Labor Day Dinner

I find this story a little un-Munroish, or at least unlike her later style. It's so very wordy and full of dialogue, so many things are spelled out for the reader. The first sentence is so full of names too, it confused me - George and Roberta and Eva and Angela. (I started reading Munro with "The Love of a Good Woman", so I got her best work first. I'm spoiled that way.)

But later on, when the characters emerged, I loved the story. I love how awful George is and how everyone walks on tiptoes around him, and how he despises Roberta and the way she mopes. He thinks that she started out self-ironic and calmly telling him her flaws, and now she's needy and sad. It reminds me of David in "Lichen" and his description of Rosemary: "A sweet dark name, though finally a shrill trite woman."

A lot of things about George and Roberta are disturbing. It's disturbing that Valerie likes him better than he liked Roberta's ex. It's disturbing that people want to please him, and make him laugh. Is he really that charismatic? It's disturbing that Roberta has slid into depression with him - although it might not be fully his fault.

It seems like Angela is the only one who sees George for what he truly is, a selfish jerk who makes Roberta depressed. He has no tact - he tells Roberta, "Your arms are flabby" when she wants to wear a sleeveless dress - and he can't stand to see weakness.

I have seen her change, Angela has written in her journal, from a person I deeply respected into a person on the verge of being a nervous wreck. If this is love I want no part of it. He wants to enslave her and us all and she walks a tightrope trying to keep him from getting mad. She doesn't enjoy anything and if you gave her the choice she would like best to lie down in a dark room with a cloth over her eyes and not see anybody or do anything. This is an intelligent woman who used to believe in freedom. 

George also reminds me of Clark in "Runaway": Carla has to fear his anger, even if he doesn't physically abuse her. He abuses her with his silences and despising of her. She almost runs away and then turns back, unable to live without him. (Like Roberta who's too depressed to do something about her situation?) But Clark and Carla had no children.

We get no real description of Angela and Eva's father, but he must be a much kinder man, or the girls would be more timid and scared of George. The girls only spend their summer with Roberta and George, but Roberta is still horrified George won't be able to take them and will hurt them:

Instead, Eva says: "You know, I understand George. I don't mind about him the way Angela does. I know how to be jokey. I understand him."
Roberta and Valerie look at each other, and Roberta smiles, shakes her head, and shivers. She has been afraid, sometimes, that George would hurt her children, not physically but by some turnabout, some revelation of dislike, that htey could never forget. It seems to her she has instructed them, by example, that he is to be accommodated, his silences respected, his joking responded to. What if he should turn, within this safety, and deal them a memorable blow? If it happened, it would be she who would have betrayed them into it. And she can feel a danger. [...]
But Roberta thinks now that the real danger is not to Angela, who would find a way to welcome insult, would be ready to reap some advantage. (Roberta has read parts of the journal.) It is Eva, with her claims of understanding, her hopes of all-around conciliation, who could be smashed and stranded.

Half the time in Munro's stories, I want to tell the female protagonist: run for the hills, this man is a jerk, he will ruin your life. It's a bit disconcerting to think how many couples might be like this. They look happy on the outside, but there's all this settling, all this walking on thin ice, to please an angry spouse. It's easy to say I'd never settle like that, but if I'd lived the life they had, maybe I would.

Also, stop reading your daughter's journal, Roberta.