Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Mrs. Bridge stood alone at a front window thinking of how quickly the years were going by. The children were growing up so rapidly, and her husband--she stirred uneasily. Already there was a new group of "young marrieds," people she hardly knew. Surely some time had gone by--she expected this; nevertheless she could not get over the feeling that something was drawing steadily away from her. She wondered if her husband felt the same; she thought she would ask him that evening when she got home. She recalled the dreams they used to share; she recalled with a smile how she used to listen to him speak of his plans and how she had never actually cared more than one way or another about his ambition, she had cared only for him. That was enough.

Mrs. Bridge has an unusual given name: India. But no one ever calls her anything but Mrs. Bridge, including the author of Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell: it's almost as if, in marriage, she's able to conceal at last the one possible eccentricity that follows her, in order to live a life of utter conformity. Mrs. Bridge is a portrait of 1940s housewife that might feel stale and familiar to us in 2023: a woman who permits herself to have no other ambitions than pleasing her husband. Mr. Bridge is not cruel, except in the small cruelties of isolation and inattentiveness that such a relationship fosters, but still she lives for him, cooks for him, votes the way he votes. And yet, maintaining such a lifestyle requires a force of will from Mrs. Bridge, a will that goes into not seeing the world around her as it changes.

That's the story of Mrs. Bridge: a woman who fights, without knowing that she's fighting, against a knowledge that things might be different. Mrs. Bridge is written as a collection of vignettes, snapshots of Mrs. Bridge's life, each of which shows the ways in which she fights to maintain her placidity. Sometimes it's in small ways--insisting that her daughter Ruth not wear dangling earrings in the morning, or insisting that her independent-minded son Douglas not use the back door like a servant--and sometimes the fight requires much more from her, like ignoring and rationalizing the breakdown of her friend Grace, whom the desperate life of a housewife drives to suicide.

And yet, over and over again, it seems that Mrs. Bridge might be on the brink of breaking out of her shell of cultivated ignorance. She starts listening to a training course in Spanish; she takes an art class in which she paints--without knowing why--Leda and the Swan, a famous mythological scene of rape. In one vignette, she even picks up a book titled Theory of the Leisure Class, which convinces her to change the way she votes, until she ends up in the voting booth and registers "her wish for the world to remain as it was." In each case, her housewifely duties get in the way of opening up, or she grows cold feet and puts the task away, without ever really knowing why.

One of the best scenes in the book illustrates it well: while Mrs. Bridge dines with her husband at the club, word comes through that a deadly tornado is approaching. A waiter convinces all of the other patrons to shelter in the basement but Mr. Bridge insists on continuing his dinner as if nothing is wrong. As Mrs. Bridge fetches butter from a nearby table, the tornado appears in the clattering window in all its fearsome power, but Mr. Bridge never moves, so neither does Mrs. Bridge, as much as she feels inside that she might be safer downstairs. Connell has a light and ironic touch, but the overall effect is one of deep pity and sadness; we understand Mrs. Bridge so much better than she understands herself, and we can see that the bargain she has made inwardly has provide her with stability, but not peace, happiness, or wisdom. And when her husband finally dies in his office, we know that she is truly screwed, left without the capacity to live on her own and make her own choices. The novel ends on an ominous note: Mrs. Bridge in her stalled Lincoln, discovering that the doors are wedged in tight by the walls of the garage, and there's no one around to call out to for help.