serves as confidence for the
narrator and inspires the possibility of change. Speaking of the distinguishing traits of
Cathedral, Campbell writes that “Characters possess more positive qualities,” and for
Roxy, her positive influence and ability to draw the narrator’s mind back to happier times
illustrate the optimism women can give men (70). Her entry into the narrator’s situation
and his insistence that she can help, not Carver’s authorial interventions, as Bell would
suggest, brings resolution to the story.
Carver obviously saw significant growth in “Where I’m Calling From,” as he
would later use its title to name his career-spanning collection. The decision to highlight
that story testifies to the importance Carver placed on the type of stories he was writing
later in his career. While his first two collections either pleaded for silence or sensed the
unsuccessfulness of talk, Cathedral pointed to a place, where from desperation, violence,
and confusion, unity could emerge. “Fever,” which appeared in both Cathedral and
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Where I’m Calling From, introduces a form of unity between a pair of unlikely
individuals, its origin stemming from a woman miles away from the action and a woman
willing to sit and pay attention.
“Carlyle was in a spot,” begins “Fever,” and indeed, Carlyle finds himself in a
tight spot as the school year begins and he is without a sitter for his two children (157).
His wife, Eileen, left only months earlier and the first sitter he hires, a nineteen-year-old
girl, turns into a disaster when Carlyle returns home to find her and three boys drinking
beer and listening to records, the children unsupervised.
His girlfriend, Carol,
sympathizes with him. That night, she offers to come over to his house, yet Carlyle
declines: “‘Thanks for being there when I need you,’ he said. ‘You’re one in a million,
you know’” (161). After hanging up, though, he holds doubts about the words he used
with Carol. “He wished he could have thought of something else to say to her instead of
what he’d just said. He’d never talked that way before in his life” (161). His recent
experiences have caused enough insecurity to where he questions his own words. Citing
this moment, Charles May argues that “Fever” is a prime example of the breakdown of
talk, claiming the story to be “one of Carver’s most explicit treatments of the inadequacy
of talk” (44). Certainly, Carlyle suffers the same kind of fate as other males in Carver’s
work, as circumstances constantly put him at odds with daily life. The scrutiny of his
own words signifies the loss of self-confidence and poise, and when Eileen calls that
evening, he once again doubts his choice of words: “‘I was just thinking about you,’
Carlyle said, and at once regretted saying it” (167).
Eileen’s call represents an interesting moment in “Fever” because in past
conversations with Carlyle, her intentions always seem selfish and distant, her words
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estranged and foreign to him. Even though she inquires about Carlyle and the children,
she speaks of the wonders she experiences in California and promises to look into
Carlyle’s karma. This mystical nonsense only draws Carlyle further away, so he excuses
himself and hangs up the phone. When Eileen calls that evening, though, she intends to
solve Carlyle’s problems rather than intensify them:
The big reason I called is that I know things are in kind of a mess out there
right now. Don’t ask me how, but I know. I’m sorry, Carlyle. But here’s
the thing. You’re still in need of a good housekeeper, right? Well, she’s
practically right there in the neighborhood. (166)
An option has been provided, and a possibility for better times seems promising.
Although Carlyle remains skeptical, he soon finds a blessing in Eileen’s suggestion. Mrs.
Webster calls Carlyle an hour later, and when prompted, she insists that she is the proper
individual for the job. “‘I’d like to be able to count on you,’ Carlyle said. ‘You can
count on me,’ she said” (169). Mrs. Webster provides a soothing effect on Carlyle almost
immediately, and his pressing concerns about his children seem to vanish at the sight of
her the next morning when she reports to work. “I feel, I really feel a hundred percent
better” (171), he observes, and the sentiment extends for several weeks, as Carlyle’s life
regroups due to the security Mrs. Webster gives him.
During this phase of renewal, Carlyle falls ill, and the fever causes him to remain
in bed. He tells Mrs. Webster that he plans to stay home that morning and soon falls back
asleep. Occasionally Mrs. Webster enters his room to check on him, bringing him juice
and food and covering him with blankets. By the afternoon Carlyle awakes, and walking
into the living room, he answers the phone. Eileen is on the line; she senses his illness
and encourages him to keep a journal as a way of keeping his thoughts of the period. He
hangs up the phone, and as he reaches for his forehead, Mrs. Webster asks if everything
34
is all right. For even though she takes care of Carlyle, Mrs. Webster must take care of
herself, and she alerts him that Mr. Webster and she will be moving on to live with her
stepson. This news, coupled with Eileen’s recent phone call, leaves Carlyle silent for a
moment, and as he laughs about the preposterous idea of keeping a journal, tears form in
his eyes. Again, Carlyle has found himself in a spot; his recent highs suddenly diminish
as Mrs. Webster and the refuge she offered, prepare to depart. Carlyle, stricken with loss,
feels a need to converse: “Carlyle was afraid she’d move into the other room and leave
him alone. He wanted to talk to her” (184). And so he begins to talk, and what follows is
an outpouring of emotion about the issues that have long troubled him. Mrs. Webster not
only listens, but guides him through his confessions, prompting him to continue speaking
as if she knows the power of what words can realize:
“Go on,” Mrs. Webster said. “I know what you’re saying. You just
keep talking, Mr. Carlyle. Sometimes it’s good to talk about it.
Sometimes it has to be talked about. Besides, I want to hear it. And
you’re going to feel better afterwards. Something just like it happened to
me once, something like what you’re describing. Love. That’s what it is.”
(185)
Her words convey the possibility of unity between two people, prompting Carlyle to
convert his suppressed feelings into actual communication. “Keep talking,” she pleads,
and for the first time, he feels able to converse about the difficulties he has experienced in
the past few months. The action somewhat defies May’s claim that “Fever” exemplifies
the failure of talk, for even though preceding incidents illustrate the failure to choose the
appropriate words, they never fully show an inadequacy in talk.
No violence or
screaming exists between these two people, but rather a supportive ear willing to listen to
the abandoned man talk out the story of his marriage and its end. Piotr Dziedzic believes
that with “her straightforwardness, honesty, and precision, Mrs. Webster is the antithesis
35
of carelessness,” and by convincing Carlyle to speak, she allows him the chance to
restore what has been lost. “Talking, she knows, has a therapeutic effect, albeit even a
very long and complicated story of personal failure and unhappiness can be made more
manageable by being reduced to its deep structure of eternal human woe” (Dziedzic 5859). As Dziedzic explains, Mrs. Webster has drawn out the painful experiences from
Carlyle, and as she leaves that afternoon, he feels different. Something has ended, and he
realizes that his relationship with Eileen has finally been put to rest, all thanks to Mrs.
Webster. Like Roxy, Mrs. Webster affords a man the chance to comprehend his potential
to accomplish what once seemed unreasonable. The narrator of “Where I’m Calling
From” and Carlyle, both immobilized and, for the most part, acceptant of their decline,
have the second chance the men of previous collections were never presented with, and
these opportunities are created with the help of women.
Roxy and Mrs. Webster enable recovery in men, and these men permit them to
enter into their lives to relieve their apprehensions. Such is not always the case, however,
as “Preservations” introduces a couple that seems unwilling to work together. This
derives not so much from Sandy, but from the reluctance of her husband. “Preservation”
does not present a situation like “Where I’m Calling From” or “Fever” where the man is
willing to change, but instead shows a woman fully capable of allowing for change, even
when her husband refuses to do so. Transcendence fails to emerge in Sandy’s husband
not because she is incapable of motivating change, but because her husband rejects the
idea. Marshall Bruce Gentry, in his study of women’s voices in Carver’s work, suggests
that this kind of inactivity stems from a pattern he sees occurring in many of Carver’s
stories:
36
In general, Carver reverses the traditional associations of men with
consciousness and common sense and of women with complex emotion
and the mysterious truths of the unconscious. His female characters tend
to experience an initiation into mystery through the catalytic behavior of
men. (87)
Gentry believes a story like “Preservation” portrays a “female perspective [which] is
reflected occasionally rather than constantly” (92). Yet what Gentry seems to overlook is
that, even though Sandy is drawn in by her husband’s inadequacy, her will and
determination are the underlying aspects of the story. The story begins with Sandy’s
husband returning home from work where he has just been laid off: “I got canned today.
Hey, what do you think’s going to happen to us now?” (35). That was three months
prior to the story’s present, at a time when Sandy’s husband still applied the term “us” as
a sign of solidarity, as if the two were in it together, job or no job. Since then, Sandy’s
husband--his namelessness again speaking to the inadequacy and isolation felt in many of
Carver’s males--has occupied the couch in front of the television on a daily basis from
the time Sandy leaves for work in the morning until she returns in the afternoon. “Once
in a while he had to go talk to somebody about a job possibility, and every two weeks he
had to go sign something to collect his unemployment compensation. But the rest of the
time he stayed on the sofa. It’s like he lives there, Sandy thought” (36). Sandy leaves the
house every day, supporting the two of them while also trying to maintain a stable life,
which leads her to confide to a co-worker about her husband’s condition. After hearing
an account from a co-worker about an uncle who cried daily and spent all of his time in
bed, Sandy refrains from approaching the topic again with anyone, mostly from the fear
that the stories she hears will ultimately be the story of her husband. While her husband
leaves the house irregularly with only utilitarian purposes in mind, Sandy ventures into
37
the outside world to communicate, understand, and survive. Her perspective, framed by
determination, supports both her and her husband.
She is the one concerned with
preservation, and therefore, her viewpoint serves as the central focus of the story.
The idleness around the house finally comes to a stop one afternoon when Sandy
arrives home from work to find the refrigerator has stopped working and the food inside
the freezer has begun to thaw. While she takes the necessary steps to begin preservation,
her husband, awakened by her scream, rises from the couch and comes to the kitchen to
survey, in disbelief, the disaster. The moment demands immediate attention--the food
needs preserving, as does the marriage--and thus, the title of the story functions as a sign
of impending action. Sandy’s urge to take care of the problem alludes to possibilities
further down the line. Her marriage in shambles, she demonstrates the capability to
enforce action, and such proficiency suggests that she can now sever ties with her
husband. Her activeness, and his lack of it (he soon returns to the couch), epitomizes her
primary role in the story; therefore, the female perspective, which Gentry considers an
infrequent aspect of the story, surfaces as a force that actually propels the story.
Once Sandy’s husband proves unable to fix the refrigerator, Sandy searches the
newspaper and finds an announcement for an auction that evening. She insists they
attend, adamant that a new refrigerator is necessary and that the auction could be
enjoyable for him. “‘Come on,’ Sandy said. ‘What’s the matter with you? They’re fun.
I haven’t been to one in years, not since I was a kid’” (43). Her plea serves as a last ditch
effort to get him out of the house, to somehow break his lifelessness. Meyer notes that
Sandy, who is the central consciousness and true protagonist of the story,
has difficulty dealing with her husband’s inactivity. She wants to break
him of his lethargy, and the opportunity seems to present itself when the
refrigerator stops working. Just as all of the food in the freezer has
38
thawed, so does the need to buy a new refrigerator begin to draw the
husband out of his frozen shell. (130)
Yet the husband’s response is to retreat to the living room and the television, sterile in his
ability to join in, let alone initiate, serious action. Meyer’s argument concerning Sandy
as the central consciousness of the story would seem to dispute Gentry’s feeling that her
perspective is only an occasional aspect of the story, and it points to the effort she makes
to bring forth change in her husband. In this respect, she resembles Roxy and Mrs.
Webster in the way these women attempt to draw men out of seclusion. As the story
ends, Sandy has salvaged most of the food and she calls her husband into the kitchen to
eat, and when he enters the room, he stops to look at the floor. She tells him to sit, yet he
cannot; he looks at the floor and then turns around to return to the living room where the
couch and the television await. The scene offers a final moment of listlessness, as
Sandy’s husband withdraws back into his own safety instead of stepping into the pool of
water that has collected from the thawing items on the kitchen table. His refusal to get
his feet wet, literally, and accompany his wife to the auction illustrates a type of
hopelessness prominent in earlier Carver stories. The difference, here, is the function of
the woman, as Sandy willingly strives to change the situation and bring her husband out
of his apathetic condition. The failure to do so rests not in her endeavors, but rather on
her husband, who prefers to do nothing.
In “Being Lonely- Dimensions of the Short Story,” Reamy Jansen claims that
“Carver’s essential theme is [the] male struggle to maintain love and wholeness of union
against forces that veer toward disaster and dissolution” (395). Comparatively, women
share in these struggles in a variety of fashions, and as Carver progressed to fuller
narratives later in his career, these methods involved a more assertive and positive
39
approach. And so, when Inez visits her estranged husband’s apartment in “Careful” and
finds his hearing impaired by a stopped up ear, she makes an effort to solve the problem.
Even though Lloyd’s alcoholism, a cause of the couple’s separation, has to be taken care
of (he hides champagne bottles in the bathroom), the story ends with Lloyd having one
less ailment. Struggles continue, yet the woman has enforced a moment of precision.
Inez has shown how careful she can be with Lloyd’s life, though other choices are left to
be made. A choice remains also at the end of the collection’s title story, where a man has
undergone a change of perception, seemingly for the better. One of Carver’s most
illustrious pieces, “Cathedral” points to the kind of connections humans can eventually
discover given the proper circumstances and frame of mind. The story shows a man
willing to open his eyes and self to new experiences, as well as a story that displays the
influence of women in a subtle manner that allows men the chance to detect previously
suppressed emotions.
“Cathedral” introduces yet another stereotypical Carver male who prefers the
reassurances and safety of the home. He stays up late, drinks, smokes marijuana, and
watches television from the comfort of his living room. When his wife tells him about
Robert, a blind friend coming to visit, he scoffs at the bond the two seem to have made,
ridiculing the poetry she has written about her experiences with the blind, even while
admitting to not understanding or frequently reading it. As the story begins, the husband,
yet again unnamed, narrates his feelings concerning the upcoming visit from Robert. His
lack of enthusiasm and downright disgust for this man who seems to possess an
enigmatic relationship with his wife, lead him to poke at what he does not understand.
The blindness bothers him, and he searches for ways to separate himself from the
40
situation while talking to his wife: “Maybe I can take him bowling,” he says, drawing ire
from his wife, who, although frustrated with her husband, probably is all too familiar
with his insensitivity (212). Chris Bullock, who examines “Cathedral” and the use of
architecture in the story as a way of showing a metaphorical construction of the
masculine identity, examines the narrator’s lack of solid relationships with others as well
as his wife, and concludes that these absences negatively affect his marriage. “The
narrator’s lack of relationship extends to the relationship with his wife, as is evident not
only in their sparring in the narrative present, but also in the remoteness of perspective as
he tells the story of her attempted suicide a few years before” (344). Bullock refers to an
incident before the narrator and his current wife were married, at a time when the wife
was married to her childhood sweetheart and following her officer-husband around the
country to live at various Air Force bases. The wife, at the time feeling lonely and
isolated, swallowed all the pills in the medicine cabinet and polished them off with a
bottle of gin. The husband relays:
But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw up. Her officer--why should
he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he
want--came home from somewhere, found her, and called the ambulance.
In time, she put it all on a tape and sent the tape to the blind man. Over
the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off licketysplit. Next to writing a poem every year, I think it was her chief means of
recreation. (211)
The husband reveals little emotional connection to what has taken place in his wife’s
past, evident in his matter-of-fact, even sarcastic, retelling of the events that caused his
wife to look for solace in poetry. To him, poetry is recreation, on a par perhaps with
smoking marijuana and watching television, but the poetry is more than that for the wife.
Left in a suspended state where her husband ignores much of what she does, the wife
41
finds poetry an outlet to express herself, and indeed, her growth and development as an
individual rests in her writing. As Bullock remarks, the husband’s recounting of his
wife’s attempted suicide is an “account written without relationship and without feeling,
an account that dismisses poetry--a form of writing likely to contain feeling--as a trivial
feminine recreation” (345). The poetry has helped the wife through previous troubles,
and at the time “Cathedral” occurs, the wife is capable of continuing longstanding
relationships and competent enough to call attention to her husband’s insecurities and
complete lack of solid friendships.
Upon Robert’s arrival, the husband continues to brandish his unflattering attitude
and language, asking Robert which side of the train he sat on, as if a blind man could
elaborate on the scenery from either side of the aisle. Robert remains patient, however,
and his laidback nature is the first of many attributes to surprise the husband, who
undoubtedly has expectations as to how a blind man should act and talk. Robert makes
an effort to better acquaint himself with the husband, calling him Bub, a name which at
first the husband detests. He also has a beard, and he smokes--two things that challenge
the husband’s perceptions of what the blind are like. “I thought I knew that much and
that much only about blind people,” he says. “But this blind man smoked his cigarette
down to the nubbin and then lit another one” (217). His views challenged by the intruder,
the husband grows weary of Robert’s presence and affable manner during the course of
dinner and the conversation between Robert and his wife after dinner in the living room.
The husband listens desperately for his name to surface, wanting to be injected into the
dialogue between the two old friends. “I waited in vein to hear my name on my wife’s
sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came into my life’--something like that. But I
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heard nothing of the sort. More talk of Robert” (218). What takes place in front of the
husband is a loss of control from all things he is accustomed to having power over. His
living room no longer represents a tiny sanctuary nor is his wife simply a writer of
poetry. She actively engages herself in conversation that revolves around her and her
experiences, never once suggesting the importance of her husband, who now appears
unnecessary and trivial.
It would seem as if the husband has been displaced,
disassociated as Boxer and Philips would declare, from his normal habitat. Excluded
from his customary environment, he feels alienated, yet he creates this dilemma with his
impudence and coarse behavior.
As a part of “From Castle to Cathedral: The Architecture of Masculinity in
Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral,’” Bullock utilizes Antony Easthope’s analysis of
masculinity and the house, suggesting that men in Western cultures over the past few
centuries have gradually built a connection between their identities and their living
spaces. In “Cathedral,” the narrator feels his space and comfort have become violated by
the arrival of another man, a blind man no less, introduced by his own wife. After the
three eat dinner, they retire to the living room where the wife aims to keep Robert
comfortable. Her attention to his comfort comes from politeness, yet the threat to the
husband’s space cannot be overlooked. “I want you to feel comfortable in this house,”
she tells him before leaving the room to change into her robe, her frankness surfacing in
the way she adopts the role of hostess while her husband aimlessly sits to the side (219).
After all, the house belongs as much to the husband as it does the wife, and any threat the
husband feels can be attributed to his failure to recognize the union of his marriage.
43
As the wife leaves the room, two men remain--two men who might never interact
if it were not for an intervening third party. The wife draws these two individuals to the
same room, but her absence allows these two men, one physically blind, the other blind to
the problems that persist in his life and relationships, to converse and somehow come to
an understanding of one another. For once, the husband admits to enjoying the company
the blind man provides, as the conversation they share trumps the lonely nights watching
television and smoking marijuana. As the two sit in the living room, the television
playing a program on cathedrals, the husband realizes the blind man has no reference as
to what a cathedral looks like. The husband tries relating what flashes on the screen with
no avail, demonstrating the lack of communication that generally brought earlier Carver
stories to an indecisive closure. Whereas previous stories might have ended with two
characters failing to communicate, “Cathedral” has characters who soldier on, and Robert
encourages the husband to initiate all of his senses, asking him to guide his hands over a
shopping bag in the outline of a cathedral. What follows remains one of Carver’s most
tangible examples of connection, as each man succeeds in discovering something about
the world around them, and themselves, that before had gone unrevealed. Bullock’s
concludes his essay by noting the significance of the connection made between the two
men and their bond over the construction of a cathedral, claiming, “Carver’s point seems
to be that what is built can be differently built, however constrained the conditions. Thus
‘Cathedral’ offers an encouraging lesson for modern men struggling themselves with the
architecture of masculinity” (350). The men detect the numerous ways of finding a
connection, and in a haphazard way, they find through the drawing of a cathedral their
senses are stimulated like never before.
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The conclusion of “Cathedral,” filled with an optimism reserved for the latter
works in Carver’s canon, leaves the husband with a prospect of hope that before was
nonexistent. Once isolated, he experiences the touch of possibility as he closes his eyes
and allows his senses to awaken as he guides Robert’s hand across the paper sack;
however, another moment during this final scene plays a significant role in the story.
Earlier, the wife returns from upstairs as Robert and the husband share a joint, and when
she reappears in the living room, she takes a place between the two men on the couch.
She soon falls asleep, but eventually wakes to see the two men drawing on the floor. She
wants to know what the two are doing, and when asked, the husband does not respond,
and Robert’s reply turns quickly from an answer to more encouragement for the husband,
who narrates:
The blind man said, “We’re drawing a cathedral. Me and him are
working on it. Press hard,” he said to me. “That’s right. That’s good, he
said. “Sure. You got it, bub. I can tell. You didn’t think you could. But
you can, can’t you? You’re cooking with gas now. You know what I’m
saying? We’re going to really have us something here in a minute. How’s
the old arm? he said. “Put some people in there now. What’s a cathedral
without people?” (227)
It develops into one of Carver’s most magnificent scenes, one that centers on two men
learning, as Bullock would note, about how understanding can be built in an assortment
of methods. The interaction is a rare moment in Carver’s work, where men can come to
an understanding of each other and themselves.
So rare is it that the wife grows
concerned, and she asks, “What’s going on? (228). For once, the woman is no longer the
individual who initiates the crucial element of change, and the ending shows two men
taking the initiative. The final line of the story has the husband considering Robert’s
question of what he thinks of the drawing. Without opening his eyes, the husband says,
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“It’s really something,” and for once, he speaks without the disillusionment that peppered
his speech for most of the story (228). He has turned the corner with the assistance of
Robert, the outsider introduced into the household by the wife. The wife, who in the end
becomes the outsider, establishes her place and influence by bringing Robert to the house
and her absence, which allows the two men the chance to form a bond. Certainly, the
impact Robert has on the husband is a vital aspect to the story, yet by introducing him as
the element that eventually brings forth the change in her husband, as well as by exiting
the scene to allow the two men to connect, the wife plays a subtle role in the story, one
most often overlooked. Critics rightfully examine the newfound relationship between
Robert and the husband as the principal event of “Cathedral,” yet the wife’s role in
helping the scene unfold cannot be forgotten. At the end, the wife’s words act as a
confirmation of the things she no longer understands, and a transformation of sorts
occurs, as the men become the ones capable of understanding through their
communication. As Michael Vander Weele remarks, “Most of the communication in this
story comes through shared non-verbal work, as expression that stops short of the effort
and commonality of speech” (120). Vander Weele’s examination of the story and its use
of language and communication fails to consider the wife’s function in the story, but his
belief that much of the story relies on non-verbal interaction due to the lack of actual
speech stresses the significance of the wife--she verbalizes, she questions, and she draws
two men closer together.
“Cathedral” became Carver’s cornerstone story because it provided the most lucid
example of people building something out of the strained ties of desperation and silence.
As repulsive and stubborn as the husband is for a majority of the story, the ending
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illustrates how change can overcome an individual in a positive manner.
The
conventional Carver male, once relegated to alienation and misery, now has the
possibility of experiencing something different.
While women were once the sole
believers in optimism and determination, in Cathedral, these traits begin to extend to men
as well, prompting a revitalization. Considering Cathedral and the stories that would
follow it, Jansen believes that “Carver’s men and women, especially the men, have
changed significantly and generally for the better.
characters’ lives” (397).
There is a reorienting of his
This perception defines Cathedral, as the stories feature
individuals pushing toward understanding and tolerance. When Roxy, Mrs. Webster, and
Inez reach out to men, or when the wife in “Cathedral” and Sandy attempt to implement
change, these women are allowing men the chance to advance out of a passive condition
and into a world of communication and opportunity.
Through Carver’s three main collections, an evolution in the relationship between
men and women serves to identify the roles of each gender and the influence each had on
the other. Women maintain a willingness to accept change, although at times, this
openness proves to be destructive as well as encouraging. Early stories examine the
futility both genders experience, yet women often endure the brunt of despondency
forced onto them by men. As Carver’s work progressed in styles and character growth,
women took a variety of stances against the indolence and hostility of men, and by later
stories, their determination and assertiveness had matured into acceptance and
understanding, creating a general feeling of hopefulness.
Cathedral marked a shift in Carver’s work just like What We Talk About When
We Talk About Love had marked a shift, and the final stories found in Where I’m Calling
47
From would build upon previous stories just as the stories of Cathedral built upon their
predecessors. Collected and titled New Stories and appearing at the end of Where I’m
Calling From, Carver’s final seven stories to be published before his death show not only
traces of earlier work, but strands of ideas that pointed to new directions in his work.
“Errand” shows Carver using historical biography to create a fictional retelling of the
death of his literary icon, Anton Chekhov, while “Blackbird Pie” shows a use of imagery
and voice unseen in previous works--conventions that lead Mark Facknitz to apply the
term “antiminimalist” to the work (68). Scenarios and characters are, for the most part,
distinctly Carver-esque, and the final stories show that the relationships between men and
women still focus on how women affect men. These stories present women who seek
independence by suggesting they have no need for the men who have troubled their lives.
While mirroring the discord of earlier Carver stories, the last stories also illustrate women
moving forward without any regard to men stuck in their insecurities.
“Intimacy” begins with the narrator paying a visit to his ex-wife’s house, their
marriage long ago fallen to pieces. His arrival is a reversal of sorts, as men in past stories
would rather stay in a house than return to one. His visit does not give the reader a strong
impression of him because even though his writing career might suggest some success,
his remarks in the opening paragraph prove he still wishes for his ex-wife’s approval:
We haven’t seen each other in four years. But from time to time, when
something of mine appeared, or was written about me in the magazines or
papers--a profile or an interview--I sent her these things. I don’t know
what I had in mind except I thought she might be interested. In any case,
she never responded. (444)
Despite the acclaim he receives, the narrator still seems to need attention from his exwife, and her refusal to reply indicates that she has moved on and no longer holds any
48
interest in the achievements of her ex-husband. This lack of consideration inspires the
narrator to pay her a visit, and once he is inside the home, his ex-wife begins to admonish
him for his past transgressions. He writes, “She says I’ve caused her anguish, made her
feel exposed and humiliated. Make no mistake, I feel I’m home” (444). She articulates
the pain he has caused her over the years, and as she verbalizes her frustrations, the
narrator listens. As a writer, he seems to have used much of their past marital discord as
material, and she feels exploited by his use of their past in his work. This also seems to
explain to her his sudden arrival at her door: “You’re on a fishing expedition. You’re
hunting for material” (447). He may be there for material, but he also listens, and as the
story progresses almost every paragraph begins with “She says.” The narrator acts as
Mrs. Webster does in “Fever,” prompting his ex-wife to release her emotions by sitting
silently by her side.
As the story nears the end, and as the ex-wife proceeds with her reprimand, the
narrator reaches out to touch her blouse. He then gets on his knees and holds on to her
dress. The indiscretions she remembers demand some kind of apology, and for the
narrator it seems necessary to act in some way.
Their relationship always lacked
intimacy, and he attempts to provide at least a hint of what he never did before. Words
do nothing for him and so he gets on his knees in front of her. For once, this gets her
attention, and for a moment, she is dumbfounded:
She is still for a minute. But in a minute she says, Hey it’s all right,
stupid. You’re so dumb sometimes. Get up now. I’m telling you to get
up. Listen, it’s okay. I’m over it now. It took me a while to get over it.
What do you think? Did you think I wouldn’t? Then you walk in here
and suddenly the whole cruddy business is back. I felt a need to ventilate.
But you know, and I know, it’s over and done with now. (450)
49
Through communication, the ex-wife begins to give what she thinks he most needs,
attention. Finished with her verbal attack, she tells him she has a new life, and that things
are different. She has a new husband, who will be coming home for lunch shortly, and
she does not want to explain to him why her ex-husband has suddenly appeared. The
narrator stays on his knees though; he apparently has not reached the same conclusion she
has, and lacks the words to express himself. She pushes him to leave, but the narrator
stays on his knees, until finally “She says, I forgive you” (451). Her forgiveness at least
gets him to stand and head toward the door, but he has nothing to say. Like a majority of
Carver men, the narrator finds no words to complement his emotions, and like Burt and
L.D. from “A Serious Talk” and “One More Thing,” he exits the house, only this time
with a whisper rather than a crash. The ex-wife, who has stated her position, keeps
talking, however, but now, instead of rebuking him, she tries to rebuild him and allow
him the chance to reclaim something he seems to have lost:
She says, You just tell it like you have to, I guess, and forget the rest.
Like always. You been doing that for so long now anyway it shouldn’t be
hard for you.
She says, There, I’ve done it. You’re free, aren’t you? At least you
think you are anyway. Free at last. That’s a joke, but don’t laugh.
Anyway, you feel better, don’t you? (452)
Still bitter, her concern and inclination for him to keep on with what he has been doing
indicates a strong sense of command she holds in their association. “She tells her exhusband he is ‘free’ to do as he likes, to write what he wants, but implies that freedom, at
least as far as they are concerned, is merely a construction of the mind” (Nesset 99). The
ex-wife has had the opportunity to speak her mind, and now the narrator must go back
into the world with the knowledge that he is free from his past relationship only because
his ex-wife has a new life that no longer involves him. As he departs the house, he strolls
50
down the sidewalk and notices piles of leaves accumulating everywhere he walks.
“Somebody ought to make an effort here,” he notes. “Somebody ought to get a rake and
take care of this” (453). The leaves suggest the scattered remains of his life, and whether
he decides to collect those strewn remnants and resume his life is unknown as the story
closes. The ex-wife has made her peace with the narrator and released him back into the
world. Her independence from him marks an uncertain future for him, and the leaves
represent all the possibilities the narrator could take. As the story closes, however, the
narrator shows no signs of taking such an opportunity, and he is left like many other
Carver males--with an indefinite future and a failure to communicate.
The narrator recognizes that the leaves need to be collected and organized;
however, the idea that his own life requires restoration is of a different order. As Meyer
notes:
He would like a return to order and stasis, it seems, but will not actively
do anything to bring it about. He wants ‘somebody’ to do it, but he won’t
do it himself. While the narrator might be marked as a success in the
public sphere, it is the ex-wife who can be marked a success in this story.
She is relying on herself and moving forward, however tentatively, while
the narrator seems to be languishing in indecisiveness. (155)
Meyer continues by suggesting that “Intimacy” recalls Carver’s earlier works by the way
characters fail to reach connections and comprehend failure, yet amongst these
characteristics is the notion that the ex-wife had already moved on long before. The
incident with the narrator serves only to allow her the chance to rebuke him verbally one
final time. Her life continues in a more normal fashion than his, and in some way, the
occasion means much less to her than it does to him.
Likewise, the same kind of indifference towards men surfaces in “Blackbird Pie,”
when the wife decides to leave her husband, alerting him with a letter she slips
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underneath his door one night after dinner. The story draws the attention of critics
because of its expressionism and use of dreamlike qualities, such as the sudden
appearance of horses from the fog at the end of the story; however, another aspect of the
story revolves around the crumbling confidence of the husband, who upon receiving the
letter adamantly asserts that his wife has not written the letter.
Residing in a house in the hills, the couple takes different approaches to isolation.
“Frankly, I was glad for the solitude,” the narrator admits. “But she was a woman who
was used to having friends, used to dealing with shopkeepers and tradesmen” (494). The
differences divide the couple, and finally the wife slips her husband the note,
acknowledging the strife that has grown for the past twenty-three years between them.
Yet, as the narrator notes, “Most important, however, the handwriting was not my wife’s
handwriting” (491). His failure to notice the contents of the letter is one thing, but not
recognizing the handwriting suggests how far the husband has drifted away from
identifying his own wife. With her on the verge of leaving him, he remains transfixed by
the letter (remaining in his own room, no less) as she prepares to depart in the living
room. The design of the two-room house embodies the separation between the couple, as
the husband’s room connects to his wife’s room by one hallway, and the husband’s first
instinct is to open his door and confront her:
My first impulse was to walk rapidly down the corridor and into the
living room and get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. But I
didn’t want to act impulsively and possibly discredit myself. I’m not
impulsive, so I waited. But there was activity of some sort in the house-something was afoot, I was sure of it--and of course it was my duty, for
my own peace of mind, not to mention the possible safety and well-being
of the wife, to act. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The moment was there, but I
hesitated. (500)
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Action does not happen and the husband retreats, as most early Carver men would have
done. He remains conflicted over the situation, and instead of facing his problems in an
upfront manner, he recoils into his room until he hears the front door slam. Finally, he is
drawn from his room, but only to find an empty living room--his wife has left.
He discovers her outside in a cloud of fog surrounded by a few horses that had
escaped from a neighboring property. A deputy and a rancher drive into the yard, and as
they work to gather the horses, the wife explains to her husband why she is outside,
dressed to leave. The whole ordeal takes on a surreal feeling for the husband, however,
and his confusion prompts the wife to make sure he is paying attention. “I’d been
watching them round up the horses,” the husband says. “The deputy was holding his
flashlight while the rancher walked a horse up a little ramp into the trailer. I turned to
look at this woman I didn’t know any longer” (504). This woman, who has become so
foreign to the husband that he cannot accept that the writing in the letter is hers,
announces her decision to leave. Her final rejection of him comes in front of two other
men, and his role of husband is questioned alongside his role as a man. Rarely has one of
Carver’s stereotypical male figures been so closely contrasted to another man without any
distinguishable weaknesses. Here, the narrator must experience humiliation in front of
two men, both of whom appear more rugged and Western than the narrator. At one point,
the narrator remarks about their attire: “I found it worth nothing that both men were
wearing hats. I ran my hand through my hair, and was sorry I wasn’t wearing a hat of my
own” (504). Later, as the wife prepares to leave, she also dons a hat, and it allows a
subtle examination of how empty the husband really is. “His uncovered state suggests an
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exposed vulnerability and emphasizes his difference. Here on his own doorstep, he is the
outsider, helpless and forced to watch as his wife leaves with the rancher” (Campbell 81).
His masculinity questioned, and his wife leaving, the narrator resembles many of
Carver’s earlier men--befuddled and comatose. His wife, on the other hand, takes a
similar approach as the ex-wife in “Intimacy;” she progresses beyond the uncertainties to
a world of new opportunities. This picture reappears throughout Carver’s work, yet one
development takes place in the final pages of the story unseen in early work. After his
wife has departed, the narrator reflects on his past wrongdoings, and in the process, he
begins to contemplate the history of his life. As a man who claims to recall the important
dates of history (a fact proven erroneous earlier in the story), he wonders about the
condition of his life and its past and future:
If I know anything--and I do--if I know the slightest thing about human
nature, I know she won’t be able to live without me. She’ll come back to
me. And soon. Let it be soon.
No, I don’t know anything about anything, and I never did. She’s gone
for good. She is. I can feel it. Gone and never coming back. Period. Not
ever. I won’t see her again, unless we run into each other on the street
somewhere. (510)
Finally, a man has an epiphany, but it comes far too late for anything to be done about it.
The realization that the woman is capable of carrying on in life without the assistance of
the insignificant male figure comes to the narrator as he is left to gather the pieces of a
broken marriage. Elsewhere in Carver’s work, this awareness of masculine deficiency in
contrast with feminine persuasion remains only an intimation that requires exploration.
The wife in “Blackbird Pie” takes the necessary action to alleviate the obstacles in her
life and marriage, and in doing so, she demonstrates the qualities of previous Carver
women. Determination brings her to the end of a marriage and allows her to seek a new
54
existence beyond the fog, somewhere where the rancher can take her that evening as she
leaves the narrator with his house and his history.
At the end of “The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off,” found in What We
Talk About When We Talk About Love, the narrator and his father stare out over the ruins
of a flooded pasture. The land once belonged to Dummy, who when he heard word of his
wife’s affairs “Did in his wife with a hammer and drowned himself” (102). As officers
search the flooded area for remains of Dummy, the narrator looks at his father: “His face
was funny the way it was set. ‘Women,’ he said. ‘That’s what the wrong kind of woman
can do to you, Jack’” (103). Later, the narrator reflects on his father’s words: “But I
don’t think Dad really believed it. I think he just didn’t know who to blame or what do
say” (103). The narrator perfectly summarizes a scene that epitomizes the relationships
between men and women in Raymond Carver’s short fiction. A man, unable to express
what he feels, finds words that are empty of meaning, and in the process suggests a
division between men and women.
The division between men and women throughout Carver’s work remains a topic
in need of more critical examination, as the relationships in his stories feature dynamic
characters and scenarios ripe for analysis. If many critics recognize Carver’s fiction as a
progression from Hemingway and Chekhov, eventually the study of his style must give
way to the study of themes and characters. While criticism that engages these concepts is
materializing, a fair amount of work still focuses on Carver’s career as a minimalist. The
relationships between men and women in Carver’s work offer an enormous opportunity
for critics to consider gender roles in the latter parts of the twentieth century in
conjunction with the literature of the period. Men in Carver’s work often find trouble
55
with the unexplainable situations that dominate their lives, and in contrast, women
surface as the prevailing figures in relationships. With each volume, Carver expanded
the roles that women played, yet always suggested that females kept an advantage over
men in their capacity to handle the problems of everyday life. As men abandon their
customary roles and suffer with a disassociation that separates them from their normal
environment, women emerge as the assertive characters determined to find triumph as
best they can.
56
BIBLIOGRAPHY
57
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