=
220;Home
Is Where You Come From”: The Fiction of Jayne Anne Phillips and the
Journey Within
“The great writers,” West Virginia fiction writer Jayne Anne
Phillips wrote in 1985, “have a journeyer’s wisdom. They
have been somewhere limitless and come back. That’s not necessarily what =
they
are writing about, but you can feel that in the work” (qtd. in Edelstein
107). When reviewing MotherKind in 2000, Richard Eder
saw the connection between Phillips’ writing and Kerouac’s (11);
indeed, many critics and reviewers have referred to Jayne Anne Phillips over
the years as a “feminized Kerouac.” However, her plots go beyond the t=
ypical
road-trip fare and her characters have a broader range than the angst-ridden
questers of Kerouac’s stories (though she certainly gives us a fair d=
ose
of angry, alienated young seekers). What Phillips’ fiction prese=
nts to
the reader is a variety of profound and thought-provoking ideas, portrayed
within the framework of the journey; and more often than not, even when the
journey is literal, it is one made within the individual character as well<=
st1:PersonName
w:st=3D"on">. In
some cases, it is a “trip” layered with guilt and anger, as in =
the
extraordinary short story “Fast Lanes”; in some, the trip is an
exercise in obsession and delusion that propels a character toward catastro=
phe
and impedes discovery (“How Mickey Made It”); in others, the
journey involves lost innocence and discovery of a failed and fallen adult
world (Shelter); sometimes the
journey involves the disintegration of values that provide cohesive relatio=
nships
(Machine Dreams); finally, the
journey is imbued with mythic significance of spiritual discovery and salva=
tion
as in the moving story MotherKind.
If Phillips’ writing fits into literary
scaffolding of the journey, it reflects her own personal inclinations and
psychic propensities as well.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> In a 1984 Publishers Weekly interview, she confessed that writing for her=
is
a slow, labored endeavor and absolutely necessary for her own well-being and
self-preservation. Her life has been itself a journey=
toward
discernment and understanding of forces that propel individuals toward trag=
edy
or self-revelation. Yet there is a certain degre=
e of personal
and artistic freedom that her writing has given her. She says in the 1984 interview: &#=
8220;I
write for my own psychic survival, and that is why I never have considered =
the
reader. Nor have I ever written with any k=
ind of
plan because the whole point is to follow the story to its center, not to
impose some point of view” (66). Indeed, the best writers follow th=
is aesthetic
principle, with the story itself always serving as the center of any creati=
ve
work of fiction. Certainly, profound moral principl=
es and
a discernible plan are apparent in the long view of Phillips’ work, b=
ut,
like Emerson’s tacking s=
hip, they
are seen as a straight line only at a distance; and no matter how far abroad
she may sail, all ports eventually lead her back to =
West Virginia. In a taped interview with Kate Lon=
g for
public radio, Phillips shared her feelings about West Virginia and home: “I think my work is really r=
ooted
in my childhood, my young adulthood, my family<=
/st1:PersonName>,
my ancestry. And it’s very much rooted in=
place. . . . The
sense of hard reality, the edge in my work, I think comes from having grown=
up
there.”
Jayne Anne Phillips readily admits the intercon=
nectedness
of her rich and unique fiction. In a 2001 interview with Sarah Rob=
ertson,
Phillips said: “I see my work, all of it, as a continuum. All
the books I have or will write open out into one another” (72). This
literary continuity began for Phillips in the hills of West Virginia, in Buckhannon, where sh=
e was
born on July 19, 1952. Her mother Martha Jane Thornhill w=
as a
hard-working, industrious woman, ambitious for herself and for her children=
, a
woman who put herself through school while her children were small and
eventually became a public school educator and administrator.
Phillips’ father, Russell R.
Phillips, owned a cement business, which failed as the children were growin=
g up,
forcing Martha Jane eventually to become the principle breadwinner. Phillips
was the only daughter, sandwiched between male siblings. In 1972, when she was twenty, her
parents divorced.
Hom=
e Is
Where You Come From
From her earliest memory, Phillips was set on b=
eing a
writer. She recalls listening to the stori=
es of
those around her and yearning to tell her own.<=
/st1:PersonName> In her hometown of Buckhannon, she
remembers, “everyone knew everyone’s stories, but the stories w=
ere
secret.” Phillips goes on to explain: “As the writer in my family, I felt that I was the person who was c=
harged
with making sure all these stories and ideas survive, but at the same time
you’re not allowed to tell anyone. Writing is the telling of secrets<=
st1:PersonName
w:st=3D"on">. . . .
[which] can transform and unite one moment with another, and bridge the gulf
between time, distance, difference” (qtd.=
in Dictionary of Literary Biography=
273). Growing
up in Buckhannon, Phillips always had a knack for language, entertaining her
friends with adolescent narratives in which they played a central part and
learning early the power of storytelling to validate our lives and engender
meaning in mundanity. In high school, she received
encouragement from English tea=
cher
Irene McKinney, later West Virginia̵=
7;s
Poet Laureate, and with her own ambitions and a singular lust for living, s=
he
left her hometown at eighteen to attend West Virginia Unive=
rsity,
receiving her BA degree in 1974.
During these years she wrote mostly poetry̵=
2;narrative
poems that would become seeds for later stories=
. After graduation, the call to wand=
erlust
and to see the world beyond W=
est
Virginia prompted a cross-country trip to California, wher=
e Phillips
settled for a time in an African American neighborhood in Oakland. By the next year, she was in Colorado, contri=
buting
to small literary magazines and drawing from the broad range of characters =
and
types she had encountered on her journey. In 1976, as she was preparing to e=
nroll
in the writing program at the University
of Iowa, she publis=
hed
her first volume, Sweethearts, a
collection of one-page prose pieces, which won the notice of the literary w=
orld
and the Fels Award in Fiction.=
Sweethearts
was recognized by Pushcart, and Phillips was well on her way to the solid
literary reputation she enjoys today. She received her M.F.A. in
1978 from the University<=
/st1:PlaceType>
of Iowa, where she
studied with Frank Conroy. Phillips’ association with S=
eymour
Lawrence, publisher of Tillie Olsen, Katherine Anne Porter, and Kurt Vonneg=
ut,
completed her literary apprenticeship, and with the publication of Black Tickets in 1979, she became
recognized as a major new voice in American fiction.
Phillips’ writing has received the plaudi=
ts of first-rate
critics and such writers as Tillie Olsen, who called her collection Black Tickets “the unmistaka=
ble
work of early genius,” and Nobel-prize winning author Nadine Gordimer,
who called her “the best writer since Eudora Welty.” Phillips is recipient of the Sue K=
aufman
Prize for First Fiction and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two
Pushcart Prizes, the O. Henry Award,
a Bunting Institute Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two
National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in fiction. Her work has been translated into =
twelve
languages, and her stories have been anthologized in American Short Story Masterpieces.
A M=
atter
of Style: Time, Memory, and Point of View
It is no coincidence that Phillips’ rich =
and
sensuous prose is the product of her creative beginnings as a poet. She
has a poet’s eye for detail, but more important, she possesses the
perception and intellectual inclinations of a poet. Of her narrative technique and the
prominence of plot in her writing, she says: “I’ve always been =
more
interested in conveying perception itself within a narrative rather than
conveying plot or a series of events. Plot moves out of voice for me; st=
ory is
suggested in part by the rhythm of the language in which a narrative unfold=
s. There
are a finite number of stories . . . but
perceptions about those stories are specific and infinite” (Robertson=
74). Nonetheless, her plots are gripping=
, in
large part because of the power of those “perceptions” and the =
profundity
of her language. In a 2002 interview with Kate Rhod=
es,
she explained: “I work with language in a very specific way, with
language that’s very much anchored in physical detail and in sensual
detail. There’s a sensory
connection, with the reader, hopefully. I try to use language in a way tha=
t begins
to get at perception itself: the way people think, and the way they experie=
nce
things, and the way that memory and dream and thought can all
intermingle” (420).=
One gathers a glimpse of Phillips’ litera=
ry
aesthetic from a conversation that her character Kate has about literature =
and
film with her mother in the novel M=
otherKind. Kate
is a poet, a daughter, and a new mother, whose terminally ill mother, Katherine, leaves her home in West Virginia to go to Boston to stay with her daughter during=
the
last year of Katherine’s life. Kate not only has the responsibili=
ty of
her mother’s illness but all the attendant woes that come with a blen=
ded family and a new marriage. Katherine says that she wants to be
entertained when she experiences art, that she wants to go to a movie and n=
ot
be upset; Kate counters that she doesn’t “want to be entertaine=
d;
entertainment was far too demanding, and gave so little in return.”
Phillips writes: “Kate wanted someone to read stories to her, =
or
speak intensely about a private matter. She wanted to be fed” (32).
Great art, for Phillips, essentially feeds one an intellectual feast
that remains long after the meal has been consumed, and words provide the
ingredients for that nourishment. In Why
I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, Phillips says:
Words float memory, awaken desire; words do pull
people in, even demanding, haunting words, because language is, finally, a
matter of survival. Human beings can’t live with=
out
the illusion of meaning, the apprehension of confluence, the endless debate
concerning the fault in the stars or in ourselves. The writer is just the messenger, =
the
moving target. Inside culture, the writer is the
talking self. (Blythe 191)
Kate
is Phillips’ best articulator about the power of language to create
reality and make meaning of our motley lives. The narrator states: “Kate
conceives of words as implements of pure energy, washed, infused, shadowed =
or
illuminated by all they carry in endless combination with one another. She writes words and works with th=
em for
pay and for succor; she believes words open in the intangible spheres of th=
eir
construction, yet stay apart from the world of use, innocent of motive, of
healing or harm” (MotherKind<=
/i> 4).
Phillips rarely presents a story in a
straight-forward linear style, again a testament to her propensity for
portraying perception rather than delineating plot. She is interested in getting insid=
e the
skin of her characters and allowing them to tell their stories from their
particular viewpoint, whether that point of view is accurate or not. Technically, of course, there are =
no
“inaccurate” points of view.&n=
bsp;
Each character’s narrative is accurate according to his percep=
tion,
and there are as many narratives as there are characters. The moral world in which these
characters operate is complex, where good and evil co-mingle to constitute a
fearful symmetry that is perplexing at best and rarely presents moral insig=
hts
that are crystal clear. Knowl=
edge
and truth are fleeting as well as difficult to discern, and the moral
color-scheme of such a world is, at best, grey. To unfold her characters’ pe=
rceptions
and moral dilemmas, Phillips utilizes stream-of-consciousness narration alo=
ng
with multiple-focus points of view.
It is obvious that the literary models that she has acknowledged have
exerted their influence on her writing style: the subtlety of a Eudora Welt=
y in
unfolding a story through focus on character, the modernist proclivities of=
a
William Faulkner or Katherine Anne Porter in stream-of-consciousness narrat=
ion,
the interconnecting imaginative fictional world of an Edgar Lee Masters, and
one might add, at least in so far as the short stories are concerned, the
southern gothic characterization of a Flannery O’Connor.
&=
nbsp; In
the online essay “Jayne Anne Phillips Talks about MotherKind,” Phillips explains how she uses language, tim=
e,
and memory to unfold narrative. “I see language,” she =
says,
“as the means of investigation and time as the organizing principle&#=
8221;
(4). Her 2000 novel Motherkind, she explains, is written in a “clear, simple,
very accessible language becau=
se it
deals with such intricate patterning and universal experience” (birth,
death, familial relationships). In
terms of time sequences; Machine Dr=
eams
(1984) has sections “framed by lapses of time that float the prose.”
Shelter (1994), on the o=
ther
hand, occurs in “three days of real time made lapidary and
circular,” while MotherKind
occurs on “two planes at once: the year within the novel is inter-cut
with an on-going past that becomes a kind of eternal present. Memory
sometimes offers up the past as living, dimension, sensory presence.”
Memory, she continues, “is alive with meaning. . . . This
is not a random universe precisely because we are in it: naming it loving a=
nd
fearing it, yearning to understand it, reaching for one another within
it” (4).
&=
nbsp; Phillips
has a unique and to a degree stylized writing style, certainly one recogniz=
able
to her alone. Sarah Robertson directly asked her=
about
her use of italics in her writing, and Phillips explained: “I use ita=
lics
differently in various works, but they nearly always signify time shifts, or
language unlimited by time. They may be phrases or lines spoke=
n in
another time, powerful enough to have remained intact in the mind of the
character recalling them. They may be the voice of one chara=
cter
perfectly recalled in the mind of another. They may be words from a spiritual
realm, or phrases from the oracle into which all lines are spoken” (7=
4). Phillips goes on to explain h=
er use
of the italic sections in MotherKin=
d,
which “form one narrative which threads throughout the book—the
journey home to and with the mother exists in perpetuity, outside the
boundaries of death” (74). The time shifts, the interior monol=
ogues
of her characters, and most particularly, the extraordinary imagery that
Phillips employs in her writing all attest to the artistry of her richly po=
etic
prose.
The
Dysfunctional, the Disenfranchised, and the Disenchanted: Black Tickets (1979) and Fast
Lanes (1984)
Aside from the many stories in these two import=
ant
collections that provide a preface for the novels, all of the stories revea=
l an
array of characters on society’s fringe, many disenfranchised, many in the “=
;fast
lane,” going nowhere. Phillips’ sympathy for these
individuals is evident, yet there is little sentimentality as their lives
unfold before the reader, like the sad inhabitants of some latter-day Spoon River. Most
of the characters tell their own stories, each voice unique and authentic; =
Phillips
has an extraordinary ability both to get under the skin and into the psyche=
of
her characters. The best examples are
“Gemcrack” in Black Tic=
kets
and “How Mickey Made It” in Fast
Lanes, two “dramatic monologues,” told in the vivid voice o=
f misfit
personas. Many of the stories in Black Tickets are mere poetic sket=
ches,
only a paragraph or two—the prose terse and stripped bare of all but
snatches of a character’s consciousness or brief images, but the rhyt=
hms of
the language leave a resonating echo in the reader’s mind. One of
the most memorable of these vignette collections, inspired by the poetry of
Akutagawa, is found in the story “Counting” in Fast Lanes. “Counting” is a series=
of
“mini-chapters” or brief vignettes detailing the demise of a
relationship between an aged dancer and her young lover. The details are so sparse as to be=
almost
brusque, yet by the end of the story, the reader knows the two characters t=
horoughly
and sees their tattered lives in full.
Not one, by any means, to be “afraid of
Virginia Woolf,” Phillips’ realism is dazzling to the point of =
being
almost blinding. In one of the longer stories in Black Tickets called “Home,&=
#8221;
a daughter returns home to her mother, to heal and begin a new life as she
commences graduate school. The idea of home in Phillips’
stories is a place where you can go back to but not always a place you will
wish to remain. “Home” serves as a preface for the novel MotherKind; however, the daughter finds little solace in the
presence of the mother, who is herself wounded, both physically and emotion=
ally. Often
in Phillips’ stories, generations clash and children find little in t=
heir
parents’ disheveled lives to help them adjust to this perplexing worl=
d,
as their parents are just as confounded and alienated as they. Yet
there is a connection between family
members that suffices for salvation. In another short story preface to =
Motherkind called
“Souvenir,” a daughter learns of her mother’s terminal
illness and the importance of “settling things” in the messy
business of life and familial relationships. The story also establishes one of =
the
important ideas in Phillips’ canon, the concept that mothers and
daughters have a unique bond—with daughters functioning as receptors =
of
those “secrets” that run through the heart of family matters. At one point Kate thinks to hersel=
f, ”She’d
been on the point of telling her mother everything.
The secrets were a travesty”—and secrets must be shared.
Daughters, like mothers, are the guardians of family
secrets, angels sweeping away “the rotten rain off the clouds”
(188).
One of the most important aspects of these two
collections of stories is that they contain the seeds for Phillips’s
novels. “1934” in=
Black Tickets gives us the mother
Jean’s story which unfolds more fully in Machine Dreams. &=
#8220;Alma” in Fast Lanes portrays the quiet
desperation of the parents of two of the children in Shelter—the short story helping us comprehend the degree =
of
moral autonomy the children possess at the end of the novel. Lenny’s and Alma’s mot=
her
Audrey has an affair with Nick Campbell, the father of Lenny’s friend
Delia. Audrey elicits her you=
nger
daughter Alma’s help to carry out the affair, feigning baton lessons =
for
the child in nearby Winfield as an excuse to meet Nick. The affair ends in tragedy as
Nick’s guilt drives him literally off the =
Winfield
Bridge, and Alma forever tries to comprehend the tr=
agedy
and the bitterness of her parents’ lives. Both “Blue Moon” and
“Bess” take us into Mac=
hine
Dreams territory, with “Bess” exploring the background to
father Mitch’s life and “Blue Moon” exploring an episode =
in
the teen lives of Mitch’s two children, Danner and Billy—all ar=
e prominent
players in the Hampson family saga which the novel portrays. “Bess,” however, is a =
key
narrative in the collection, providing a poignant story that grapples with
time, memory, and coming of age, portrayed through a relationship between a
brother and sister. Two of tw=
elve Hampson
siblings growing up in a sleepy West
Virginia mountain cove, Bess and Warwick have an
unusually close brother-sister relationship that will be echoed in
Danner’s and Billy’s story, two generations of Hampsons later.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> The main part of the story takes p=
lace
during a summer of awakening—to love, to sexuality, and to death. The secret, however, that the read=
er
shares about Mitch’s parentage at the end of the story will shed ligh=
t on
the tragedy and family dysfunction of Machine
Dreams, for Bess is actually Mitch’s mother rather than the cold,=
distant,
and disdaining Warwick, thus explaining Mitch’s feelings of inadequacy
and emotional absence from his children.&n=
bsp;
Indeed, much of the anger,
truculence, and brooding alienation that afflict so many of Phillips’
characters in these two short story collections are preceded by childhood
events that adults awkwardly and carelessly engender, sometimes in the name=
of
propriety but more often than not by shear adult self-absorbed neglect.
=
220;Let
Your Life Be a Counter Friction to Stop the Machine”: Machine Dreams (1984)
In the story “Blue Moon,” the image=
of
lost ideals of youth is displayed as a fake “moon” stretched ov=
er a
frame and set to drift on wires across the prom dance floor. Prom
night in this short story provides portents for both the personal tragedies=
to
come to Billy and Danner Hampson and to their generation who would become
embroiled in the failed political scheme that became the Vietnam War. The
novel Machine Dreams fleshes ou=
t the
tragedy of faded ideals and provides a representative chronology of American
life, from pre-WWII through the dark days of the Vietnam War, as represente=
d by
this West Virginia
family, the Hampsons. The
narrative is told from multiple points of view—through letters from t=
he
war-front or through the consciousness of four characters: the father Mitch,
the mother Jean, the daughter Danner, and the son Billy. The book reflects the extraordinary
change in values of the period, the schism in the American family brought on by changing social conditions
including the second wave of feminism of the 1960’s and 70’s and
the sexual revolution exacerbated by the Vietnam War. The story begins with the rise and=
fall
of Jean’s parents, Jean’s loss of her first and great love Tom,=
who
dies as a teen of a heart attack, and her marriage to the older, more settl=
ed
Mitch, a WWII veteran. Their children, Danner and Billy, =
grow
up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, a time that reflects immense
transition in the American experience. Thus as the novel portrays the
increasing dysfunction of this American family<=
/st1:PersonName>,
it also portrays a national dysfunction, symbolized in a war that almost to=
re
the country apart. Running throughout the novel are t=
he
themes of family and home, the
dreams and hopes that elude us, a capricious Fate which buffets us about
carelessly and often tragically, and the passage of innocence—lost
innocence on an individual level and a larger, nationalistic level.
&=
nbsp; Looming
large over the novel is the metaphor of the
“machine”—Billy’s love of machines, Mitch’s
trucks at his cement business, the planes and cars that fill Billy’s
dreams—all brassy, shiny, and new, all mindless and sometimes decepti=
ve
in their appeal. The “m=
achine”
metaphor becomes an emblem for a country that is changing too quickly, movi=
ng mindlessly
toward an unjust war, skewed values, and a world that folks like Mitch simp=
ly
can’t comprehend with any degree of surety. One is reminded of Thoreau’s=
metaphor
of the great machine in “Civil Disobedience,” a mindless,
methodless machine that rolls ever onward, no one bothering to throw a wren=
ch
into a cog to provide the friction to slow or stop the ever turning wheels =
in
the machine when it goes awry. When
Mitch’s concrete business fails, Jean takes over more and more of the
responsibilities of the family, eventually divorcing him when the children =
become
college-age. Changing sexual =
mores,
the drug culture that looms over the horizon, the disintegration of the fam=
ily—all
are the polluting by-products of the machine that will eventually cause
disaster and pull this family apart.
A manifestation of the changing times can be observed in the war let=
ters
in the book. Mitch’s WW=
II
letters and Billy’s letters from Vietnam highlight the dispari=
ty
between the two eras. Mitch&#=
8217;s
war letters are hopeful and heroic, while Billy’s are contentious and
often tinged with irony and bitterness.&nb=
sp;
Throughout the book, time present and time past=
interplay,
with the image of the machine ever-present. Toward the end of the story, in a =
moment
of family truce prior to Billy’s leaving for Vietnam, Billy speaks the
words of a childhood prayer before dinner which brings forth an image from =
the
past to his mind, an image from childhood, propitious and ominous in its
symbolism: “Billy spoke, words from one of the old prayers, but behind
his closed eyes played a memory of startling clarity: watching the snow plow
with Danner, both of them small, standing in snow to their knees. The big yellow machine rumbling by,
slow, all-powerful. Engine ro=
ar,
shrill jangling of chains. The
powdery snow thrown up in fanned continuous spray as the heavy machine press
on” (271). Just as the
children are lost for a moment in the man-made “storm” created =
by
the plow, they will be lost in the storm of war and societal dysfunction, w=
hich
Phillips vividly portrays in Machine
Dreams.
In =
the Garden of Good and Evil: Shelter (1994)
&=
nbsp; While
the seed for Shelter is found i=
n the
short story “Alma,”
the longer work allows Phillips to explore the very nature of good and evil=
in
a violent “coming of age” story that ultimately is full of hope=
and
possibility for the human journey.
Phillips has said about her writing Shelter
that she wanted to investigate whether evil truly exists or whether it is
merely a by-product of “damage.” She confessed to Sarah Robertson:
“I do see ‘evil’ as a statement of horrific damage,
particularly in personal terms: one person acting to damage or dominate
another. . . . In societal terms, I see evil as a
function of fear” (76).
However, she goes on to add that in the “primal world of Shelter—the power of place, =
time,
the natural world—functions beyond and predates our distinctions of g=
ood
and evil” (76). T=
he
conclusion of the novel does indeed appear to suggest that the concept of e=
vil
is more complex than such a “damage” theory might explain, for
among the array of “damaged” individuals in the story, some ult=
imately
succumb to the power of evil and some do not, suggesting another dimension =
or
Power at work along with our wills.
That Power likewise appears to operate, like Blake’s idea of a
Universal Fearful Symmetry, according to a scheme that is beyond good and
evil. The irony associated wi=
th
“Shelter,” the name of a girls’ summer camp, operates wit=
hin
this interpretation as well, for this “shelter” is fraught with
sinister danger for all of the children in the story.
&=
nbsp; The
narrative of Phillips’ second novel takes place during the summer of
1963. The Cuban Missile Crisi=
s has
just taken place, and communism is the recognized “evil empire”
that threatens the course of human existence—this backdrop to the eve=
nts
that occur in the bucolic summer girls’ camp highlights Phillips̵=
7;
suggestion that the darkness often lies within ourselves rather than in some
extraneous, ideological villainy. For
a few months of woodland paradise, sisters Lenny and Alma Swenson and their
friends Cap Briarley and Delia Campbell are away from their parents and the=
unhappy
complexity of those adult lives.
The story is told through multiple points of view—through the
perception of several of the girl campers, through their young friend Buddy,
son of the camp cook, and through two dark and damaged characters, Carmody,
Buddy’s perverted, abusive father, and the ultra religious, guilt-rid=
den Parson. Both Parson and Carmody are ex-con=
victs,
Parson having escaped from prison and found his way to the camp in search of
Carmody, whom he has known in prison and whom he has identified as the serp=
ent
incarnate. Parson finds a job=
with
a construction crew working near the camp, and the potential for tragedy mo=
unts
with each passing day.
&=
nbsp; At
Camp Shelter, the children find some re=
lief
from the problems and pain of home life, for Delia’s father, guilt-ri=
dden
and despairing after an adulterous affair with Lenny’s mother, has a =
few
months earlier driven his car off the Winfield Bridge. The
children are haunted by painful memories that intrude upon their consciousn=
ess—their
inner darkness converging, as it were, during this summer sojourn at Shelter
with the outer darkness represented in the characters of Carmody and Parson=
. For
Lenny, the painful image of her mother, discovered by her one night in the
kitchen, in a groping embrace with Delia’s Dad, haunts her; for her
little sister Alma, the image of Nick Campbell’s waxen face in the ca=
sket
provides likewise little peace. The children confide their secrets=
to
each other during a summer of budding sexuality and gathering storm.
This novel is written on a smaller scale than Machine Dreams, but its moral dime=
nsion
is vast. The individual voices which
Phillips’ presents are authentic for each character and provide a tour de force in storytelling,
different characters’ p=
erception
of the same event unique to their own particular reality . The story is also rich with symbol=
ism. The
Turtle Hole where Lenny and Cap meet to swim and explore their sexuality wi=
th
one of the young camp workers Frank is emblematic of the girls’ buddi=
ng
female sexuality. The swing bridge across the Mud River
over which the girls must cross as Frank watches from below represents the
demarcation point between the worlds of innocence and experience. The
stick that the guilt-ridden and sexually obsessed and repressed Parson hold=
s as
he ferrets about the woods is rich with phallic significance. The
camp director, Mrs. Thompson-W=
arner,
a bona fide Daughter of the American Revolution, admonished the children in=
her
lectures on the evils of communism and appears in her singularly and monoma=
niacal
religious fervor as the other side of the coin to Parson. However, the true serpent in the g=
arden
is Buddy’s father Carmody, who has returned to taunt and abuse Buddy =
and Mam,
his mother, whose own religious simplicity and good heart are in stark cont=
rast
to Mrs. Thompson-Warner’=
s nominalistic orthodoxy.
The dramatic climax in the story occurs when th=
e incestuous
Carmody absconds with Buddy, taking him to a secret cave where he intends to
keep the boy until he agrees to rob the camp director. As Buddy and Carmody leave the cav=
e,
they spy Cap, Lenny, Delia, and Alma
at the Turtle Hole, with Lenny already in the water. Carmody’s lust overcomes his=
greed,
and he plunges in the water to rape Lenny. Lenny tries to escape to shore whe=
re Parson,
who has been watching the evil doings of Carmody, attempts to pull him off =
of
Lenny. When Parson is knocked away by Car=
mody, Buddy
comes up behind his father to drop a huge rock on the back of his head. The
children rush to Buddy’s and Lenny’s defense and begin to stone
Carmody, at which point Parson awakens to club the now still and lifeless b=
ody
of Carmody—taking a “flat rock from the bottom of the pile̶=
1;
and lifting it high above his head, Parson “brings it down on the bac=
k of
the hooded head but the body never twitches. Still they can’t know. Parson
has taken it on” (245).<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'>
This violent ending is rife with poignant detai=
l and
religious significance, reminiscent of the best of Flannery
O’Connor’s storytelling.
Parson acts as a shield for the children—Christ-like, he takes=
on
the burden of their sin and then immediately proceeds to wash that sin
away. Buddy comes up to him a=
s he
rests from his struggle with Carmody, to point to his blood-splattered
shoulder, and Parson takes the boy’s hand and walks directly into the
river: “[Buddy] folds himself in and sighs raggedly. Parson stands, holding him, and th=
ey
walk in to the water just far enough for Parson to crouch down, immersed to=
his
chest. He cradles Buddy in the
water easily, with one arm, and he tilts Buddy’s head back, only
slightly, as though he will rock him, to comfort him” (245). And thus the boy is “baptize=
d,”
cleansed. The children lead Parson to the cave, where they hide the body, a
place where it is unlikely Carmody’s remains should ever be found and
where they vow to keep silent forever about this day.
Summer camp is over=
. Cap and Lenny leave for school in =
New York, while =
Buddy
lives peacefully with his Mam, whose gentleness and religious simplicity wo=
rk
as an anecdote to the poison of his father. The last vignette of the novel lea=
ves
one with an image of hopefulness, as this horrific story comes quietly to an
end. Buddy, the wild child of the woods=
, a
boy abused by a perverted and sinister father, comes across a young rabbit,
damaged and blind in one eye.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> “One-eyed,” Buddy says=
to
himself, “Big enough to be on its own but won’t make first snow,
all the foxes and stoats gluttonous with instinct .
. =
.
. He’ll take it to Mam.
She’ll think it’s pretty, she’ll have a bottle to =
feed
it” (279).
Shel=
ter is particularly interesting with regards to the
religious undertones in the book. Sarah Robertson asked Phillips abo=
ut the
religious fundamentalism in the book, and her response echoed Flannery
O’Connor’s use of religious fundamentalism in her fiction.
“I believe religious teachings (doesn’t matter which
religion really) are just as important to the developing psyche as fairy ta=
les
and myths,” posits Phillips. “Unfortunately organized rel=
igion
often politicizes those teaching and uses them to promote a tribal rather t=
han
religious mentality, but the stories themselves at least imply a spiritual
dimension and of course play out communal metaphors of male/female, father/=
mother
archetypes” (75). Phillips goes on to say that=
“religion
is a magical response. As our illusions of control of env=
ironment,
of ourselves, grows, societal religious observance declines. My
point in Shelter was that relig=
ion
invested with power is a source of strength to Mam .
. =
.”
(75). Phillips relates these ideas to the
discomfiting character Parson: “Charismatic Christianity provides Par=
son
with a vocabulary in which to couch his understanding of good, evil, shelte=
r,
protection; it provides him with a self-accepted
frame for his psychic abilities” (75).
Pas=
sages
on the Journey: Birth, Death, and M=
otherKind
(2000)
&=
nbsp; Chic=
ago
Tribune critic Alan Cheuse has
compared MotherKind to a Mary C=
assatt
portrait of a mother and child, “beautifully composed and emotionally
wrenching.” Cheuse writes, “Even the most commonplace care.
. =
.
becomes lyrical—but never, never sentimental—in the enlivening
embrace of Phillips’ wonderful prose” (qtd.
in Contemporary Authors Online =
7). The
journey in MotherKind is a jour=
ney
through life-passages and a coming to terms with
relationships—relationships between men and women, fathers and daught=
ers,
stepparents and stepchildren, and most particularly, between mothers and
daughters. As the novel opens, Kate, both an =
artist
and a “spiritual pilgrim,” as Phillips has called to her, finds
herself at the commencement of two of life’s most poignant passages, =
both
occurring simultaneously in her case: the birth of her first child and the
death of her mother. Kate is one of Phillips’ most
interesting “journeyers,” having left the hills of West Virginia for academia and life as a poet and e=
ditor
living in Boston.
Throughout her life she has avoided long-term relationships, as have=
her
brothers, since her mother Katherine and father Waylon have sown the seeds =
of
caution in their children by the example of their own strained relationship=
. When
Kate meets Matt, a physician, his wife’s infidelity has already destr=
oyed
his own marriage, though young sons Sam and Jonah are loathe to accept that fact.<=
/st1:PersonName> Kate prepares to leave for a sabba=
tical
to Katmandu, a
spiritual journey that will serve her well and provide her with essential
spiritual resources when she returns to find that her affection for Matt has
turned to love and her mother is terminally ill with cancer. As Katherine’s
physical health deteriorates, the decision is made for her to leave her West Virginia ho=
me and
spend her final days with her daughter. This need becomes particularly imp=
ortant
for Katherine when she learns that Kate is pregnant with her first grandchi=
ld.
“I want to hold this baby,” says Katherine, determined to
stay alive until the birth of Kate’s son Alexander (292). Though
the pressures of trying to blend a new family,
to deal with the anger of her two stepsons, to tend to her mother’s
illness, and to welcome a new life into the world are difficult and challen=
ging,
Kate handles these events with the grace and wisdom of a woman who has alre=
ady
progressed far on her journey.=
&=
nbsp; The
narrative in MotherKind is told=
from
the point of view of an omniscient author, though Kate’s perspective
looms above the rest; for this is after all Kate’s story, a womanR=
17;s
story, indeed all women’s stories.&n=
bsp;
Phillips writes: “For me, consciousness begins with the mother
figure, the figure of the mother and the relationship between the mother and
the infant, and very specifically in my heritage in the writer bearing witn=
ess,
the female child who is the confidante of the mother. She is the one who is told the sec=
rets,
the one who is charged with remembering the secrets. She’s not really supposed to=
speak
about them, but she finds herself unable to live with them or truly remember
them unless she speaks about them . . . a sort of metaphor for consciousness
itself” (qdt. in Rhodes 2). Like Phillips’ other stories=
, the
narrative eschews a strict linear unfolding; though it delineates a “=
real”
time action that roughly covers a year, it intersperses the immediate narra=
tive
with memories and flashbacks that clarify the action of that year.
Phillips is unafraid to write of atypical subje=
cts,
including the gritty details of birth, nursing, the slow process of death f=
or
the terminally ill, divorce, and the minefields of blended and extended
families—for this reason, a few critics have rather erroneously and
short-sightedly thought the subject matter narrow. These details, however, while often
singularly female, nonetheless have universal implications. After Kate’s son is born, the
narrator muses: “Ravenous, Kate knew, this need to birth babies, to h=
old
one’s child. The fact w=
as,
birth dwarfed sex, swept sex before it.&nb=
sp;
A woman had sex to get this, to be here, to smell the clean smell of=
her
child tended by her hands, to drink him in, consumed” (117). One of the most important ideas th=
at
Phillips communicates in this extraordinary story is that the birth of a ch=
ild,
certainly for a mother, and potentially for a father, releases one from the=
debilitating
illusion of control in this vast and friendless universe. Such knowledge is liberating by al=
lowing
one to confront Fate and engenders the kind of flexibility that enables one=
to persevere
in stressful times, to prevail under duress, but also saddles one with an
understanding of human frailty and limitation. Kate thinks that “the idea of
control was an illusion.
Gestation progressed, labor progressed, birth progressed”; they
were immovable and unstoppable; however, “once life existed, threats =
to
life progressed” as well.
Such is the double-edged knowledge of MotherKind (117).
&=
nbsp; The
novel tackles many of the societal issues that we face today—foremost
among these is the ever-changing dynamics of the family. Phillips explains: “Family i=
s our
spiritual blueprint. We’=
;re
born into it and move off from it, into the endless permutations and patter=
ns
we make of those first intimacies—mother, father, siblings, homeplace=
. If they’re absent we constru=
ct
them. If they’re damage=
d we try,
even as children, to fix them. The
rich, textural, sensual/sexual realm of identity is awash in where we
begin” (“Jayne Anne Phillips Talks . . . “ 3). However, she goes on to add that our
society is “notoriously anti-family,” except as families are re=
garded
as consumers. “We live =
in a
fast, mobile, scheduled society. When
families need support, we don’t always have nearby family or available
friends; we no longer experience the most primal, demanding junctures in li=
fe
within a community. Like Kate=
and
Matt, we hire help or depend on social services for assistance” (3).<=
o:p>
&=
nbsp; The
“support” that Kate finds comes in the form of MotherKind, a po=
stpartum
care agency whose services Katherine has given Kate as a gift, since she wo=
uld
not have the strength to help her daughter after the baby was born. The women who serve Kate eventuall=
y care
for Katherine also, as the two passages, birth and death, become profoundly
intertwined. The women of
MotherKind become Kate’s “comrades”; they “watched =
and
tended; listening, touching, waiting, doing” (286). Kate finds that she needs their
“distance, their calm,” for these “women knew; they liste=
ned
before . . . they had crossed oceans to meet beside this bed. . . . These w=
omen
were strong enough to care for the dying, and Kate endeavored to be one of
them” (286). And indeed=
Kate
does become one of them. Moth=
erKind represents for Phillips a continu=
um, a continuity
that is symbolized in the antique bassinet that Katherine has refurbished f=
or
her daughter.
Throughout Kate’s journey, she is complete
enough in her sense of self to keep something back for her alone, when all =
the
care-giving is over and when this current passage is finished as well. This “holding back”
something for oneself, an idea that Kate Chopin posits in The Awakening, is represented in the Millennium Falcon, a Star =
Wars
spaceship toy that Kate finds on a day that she has taken a few minutes for
herself away from her duties for her new son and her mother. Shopping, she finds a pram for the
Alexander and the bright and shinny Millennium Falcon. At first she speculates about givi=
ng it
to her stepsons, another weak attempt to buy their favor, but she thinks be=
tter
and decides to keep it herself.
“But this toy,” she thinks, “was so untouched,
unscratched, as though no one had ever played with it. Surely there was a reason someone =
had
revered it so. She would keep=
it
safe, Kate thought, put away somewhere, like an escape vehicle she might fit
into when they were all through with her.&=
nbsp;
There’s no such thing =
as a
blended family, one of Kate’s stepfamily manuals intoned, and if there is, it’s the woman =
who
gets blended” (82). =
;Kate
understood that even under the best of conditions hers and Matt’s cur=
rent
domestic adventure would be difficult.&nbs=
p;
Sam and Jonah, Matt’s two sons, had made clear that they held =
her
responsible for their father’s leaving their mother, an idea encourag=
ed
by their mother even though she had begun the affair more than a year ago t=
hat
had broken up the family. The
Millennium Falcon represented to Kate a pure and limitless self-boundary
untouched by the hurly-burly of life with its care and tragedy. The spacemen who inhabited the
Millennium Falcon existed in “an enclosed system, away and a partR=
21;
(84). They were insulated in =
the
same way that metaphorically her spiritual study in <=
st1:place
w:st=3D"on">Katmandu had instructed her. For Kate, it was necessary to throw
herself into the messy business of life at this difficulty point in time, b=
ut
there must always be something of herself held back in reserve to suffice f=
or
spiritual peace of mind.
&=
nbsp; MotherKind is a book about
reconciliation and “putting things right.” If Phillips’ other novels
delineate the dysfunction of family, this story details the reconciliation
possible in familial relationships.
By the novel’s end both Kate and the reader understand the val=
ue
of friendship and loyalty, and they have a greater understanding of the con=
cept
of home. At one point, Waylan=
d,
Kate’s father, talks to her about home back in West Virginia. “Everything’s there,&#=
8221;
he says, “houses I built, streets I laid down, Raine’s grave. You’ll be bringing your moth=
er
back. . . . It’s home, no matter who’s left it. Your home too.” Kate responds that her home is in =
Boston, far away from the dusty roads of West Virginia. Wayland turns to his daughter, the=
gulf
of years of silence and misunderstandings fading away as he too has traveled
far on his own journey, and says: “This
is where you live. Home is where you come from”
(203). Little does Waylon com=
prehend
of the broader ramification of those words, for home is ultimately more tha=
n any
one place: it is a state of mind, a collection of memories and relationships
that are with one always.
Sylvia Bailey Shu=
rbutt,
Professor of English
August 2005
Wor=
ks Cited
“An
Interview with Jayne Anne Phillips.” Publishers
Weekly. 225 (8 June 1984)=
:
&=
nbsp; 65-66.
Blythe,
Will, ed. “Jayne Anne Phillips.”
Why I Write: Thoughts on the=
Craft
of
&nb=
sp; Fiction. =
New York; Little=
Brown,
1998. 188-194.
Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2001. Online @
<=
/span>http://galenet.galegroup.com.
Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-First
Century American Novelists. Vol.
2=
92. New
York: The Gale Group, 2004. 271-277.
Edelstein,
David. Esquire. 104 (Dec=
ember
1985): 107-12.
Eder,
Richard. Los Angeles Times Book Review. 19 April 1987: 3. 11.
Long,
Kate. In Their Own Country. West Virginia Pu=
blic
Radio, 2004.
Phillips,
Jayne Anne. Black Tickets. Boston: Faber and =
Faber,
1993.
________________. Fast
Lanes. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.
________________. Machine
Dreams. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.
_________________. MotherKind. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
_________________. Shelter. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
_________________.
“Jane Anne Phillips Talks about MotherKind.”=
Online @
&=
nbsp; http://www.jayneanneph=
illips.com/mother.htm.
Robertson,
Sarah. EJAC 20 (2): 68-77.
Rhodes,
Kate. “Interview with J=
ayne
Anne Phillips.” Women’s
Studies 31
(July/August 2002): 517-520.