Mrs. Bridge

by Evan S. Connell

Book Overview

Evan S. Connell's Mrs Bridge is an extraordinary tragicomic portrayal of suburban life and one of the classic American novels of the twentieth century. Mrs Bridge, an unremarkable and conservative... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865470561
• ISBN13: 9780865470569
• Release Date: September 1990
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

the best

It took some time for me to get to this review for a simple reason: I so tremendously enjoyed both Mrs. and then Mr.Bridge. that I wanted to make sure I said the right thing to encourage everyone to also feast on these wonderful American novels. Both these books are so beautifully written, so carefully honed, so excellently edited and are such remarkable windows into a past generation, they cannot be dismissed for any reason. Do not hesitate to indulge yourself. So much can be said about the emotions stirred (from anger and sadness to outright laughter) by this upper middle class couple, so typical for their generation, it would be frivolous to try to convince with more words. There are already multiple 5-star reviews here. Believe them.

On the Lincoln as Symbolic of Mrs. Bridge's Life

Hello? Does anyone hear Mrs. Bridge as she sits, stuck in her elegant Lincoln, the doors blocked by the garage partition (245-246). Indeed, no one can more hear her here, trapped in the car, than they can hear her quiet thoughts of desperation, blocked for years by the partitions of a properly lived life as the good wife, proper mother, and country club Matron. Her husband provided a life of luxury for Mrs. Bridge and their children, but he was seldom home and never once asked his wife which she'd prefer: his being home more or a large house in the right neighborhood, a cook, a laundress, a country club membership, and, if even for a short while, a chauffeur. So it was no shock when her husband gave Mrs. Bridge an elegant Lincoln for her birthday for "he was determined to give her costly presents" including also an ermine coat and a diamond necklace (142). While she loved these gifts, "she could not help being a little embarrassed by the opulence of her possessions" under the stares of passersby or of people watching her attempt to park the "altogether too long" car (142, 128). She wished she could stop and explain to people that these extravagances were birthday presents, not asked for, but given to her from her husband who "was still at work...though it was nine in the evening" and she would prefer he was home (143). This desire to not attract attention to herself extended to her children. When Ruth appeared at the breakfast table dressed "in Mexican huaraches, Japanese silk pajamas...and for earrings a cluster of tiny golden bells that tinkled whenever she moved," Mrs. Bridge, "whose preference in earrings tended toward the inconspicuous," could not contain her displeasure (57). Mrs. Bridge asserted that one does not wear earrings that dangle in the morning since people "will think you're something from another world" (57). In typical teen fashion transcending time, Ruth asks "So who cares?" (58). Mrs. Bridge responds in a voice "suddenly very close to hysteria" saying, "I care, that's who!...I care very much" (58). The Lincoln's cushions were as soft as Mrs. Bridge's life, and Mrs. Bridge being short "was obliged to sit erect" as she drove, just as she felt compelled to live a formal life that demanded an appropriate style of dress including the right jewelry and gloves (129). She always wore stockings, even in summer when it was hot and uncomfortable, "but it was the way things were, the way things had always been, and so she complied" (76). The trappings of such a life were her burden, just as driving the cumbersome, frequently stalling Lincoln had become. But the Lincoln became as familiar to her as her own life; it was the way her life was, and, before she knew it, the way her life had been for a very long time. "The Lincoln was...old...but she could not bear the thought of parting with it" (245). Indeed, Mrs. Bridge could no more part with her "occasionally recalcitrant" car than she could leave the life to whi

Brilliantly Wrought Fiction of Upper Middle Class Ennui

Evan S. Connell's "Mrs. Bridge" is one of the truly outstanding works of Twentieth century American literature, a restrained, yet brilliantly wrought fictional portrait of upper middle class married life in the decades surrounding World War II. Connell tells the story of India Bridge in 117 short chapters, each a spare vignette of her enervated life in the perfectly manicured "country-club district" of an affluent Kansas City suburb. Linear in its narrative and meticulously realistic in its style, "Mrs. Bridge" follows India's life from marriage, to the birth of three children, to the rejection by those children of the repressed life of their parents as they grow into adults, to lonely suburban widowhood. While it is, at its heart, a grim tale of one woman's life of repression and, ultimately, loneliness and resignation, Connell's flawless and restrained narrative ultimately leaves the reader feeling exhilarated at the sheer literary achievement of "Mrs. Bridge".Ostensibly the story of a marriage, Mr. Bridge is noticeably absent from much of the narrative. A successful lawyer, he is a man who is unable to express love or affection for his wife or his children, a man who is focussed on becoming "rich and successful," the epitome of the status-conscious husband and father whose identity lies in material possessions. "The family saw very little of him. It was not unusual for an entire week to pass without any of the children seeing him. On Sunday morning they would come downstairs and he . . . greeted them pleasantly and they responded deferentially, and a little wistfully because they missed him. Sensing this, he would redouble his efforts at the office in order to give them everything they wanted."Mrs. Bridge, too, is powerfully repressed, unable to articulate her feelings of dissatisfaction, a woman who is beholden to the expectations of respectability and obsessed with appearances. "She brought up her children very much as she herself had been brought up, and she hoped that when they were spoken of it would be in connection with their nice manners, their pleasant dispositions, and their cleanliness, for these were qualities she valued above all others." Thus, she ultimately drives all three of her children from her life, her unthinking obeisance to social convention destroying any thread of relationship that she might have had with them. Her oldest daughter, "curiously dark", flees to New York City, where she pursues her more unconventional dreams. Her second daughter, an accomplished golfer, enters an ill-fated marriage with a college dropout who cannot provide the country club life that she has been weaned to expect. Her son joins the army, asserting an act of individuality that Mrs. Bridge never seems able to accept or reconcile.It is, most notably, however, in her relationships with her peers-with the other affluent housewives of the "country-club district"-that the grim and vapid nature of Mrs. Bridge's life becomes most apparent. In partic

compelling portrait of Americana

Denounced in 1959 for not being a 'real' novel, Mrs. Bridge is judged differently these days--and rightly so. The novel is a compelling portrait of American suburban bourgeois life; reading it causes precisely the same claustrophobia Mrs. Bridge sometimes realizes she's suffering from. In a way, this is Sartre's La Nausee moved to Kansas City, but an easier read--almost deceptively so. Closing the book though doesn't really relieve the angst the reader shares with poor Mrs. Bridge in the final section (no I won't give it away)--this book is too real. Don't look for plot, don't look for cheap thrills, but do look for detail, look for the Real peeking into Mrs. Bridge's seemingly perfect life in the Imaginary.I'll be brief: others have said plenty. Just one quick remark: Connell is a stylist of the highest order. His prose is crisp; style matches subject matter. Example: "It was necessary to be careful among people you did not know." Every sentence is carefully crafted to the point where grammar itself becomes a web of cleanliness, clear and transparent. It may seem nothing special, but Connell is a craftsman. All the more striking, both in grammar and in plot, are the few moments, aporia, where something else could have happened--such as when Mr. Bridge is breathlessly studying, in Paris, "a black lace brassiere with the tips cut off," a moment Mrs. Bridge returns to later with vague uneasiness.I am glad I was recently introduced to Connell's work. It is a treasure trove, and it's a pity so few of his works are still in print. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more of his novels to read: Deus Lo Volt! is next.

An unjustly neglected masterpiece!

I'm writing this review not only because I loved this book but also because I'm not sure many of the other on-line reviewers understood it very well. Mrs. Bridge is not meant to be a heroine -- nor does the author intend to endorse her views and practices. The reason for these misunderstandings is simple: Connell is a brilliant realist who keeps himself and his own judgments carefully out of the way; he has such a light touch, such a deadpan approach, and offers so little help in interpreting the book's events, that he creates one of the most joyously liberating literary experiences I've had; unfortunately, he also opens himself up to radical misinterpretation. For my own part, I'm almost ready to put Connell among the 20th century's finest writers (I don't go in for the usual gang -- Fitzgerald, Nabokov, Joyce ad nauseam are all over-rated and far too cerebral); this is a moving, painful, hilarious, deeply insightful and sometimes satirical look at a middle-class woman whose well-meaning workaholic husband has given her everything and thereby slowly destroyed her life; she's not a thinker or a go-getter, and has only occasional moments of beginning to understand what has happened to her (or failed to happen). Connell pulls this off without condemning her or her lunk-headed husband; it's a powerfully compassionate performance, and one of the best books I've read in the past year. Very highly recommended. (Its companion -- "Mr. Bridge" -- is also excellent, as is the overlooked Merchant-Ivory film of both books called "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.")