Caroline Gordon (1) (1895–1981)

4.5 stars

Set in the South in the early 40’s, Women on the Porch is the story of Catherine Lewis Chapman, a woman living in New York, who has just caught her husband in the middle of an affair. She packs her bags and returns to her roots, Swan Quarter, a home place occupied exclusively by the women of the Lewis family, in Tennessee. At Swan Quarter, we find the elderly Miss Kit, Catherine’s grandmother, Catherine’s aunt Willy, and Willy’s cousin, Daphne, living without men and subsisting on a farm that was mortgaged and partially sold away by Willy’s now deceased brother, Jack.

It seems to me that life at Swan Quarter is in suspension. These women live in the past, trapped in a routine that is seldom broken and which shields them from life and perhaps from disaster. The men who have stepped through the lives of these women have mostly left them trampled and scarred, and Catherine promises to join their number if not very careful. Catherine steps into this world, fully alive, and she struggles with her urges to continue living or to sink into the rocking chair existence that lulls and pulls here.

One of the most marked themes, to me, seems to be nature vs. man and city vs. country. The contrast between Tom Manigualt and Jim Chapman is stark and striking--they are not just two different men, they are two different ways of life. Tom is a younger, verile, but troubled man, who lives as close to the earth as he can manage, much to the chagrin of his pompous society mother. Jim is a professor, who roams the city, has little understanding of this woman who shares his name, and has sacrificed most of his early promise to a life that is unfilling and undistinguished. But, Jim lives in the future and Tom is frantically trying to recapture the past.

Much of what Gordon shows us is life moving on, change taking root, and the women of Swan Quarter left behind, trying to cling to something long gone and nearly forgotten. Over and over again we see illustrations of how disastrous attempts to expand beyond this limited horizon can be for them.

When Catherine arrives, her Aunt Willy begins to think about Catherine’s mother, Agnes. She sometimes had to remind herself that Agnes was dead. It was as if she were living on there in New York, only they did not get letters from her as they used to. They live so isolated a life that they can hardly realize the effect upon themselves, even when the outside event touches their lives intimately.

There are elements of this book that will make a person squirm with discomfort. Those elements deal with the relationship of these people and the blacks who work for them. The depiction is a true one, however, and serves to remind us that some changes are worth their weight in gold. Gordon’s view is not unkind or unappreciative, but the character’s views often are. I was encouraged by the fact that the black characters are accorded personality and intelligence. Life is changing for them as well, and Maria and Joe, particularly, seem to realize that the future is not going to look anything like the past for them.

In the end, each of these women has an individual story that reeks of disappointed hopes and dreams, and they are as isolated from others, and indeed from each other, as the farm is isolated from the world it inhabits.
What we are seeing is a way of life crumbling and sweeping its inhabitants into the future or out of the world altogether.
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This should have been titled “How to Write a Novel.”
A few writers are considered here, most especially Henry James. But Gordon chose to use extremely long quotes from authors she considers superior and honestly, it just turned into one long, tiresome exercise in literary snobbism. One expects the snobbery from this kind of book, really. But overall the book does nothing to help or guide a young or fairly new serious reader, and becomes a vehicle for some side-eyed swipes at people like Somerset Maugham and E. M. Forster. I did appreciate her praise of my favorite book, The Good Soldier.
Recommended only if you’re into literary curiosities and bypaths.… (more)