John Cheever
John Cheever is a representative figure of Critical Realism literature in the United States in the 20th century, representing "Giant Radio" and "John Cheever Short Stories".
John Cheever was brilliant and he often compared himself to others. For example, some people compare him to O.Henry, because both men are known for their short stories. However, O.Henry is more of a small person as the background, and John Cheever mainly focuses on the core class of American society, the middle class, through the description of the middle class survival anxiety, life status, status panic, and mental state to reveal the current situation of American society.
He is also compared to John Updike, because both "Johns" are written on the "middle class", but John Updike uses the novel as the main carrier to depict the daily life of the middle and lower middle classes. John Cheever used short stories as the main form to portray the emotional world of the upper middle class.
"Giant Radio" is his masterpiece of novels, and "The Country Husband" is an outstanding representative of his many short stories.
"The Country Husband"
The protagonist of the novel ,Country Husband, Francis, is laid-back and wealthy, with a well-paid job in the big city of New York, a large house with a garden in the quiet suburb of Shady Hill, a housewife and sociable wife Julia, and a bunch of children. Couples are often invited by neighbors and friends to attend lively parties. Yet behind this seemingly peaceful appearance day after day, Francis's repressed burnout is piling up.
Francis became a survivor after an air crash, and he returned home eager to share his experience with his family, hoping to get comfort from his family, but the family did not care about his plight, and his wife and children were busy, leaving him aside. His several attempts to raise his voice were overshadowed by the children's noises, fights, and his wife's busy chores.
He pinned his hopes on mealtimes, but the quarrels continued during the meals, and Francis complained that his wife should let the children eat earlier because he did not have the opportunity to talk, which caused his wife to complain. The last supper broke up, and Francis lost his enthusiasm for sharing.
His wife, Julia, was very fond of partying and was very keen to attend the party. She goes through emails every morning to see if there are any invitations. In fact, he was tired of going to a boring party with his wife. For Francis, the party was just a boring social ritual in such a social situation, where everyone had to put on their own masks and show the good side to others, and in this way gain the approval of others.
The loss of family marriage, the boring socialization made Francis feel that life was meaningless, and the spiritual emptiness made him fall in love with the maid of the house. The maid, whom he had temporarily invited home to help them with the child, had repeatedly forcibly embraced her, kissed her, secretly bought her bracelets for her, and even fell into carnal fantasies. In the end, he found himself merely wishful thinking, for the maid was already engaged.
The bad life and life eventually left Francis depressed, and he had to choose to see a psychiatrist. On the recommendation of a psychiatrist, he worked as a carpenter. The novel ends with Francis returning to the family.
Story backdrop
With the development of industrialization, urbanization and modernization, society is increasingly divided into three major classes: the new rich bourgeoisie, the middle white-collar class and the bottom working class.
Among them, the new rich bourgeoisie, because of its strong financial resources, in addition to facing the hatred of the low-level workers' economy, the main contradiction is the struggle for power with the old aristocracy.
The workers at the bottom are mainly the exploited and enslaved strata, and the main problem they face is exploitation and oppression by the newly rich bourgeoisie. The middle-class white-collar class is the most special class, they have been born with industrialization, urbanization, modernization of the huge class, compared with the new rich bourgeoisie and the bottom of the social working class, they have their troubles, they are facing the economic crisis, family crisis, spiritual crisis of the three major problems.
economic crisis
The economic crisis is a major problem for the middle-class white-collar class. Economic income determines social status, and the most important reason why the middle-class white-collar class has gained fame is higher income.
For a long time, the middle class, with a considerable degree of monopoly in the field of higher education, was able to acquire the skills necessary for white-collar jobs, thereby obtaining higher incomes. However, with the popularization of higher education, more and more lower-class people have gained the right to receive skills and quality education, so the gap between white-collar workers and wage-earners in education is narrowing.
In addition, with the increase in mechanization and the gradual normalization of white-collar work, white-collar employees are becoming more and more likely to be replaced. As a result, the middle class is under increasing economic pressure, and the unstable economic base makes them often panic.
Unsatisfactory work incomes and the risk of unemployment are the two main economic pressures of the middle-class white-collar class. Especially during the Great Depression, companies were more likely to reduce office expenses by firing white-collar employees, and the shadow of unemployment hung over the entire white-collar world.
For the middle-class white-collar workers, work is just a means of earning money, so no matter how boring, boring, and tedious the content of the work is, no matter how disgusted they are with their work, they choose to compromise.
Without a solid economic foundation, they are ultimately mental wage-earners who live on salaries, so they need to distinguish themselves from the lower working groups of society through some kind of tedious rituals and lifestyles. Even if they face the risk of unemployment and economic pressure, they have to swell their faces and become fat and maintain a middle-class lifestyle.
Family marriage crisis
In the middle class, men are mostly the economic pillar of the family, while women are mostly housewives. Their lives are warm on the surface, but in fact they are full of dangers. Fights between husband and wife often occur, and they become commonplace. The war between husband and wife continues, and as the contradictions escalate, the awareness of marriage gradually fades over time, and many people have embarked on the road of betrayal of extramarital love.
Because the husband and wife are "pregnant with ghost fetuses" - the husband is still living in the illusion of "male outside, female inside", hoping that his wife will become his vassal, and the wife has her own dreams and pursuits, that is, out of the narrow family circle, to the wider outside world to realize their own value, therefore, the emotional crisis between husband and wife inevitably broke out. As the emotional crisis erupts, the couple's belief in each other's fidelity is devastated, replaced by betrayal of each other. This betrayal begins with the spirit and is realized through the flesh, and extramarital affairs also come from this.
The lack of communication and communication makes the contradictions between husband and wife deeper and deeper, so most of them fall into the trap of extramarital affairs, trying to seek relief in this way. The tragic experience of marriage and even the disintegration of the family did not stop them from chasing the opposite sex.
After experiencing the pain of love and family, they prefer to indulge in depraved sexual desires, hoping to find spiritual comfort and fill the spiritual emptiness in this way.
The economic crisis and the crisis of family marriage have exacerbated their spiritual crisis.
Mental crisis
As the highest and most balanced class of education, the middle-class white-collar class is actually a collection of various intellectuals, and the sensitivity, wisdom, and fragility of intellectuals are destined to be more likely than ordinary people to be induced by the unsatisfactory external life to trigger a universal spiritual crisis.
Relationships between husband and wife, between parents and children, and between siblings are cold and contradictory. The indifferent relationship between family members plunges Cheever's characters into a quagmire of loneliness. The alienation of relationships between people makes people become lonely individuals, and lonely people are more sensitive and vulnerable.