Tuesday, January 15, 2008

SynecdoChick's Review of "Pa's Darling"

You said that you didn’t “get” this story – I don’t think there was a lot get, honestly. I’ll say what you wouldn’t say: I didn’t like it.

I think this story falls within the genre of literature about upper class New Yorkers who worry about whether they’re upper class enough, whether they’re the right kind of upper class, or whether monopoly/commodity capitalism is degrading the qualities that define the upper class so that the “true” upper class is superceded by a boorish new breed of bourgeoisie. The story also deals with the way that people—women in particular—become commodities of fluctuating value in this (degraded) class system.


Yawn. I’ve read Henry James and Edith Wharton, and I think they about covered it.

This story also belongs to a literary subgenre dealing with the Very Serious Problems of children of the rich. See also Claire Messud, The Emperor’s Children (though I’d say that that book had some self-awareness that its protagonists’ problems were quite precious and were particular to a specific historical moment and social strata).

The narrator’s first husband, Sumner, is the nobleman who reflects the “better,” aristocratic, side of her father and herself—the noblesse oblige and appreciation for high culture (serving as a judge rather than making even more money, discussing high brow literature and theater, serving three days a week as a docent at the Met, etc.). The narrator differs from her first husband in that she is more acquisitive—she wants money, parties, glamour (conspicuous consumption)—and degrades her husband by diverting him from his higher aspirations (convincing him to go make money rather than serve as a clerk—a more “pure” practice of law). (I think there's also the suggestion here that this higher realm of art and language is the province of men ... that women can't really aspire to it and will always drag men back down into the muck of the material--and materialist--world.)

Her second husband represents the nouveau riche bourgeoisie—he lacks the “class” of her first husband (and her father); he is nakedly obsessed with money and social position. But, near the end, the narrator says (of Dicky), “I had again been married to my father.” Maybe she means that to her father, as to Dicky, “appearance was everything”—her father didn’t mind that his wife was sleeping with another man, as long as they kept up appearances. The narrator also says her father liked to show off his daughter “like a financial magnate showing off a master painting he has just acquired, inwardly confident that the owner of the picture is superior both to the work and its artist.” That description makes her father seem more similar to Dicky than to Sumner.

I don’t think that communism is a subtext of this story, but maybe you’re picking up on a critique of contemporary capitalism: that it’s an economic and cultural system that values appearance over substance. However, in this case, it’s not a progressive critique, but a reactionary one—a longing for an older class system that recognizes the “natural” (god-given) superiority of an aristocratic class represented by Sumner and the narrator’s father (a class defined by its tastes and innate ability to appreciate high culture) over social climbers like Dicky.

I agree that the style seemed awkward. However, because the narrator does not share her father and Sumner’s appreciation for language, I thought that the awkward style was a conscious choice, meant to demonstrate the intellectual inferiority of the narrator?

When you read the title, “Pa’s Darling,” did you think of Chekov’s “The Darling”? It’s a pretty famous story with a very similar name—seems reasonable to suspect that the author may have been aware of it or referencing it. (If you’re interested, you can google it; it’s pretty short.) I wonder if there’s a connection …

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