Bookclub: 'Mrs. Bridge'
Presented by Zofia Smardz
Washington Post Book Assignment Editor
Thursday, April 24, 2003; Noon ET

Welcome to the online meeting of The Washington Post Book Club, a monthly program presented by the editors and writers of Washington Post Book World.

Washington Post Book Assignment Editor Zofia Smardz will be leading the discussion on this month's selection, 'Mrs. Bridge' by Evan S. Connell.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Zofia Smardz: Welcome to the Washington Post Book Club discussion of Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell. One of my favorite books ever, it's a precise, delicate, sometimes scathing, more often sympathetic portrait of a mid-century American wife and mother who represents a much-maligned (sometimes with reason) segment of our society -- the upper-class country-club set. It's one of those novels that makes you laugh and cry in equal measures, and also one of those rarest of literary creations -- a book that has become a classic in its author's lifetime. Why? Let's talk about it!

Lenexa, Kan.: Ms. Smardz: Like many Kansas Citians--including Mrs. Bridge who bought any "book by a Kansas City author no matter..."--I had read the novels when they came out and rushed to the 1990 film version. Sometimes our pride is razzed--the ex-KC wit Cal Trillin calls it "the second tallest building in Topeka" syndrome. Anyway, some things I esp. enjoyed (Your comments? Thanks.):

Connell's portrait of the well-intentioned Mrs. Bridge as "a bona-fide country-club matron"--recognized as such even by strangers like the lieutenant--and her struggle for relevance and fulfillment.

Connell's portrait of Mr. Bridge as a pillar of "Midwestern" paternalism--security, provision, fearlessness--even a kind of binary oracle: "What? Nonsense". He brings to mind the warmth of the Motel 6 ad: "...and we'll leave the light on for you."

Connell's portrait of the three Bridge children (esp. the dialogue with their increasingly irrelevant mother). As I read and viewed, I found my preference for the children changed:
After reading "Mrs. Bridge": Ruth, then Douglas, then Carolyn;
After "Mr. Bridge": Douglas, Ruth, Carolyn;
After Merchant-Ivory postscript: Carolyn, Douglas, Ruth.

Zofia Smardz: Hello, Lenexa! Faithful as you are to the Book Club, somehow I knew you'd be front and center on this one! And as ever, you give one a lot to chew over. Let me start with your comments about the children, as I find your preferences most intriguing. Personally, I can't stand Ruth. I didn't like her in any version -- in neither of the books, nor in the movie (the choice of actress for that part made her character even difficult for me; at least reading the books you can imagine that she's very beautiful, which explains some of her selfish smugness. But Kyra Sedgwick wasn't even the right physical type!). She strikes me overall as nothing more than a spoiled suburban princess, and her enigmatic nature comes across as cold and selfish, always. There are only a couple of moments where we can even begin to think that she harbors some affection for her mother. I should admit that as a mother now myself, it pains me to read about children who so thoroughly reject their parents. Maybe I identify too closely with Mrs. Bridge in that regard. In any case, Ruth is last in my preference. I think I like Douglas best, because he's obviously the author to some degree, and because while moving away from his parents and rejecting some of what they stand for, he nevertheless remains respectful and essentially loving. Carolyn, I don't know, she's a hard one to get a handle on, though obviously the most like her parents.

Zofia Smardz: Oh, I hadn't finished with that last question and submitted my answer accidentally. I just wanted to make a couple more comments. Yes, Mrs. Bridge is recognizably a "bona-fide country-club matron," no doubt from appearance as much as anything else, in her ermine and gloves. But also in her manners and behavior, she could be picked out by anybody -- unfailingly polite, reserved if not restricted in her actions and speech. What she isn't, though, and what so many people would expect in the description of such a matron, is haughty or arrogant, imbued with a sense of superiority. That's part of why she's so likable.
As for Mr. Bridge, he is reserve and repression personified, as well as the personification of the mid-century, WASP ideal of the male -- strong, silent, the rock, the provider, the decider, the man at the center of the home, even though he's away from it more often than not!

Bethesda, Md.: Do you agree with my reading of the title of the book and the name of the heroine? I think that the name of Bridge was used because it represents a complex game of leisure in which you much follow well established rules. This is India's life.

Zofia Smardz: Thank you for the interpretation! I've often wondered about Connell's choice of name for his characters -- in fact, just this morning in the shower, thinking about this chat, I was wondering about it! So you must have ESP! Though I've read a lot about Connell, I've never seen him give an explanation for the name. My own interpretation was that the Bridges represented a kind of bridge between a kind of American way of life that was slowly and inexorably being eroded and a new way of life clearly about to be introduced. But your idea is much better! Don't know why it didn't occur to me. Funnily, though, there's only one scene in the book that involves a game of bridge, but of course that was a major pastime for women like India and her friends in the 40s and 50s.

Vienna, Va.: I haven't read the book yet but certainly am after reading your review? What was your favorite part of the book? Also, do you think that India Bridge is a character commonly found in books at a certain time period (like during the war years)? I'm trying to get at the characterization of women from traditional to feminism to now.

Zofia Smardz: I do hope you pick up the book and read it. I can almost guarantee you'll read it quickly once you do -- it has that ability to grab you and hold onto you until you're done, even though it has no real "plot" in the conventional sense. But the characters are so vivid, so recognizable, and so appealing that you have to know what happens to them. My favorite part? That's a toughie. I'm always amused by Mrs. Bridge's attempts at self-improvement: trying to teach herself Spanish with the help of a record; taking art classes, etc. She starts of with enthusiasm, works for a spurt, but then ordinary daily life inevitably intervenes and her latest project is abandoned or aborted. And yet what is that ordinary daily life? Nothing much, since she has so much idle time, but somehow life presses, always. I'm also always touched by the passages that describe her inner fears of purposelessness, her feelings that there must be something more, that surely she must be needed for something. Everyone always cites the tornado scene as one of their favorites -- Mr. and Mrs. Bridge go to the country club for dinner, and in the middle of the meal, a tornado warning is sounded. As all the other guests scurry for cover, Mr. Bridge refuses to leave his dinner unfinished and forbids Mrs. Bridge to move, either. And because she's always listened to him and he's always taken care of her, she doesn't. She even goes to another table to get him a pat of butter. And the tornado comes howling down at them, but in the last instance, disappears into the sky. I love the line Connell writes there, and I'm not quoting exactly, but it's something like, "whether moved by his intransigence or her devotion, it disappeared into the sky and was never heard from again." I love that scene, too. But I also love the scene where the Bridges and their older friends go to the "out-of-fashion" country club on the wrong side of town. And Douglas's tower of rubbish.
As to whether India is a character commonly found in books of that time period, I'm sure there are characters somewhat like her in other books, but none so wonderfully, perfectly drawn. In that sense, she's unique.

Crofton, Md.: I enjoyed reading this powerful novel, quite a tour de force for Evan Connell, but why the sad ending?

Zofia Smardz: Did you think the ending was sad? Yes, I suppose it is. At least very very poignant. It did bother me when I first read the book, too, because it's so unresolved. I had to comfort myself thinking that of course the longest she would have to spend in the car is overnight; that the next day, Harriet would come and realize what had happened and free her. But we are certainly left with the impression that she is very much alone, that for some time at least, no one will miss her or realize she's not around. At the same time, I think it escapes true sadness, or bathos, because, after all, it's kind of a funny predicament -- stuck in your car, unable to get in or get out. Neither here nor there, so to speak. A bit like her life.And her husband, on whom she had always depended, is gone. Connell's never really explained the ending, except to say that this did'nt really happen to his own mother, on whom Mrs. Bridge is of course based. He made the incident up, but then some years later read of something precisely like that happening to a woman in Florida. It's somehow a most appropriate ending, sad though it is. But then her life was in many respects sad.

Arlington, Va.: Does this book have anything to do with the Paul Newman movie, "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge?"

Zofia Smardz: Yes, it's one of the books on which the movie was based. The other is "Mr. Bridge," a companion book written about 10 years after "Mrs. Bridge."

Alexandria, Va.: Mrs. Bridge is the dark side of "Leave It To Beaver". Being a modern reader, I kept waiting for the plot twist at the end - Mr. B. had taken a mistress, Grace is really India's schizophrenic wish-fulfilling self.
Grace, feeling more, suffered more. Too bad the book was to early for Harry Truman to make an cameo. I wanted more Tarquin!

Zofia Smardz: That's a good way of putting it, the dark side of "Beaver" -- but, thankfully, without your modern plot twists at the end! What makes the book so powerful is how very true it is, how very real a picture of a life that actually was lived. Funny you mention Tarquin. Rereading the book, I was shocked at how modern that segment seemed, the mention of modern parenting techniques that misfire, so to speak -- yet the book was written in 1959! Connell does that several times -- presaging our own era with uncanny precision.

Bethesda, Md.: I loved the section on the unused guest towels - so true, why do we continue to do it? I thought that the info about the dress makers dummy was telling - Douglas was the only one of the family that kept staring at it, therefore Mrs. Bridge put it away in the attic. Was this dummy her true self, only out rarely and then covered with clothing but put out of sight when uncovered, her true feelings covered by conformity?

Zofia Smardz: Yes, we all do that with our guest towels, don't we? Do they EVER get used? The book is full of those kinds of moments, where we recognize ourselves so completely. You have an interesting take on the dummy episode -- for me, it was simply a sexual thing. Mrs. Bridge felt uncomfortable having her son contemplate the female form, even if it was only a mannequin. That was the way women felt about sexuality, and particularly their own, back then, and Connell gets it down precisely. Just as he does in the scene in Europe where Mrs. Bridge finds Mr. Bridge staring into a shop window at a mannequin wearing a black bra with holes in the center and is stunned to think she might not know her husband at all, and wonders what kind of man he is after all. Sexual repression played a great role in middle-class lives, and especially WASP lives, in those days.

Alexandria, Va.: Other thoughts ... Mrs. B. should've gone to Mexico instead of Europe so she could've practiced her Spanish ... The token asian characters in books of that era are always hard-working intellectuals - don't they ever crack a joke? ... classic moments: Mr. B staring at the tip-cut brassiere ... Mrs. B delivering shoes to Carolyn at high school ... dinner at the club with the high tone Van Mieters.

Zofia Smardz: Well, of course, THE place to go for a wealthy American in the 1950s was Europe. And Mrs. Bridge had given up on her Spanish long ago! I doubt she would have had much to "practice." I also love all the anecdotes you mention.

Washington, D.C.: Both Mr. and Mrs. are wonderfully written, but so-o depressing. Is that what they're supposed to be?

Zofia Smardz: Well, yes and no. They're depressing to a degree, but they're also funny, and bittersweet. And, most of all, I suppose, true to life. Which is all those things as well. "Mr. Bridge" is to my mind more depressing than "Mrs. Bridge." Connell obviously had more baggage where his father was concerned.

Alexandria, Va.: Halfway through the book I was working on the premise that Douglas was gay. Oddly, the thought had never crossed India's mind. She wanted him to confess to being straight! That would never happen today. Another fun archaism was that at the party everyone got to smoke inside the house. Try that at your next get-together!

Zofia Smardz: It's great how the book takes us back to another era and to how people thought then, and to how accepted all that thinking was.

Lenexa, Kan.: Thanks--always nice to be recognized--and "hi" back. (I did read the four Rhys' novels in sequence--the Norton paperbacks look nice in my library.)

Although Dr. Foster was fictional his Country Club Christian (Congregation) Church on Ward Parkway does exist and has occasioned another Trillin witticism: "...the only city that would name a church 'Country Club'--and not even be aware of the irony."

Re the fascinating character of India Bridge, I thought of Tillich's "three major fears in life" as those of "nonexistence", "purposelessness" and "moral self-condemnation". Care to evaluate Mrs. Bridge within the great Lutheran's insight? Thanks again.

Zofia Smardz: India certainly embodies two of Tillich's fears, doesn't she? Her life is purposeless, she fears, like Grace, being nothing but a "hollowed-out" figure, a non-person. She wonders what she's living for. But unlike Grace, she can't imagine giving up on existence; suicide is never even in her thoughts. She's too accepting of her own particular life, and of life on a more general level. Moral self-condemnation? I don't think there's much of that, but there's no cause for much of it, either, because within the confines of her beliefs and values, she is quite moral. Not perfect, though -- her attitudes towards African-Americans and others come close to being shocking, in today's context, don't they?

Alexandria, Va.: The main flaw of the book (which keeps it from being great) is that there's no story, it's a series of vignettes. In a few years it will be a curiosity, much as the lives of the Victorians are to us. A comparison to Madame Bovary would be apt (but I can't make it because I haven't read MB in aeons). I also hoped to compare it to Mrs. Dalloway (read in conjunction with The Hours), but Clarissa Dalloway is so alive, and India Bridge is so emotionally dead (plus being pathologically controlling), it's like comparing apples and fruit roll-ups.

Zofia Smardz: I disagree with you that the book will be a curiosity in a few years. I think it rings with truth, and that will keep it alive. You're right Clarissa Dalloway is much more alive than India Bridge, but I wouldn't call Mrs. Bridge entirely dead emotionally, either. She clearly has fears and feelings and questions; she just doesn't let them come all the way to the surface. And she consequently elicits emotion from us. As a portrait of a particular type, she is SO poignant, SO touching. Books that can make you feel the way this one does, whether it makes you depressed, or sad, or thoughtful, are few and far between.

Bethesda, Md.: Just had a thought about the name India. The country of India had long been subgegated by Britian. India Bridge was subgegated by her husband and by convention. Will she rebel as India, the country, did?

Zofia Smardz: Interesting. But this India never did rebel. I think it's just a pretty -- and probably quite WASPy -- name.

Alexandria, Va.: The historical person Mrs. Bridge most reminded me of was Mary Todd Lincoln. Both married "beneath themselves" to busy lawyers who made good. Their lives played out on different scales, but who knows what would've happened if Mr. B. had gotten involved with the Pendergast machine?

Zofia Smardz: Yes, who knows? Fact is, he never did.

Lenexa, Kan.: A couple other things I esp. liked:

Mrs. Bridge's moving chance encounter with Carolyn's first boyfriend (Jay, now WWII one-armed) in the Plaza. (Authors must love doing those reflexive things when their novels are finally nearing completion.)

Ruth impulsively laughing and hugging her aloof dad at Union Station when he added his conditions to the $1000. (She hadn't hugged him since she was a little girl.)

Douglas's tower (my favorite episode when I read as a 20-year-old way back). I was always sad it didn't make the movie (already long enough, of course).

The trip to Europe. I like to imagine a teenage Connell perhaps on a trip with his family making mental notes (the green boxes being lifted, the Louvre, the restaurant spider, the French bra) for the world he might one-day create.

Zofia Smardz: Glad to hear you like Douglas's tower, too! The more I think about it, the more I think that really is my favorite scene. Certainly one that stuck in my mind.

Zofia Smardz: Okay, I guess we're out of time. Thanks so much for your questions. I enjoyed talking with you -- and if you haven't yet read "Mrs. Bridge," do it soon. And then see the movie! Bye!

washingtonpost.com:

That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.