01 Written on the front
Alice Monroe is known as the most outstanding novelist in North America today, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.
In her novels, tragedy doesn't exist on its own, she plants the foreshadowing of tragedy in the middle of nowhere, and until you know every twist, you can't even guess what the story is going to tell, and it's not until the last moment that all the lights are turned on.
In the novel Escape, Monroe constructs a woman who has lost hope in life and family: Carla, who tries to escape from this immutable life and fill the gap in her heart, but in the end, chooses to return to the old order.
What prevented her from fleeing?
02 Synopsis
The heroine, Carla, is a poor student in the class and the object of ridicule by other classmates, and she left the middle school at the age of 18.
She doesn't have a good relationship with her own family, she hates the arrogance of her stepfather and the weakness of her mother, she calls her family an unreal life, and at equestrian school, she recognizes her future husband: Clark.
Clark is a charming male who has given Carla countless beautiful imaginations, and she decides to leave her parents and run a farm in the countryside with her boyfriend Clark.
But after getting married, she discovers that Clarke has an arrogant, short-tempered personality, can't get along with anyone, he never went to middle school, and sees his family as a toxin in his blood.
Her marriage was full of control and boredom, and it was then that she gradually realized that the most important or only thing that attracted her at that time was sex. She began to grow tired of this life.
In the past few days, her favorite goat Flora has also disappeared, and she dreams that Flora has waddled her injured foot through the fence and disappeared.
The neighbor Mrs. Jamison liked the elf-like girl very much, sympathized with her miserable married life, and one day, Carla suddenly broke down and cried, saying that she could not stand Clark's control, Mrs. Jamison could not bear it, paid for her, arranged accommodation for her, and gave her her her own clothes before leaving.
As Carla watched the car envision her future life, she suddenly felt a pang of trepidation as she grew farther away from her home: she didn't know how to live without Clark.
When the car reached the third stop, she cried and called Clark and asked him to take her home.
After Clark returns to Carla, he comes to Mrs. Jamison's door for questioning, and during the confrontation, Flora the Lamb suddenly appears, and the two are startled and interrupt the conversation.
Clark scolds and leads Flora the lamb back to his house, but Carla hasn't seen Flora since. One day, she followed her intuition to the edge of the woods, where she saw a small skull like a teacup.
The end of the 03 road is the end
The protagonist of the story, Carla, seems to have been fleeing, has been choosing, she chooses to leave her family and throw herself into Clark's arms, and then flees Clark to pursue the real life, but in the end, it seems that there is no choice, or return to an old family order.
If I had to give a reason for this tragedy: she was so relieved that she was an appendage to him, and she couldn't live in a crowd that wasn't Clark every day.
The book reads:
When she was fleeing, that is, clark still occupied a place in his life, but when the escape was over and she took it upon herself to go her own way, what did she use to refer to his position?
She sees him as the architect of their future lives, and she herself is willing to be a prisoner, and her obedience is both natural and convincing. What else could someone else be such a clear and clear challenge?
What is this feeling, and have you ever encountered it in your life:
I longed for something, maybe a success in an exam, maybe a career breakthrough, but this happiness and satisfaction will only exist for a moment, and then I will be lost, and I don't know what to do
That great emptiness will engulf you, feel like you're missing a corner, and you even want to go back to that old rhythm of life, preferably every day, and that feeling will last until you find the next thing you're trying your best to do.
Carla is like this, except that she sees Clark as her spiritual pillar, and everything revolves around Clark, and when she loses him one day, her life does not know how to continue.
This emptiness of what was missing in her heart and the fear of the darkness that could not be seen through her eyes were what drove Kara back to Clark.
04 Write at the end
In fact, this book struck me a lot that when we see a woman returning to a man again and again, we will say that she has been PUA, her brain is not good, etc., which seems to make the whole tragedy appear full of accidents: if she had been braver, if she had not done it, things might not have happened.
But Monroe is not, she broke her life in front of your eyes, the tragedy of life is never independent, behind these unequal loves is a long life trajectory and the psychological struggle of one party after another, and even the shadow of the original family.
In the next chapter, I'll try to suggest some ways women can be independent, as well as an image analysis of Flora the Lamb.