Indeed, she approaches everything half-heartedly, almost as if she knows there’s no real point in devoting too much time and effort into something that her husband will think trivial or silly.Īt one point, she considers going to a therapist, as many of her friends are doing, only to have Mr Bridge, a busy lawyer, poo-poo the idea. (Though I should point out Mrs Bridge’s version of drudgery doesn’t stretch much beyond writing grocery lists and doing the odd bit of cooking - she has domestic help to do all the rest.)īut in her attempts to fill the days that yawn before her with all manner of “hobbies” - bridge, shopping, visits to the country club, driving her expensive car, she even takes art classes at one point - she can never quite sustain the motivation to take these activities all that seriously. But as her life moves on in relentless fashion, she begins to experience a rather niggling feeling - that perhaps there is more to life than domestic drudgery. Nothing of great importance happens in these vignettes, but they highlight Mrs Bridge’s kindness, her naivety, her desire to please others, her attitudes on race and class, and her constant inability to understand her three children - particularly her youngest, Douglas, whose every action seems to puzzle her.Īs you progress through the book you come to realise that Mrs Bridge is the quintessential housewife and mother, putting her family’s needs before her own, as women of that time were wont to do.

The book basically charts Mrs Bridge’s married life - her wedding, motherhood, middle-age and then widowhood - in short, but beautifully controlled and sensitively written, chapters (some of them are only a page long). Yet there’s something about the simplicity of the story and its depiction of universal truths that makes it especially appealing. Connell’s Mrs Bridge is one of those delightful books that is a joy to read from start to finish.įirst published in 1959 and set largely before the Second World War, it is not a conventional book by any stretch of the imagination - indeed, it breaks every rule in the novel-writing book: there’s no real plot, the structure is episodic, the female character is nice but bland, and the setting is purely domestic. Fiction – paperback Penguin Modern Classics 187 pages 2012.Įvan S.

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell