Crossing to Safety: some thoughts

Until I read Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegnar was unknown to me, which is a shame because he was a wonderful writer. He wrote novels, short stories and essays for 60 years set in American landscapes, mainly in the West, I believe. Crossing to Safety is his last novel, written when he was 78 years old. Knowing that, I was initially a bit put off, wondering if his better days were behind him as a writer, but the further I got into the novel the more I loved it, until I reached a point where nothing could be done until I had read it all.

Stegnar once revealed to a interviewer that he wrote the book  because he wanted to make sense of some friends of his. He creates two couples - the Langs and the Morgans. Sid and Charity Lang are wealthy via old (and new) money whilst the other couple, Sally and  Larry are poor, eventually becoming comfortable by means of Larry's hard work and talent and Charity's kind gestures on Larry's behalf. Larry narrates the story.

Charity is a complex character. She's a wonderfully giving person with her heart in the right place. She orchestrates good things for the Morgans. She wants the people close to her to be happy. She's a tireless worker for charity. There is much to like about Charity. But, there is, as Stegner puts it, a "serpent in the garden".

Charity wants the best for Sid. Even Larry, a lecturer himself in the English department at the University of Wisconsin in the year of 1937 can see that Sid is at risk of not being asked to stay on. He tends to write the sort of things that don't get published in scholarly reviews - poems - and he's at risk of being dumped. Charity knows this. Charity is right about everything, actually, and she advises him over the summer to get busy writing a scholarly book. She arranges their time at the Vermont compound, keeping the morning hours free for Larry to knuckle down to the task whilst the afternoons and evenings are spent having fun with visitors and family.

The problem is that Larry really doesn't have much talent for that sort of thing, and left to his own devises he'd not ambitious at all; perhaps a 'Mr Chips' type at a small university where the staff and faculty would love him, but otherwise he'd prefer to spend his life tinkering. With wealth behind him, it's plausible except for the fact that Charity has burning ambition for him.

All is perfectly well between them so long as Larry (and later, the children) submit to her. She's absolutely lovely whilst she is having her way but is capable of being a nightmare when she is defied. In case you have the wrong idea, I want to point out that Sid is not  a small framed man by any means. Larry, who happens to see Sid and Charity naked when they all go camping thinks of Sid as an Adonis. He feels lacking in stature in his presence. This is a hunk of a man.

Said Wagner in an interview, "There was a Charity. She is dead. But I wanted to get her said. All of her children suffered from her inordinately because she bore down on them. She couldn't do anything except in her own way."

I read in a Book Club transcript that Charity may be a case of a woman who was ahead of her time. If she were born two generations later she'd be fine because she would have her own career to absorb her. Perhaps. I think there is more to it than that. Yes, if she had a career of her own, she'd have less mind space and less time to sort out Larry to her satisfaction but she'd still be Charity; still want things her way.

There are so many scenes to discuss but I found the scenes wherein Charity is dying spellbinding. Foiled at getting Larry away to the family picnic she has devised to celebrate her birthday so that she can sneak off to the hospital without him and without a fuss, she has no choice but to tell him that she does not want him to drive her to hospital (where she will die within a few days). He's aghast; offended and hurt. He loses control.

"Why?" he shouted. "Do you hate me? Am I a handicap, or an embarrassment...I'm your husband. I have a right to be with you..."

Deathly ill, unable to control herself now that he is defying her, she snaps.

"Because I can't stand it when you break down!"

The tussle of wills goes on until he relents.

"All right. All right. Whatever you want..."

That was all she wanted. From her deathbed, practically, she had mastered him once more. Her will would be done. But the moment she had beaten him he was her hurt child. The arm came off the pillow and clenched around him, the lips touched the whorl of his crown.

"It's best, she whispered. "You'll see it is..."

What is really interesting is that through the course of the story Larry doesn't change Charity a scrap and nor does Charity alter Larry in any way. When Larry does as told they are happy and when he doesn't, things are frosty. It's this way almost the whole way through. (Perhaps, I can write of the exception to the rule next time.)

Is this just a case of feminism making strides too late for Charity? I really think not. She was the boss and that was all there was to that.