John Cheever's "The Brigadier and the Golf Widow"

"The Brigadier and the Golf Widow" by John Cheever

Case Study by Brittany C. Beal

The Brigadier and the Golf Widow______________B+

The Angel of the Bridge_____________________A-

An Educated American Woman______________D+

The Swimmer______________________________A-

Metamorphoses____________________________B

The Bella Lingua___________________________C+

Clementina________________________________C+

A Woman Without a Country___________________B

Reunion___________________________________C

The Chaste Clarissa_________________________B

The Music Teacher__________________________B-

The Seaside Houses_________________________C

Just One More Time_________________________C-

Marito in Città______________________________C-

A Vision of the World_________________________D

The Ocean________________________________A

An Educated American Woman (D+)

“An Educated American Woman” by John Cheever received a D+ from me. I would have given it an F because of how angry it made me, but the fact that I had such an intense emotional response proves that, even when Cheever writes something I hate, it is still good and well-written enough to inspire a response.

“An Educated American Woman” is about Jill and Georgie, and their son Bibber. Set in what appears to be the 1970s-1980s, Jill was raised to believe that she was destined to be the “intellectual 1%” and that any activity or duty that did not stimulate her intellect was beneath her. Her mother never had her do chores, claiming that she was just too smart to do things like dishes. When she grows up (with high honors at every school) she marries Georgie, who is a regular guy who works in a shipyard. Their relationship and the struggle Georgie faces with traditional gender roles and where he belongs in their marriage makes the story interesting. Since Jill is just “too smart” to do housework, take care of Bibber, or try to keep her husband content in life, she does not fit into anyone’s idea of a wife very well. She spends her days raising awareness for and tackling local issues, or trying to plan things like European tours at a profit.

Now, having an intellectual female protagonist would normally please me, but this witch is absolutely infuriating because of the way that she lords her intelligence over others. She believes that her blue-collar husband is too stupid to have any real problems or desires in life. When Georgie confesses his short affair to her, Jill laughs in his face for making it up because he was jealous of her intelligence. While Jill is running around trying to save some local park from bridge construction, Bibber gets ill under the care many babysitters. Georgie does what he can to take care of him when he gets home, but Bibber dies of pneumonia in the hospital.

Here’s the genius of Cheever: the reader learns about Bibber’s death through a telegram from Jill to her equally emotionally stunted mother. The telegram reads, “Bibber died of pneumonia on Thursday. Can you return or may I come to you? Love Jill.” That is how the reader, who likely sympathizes with Georgie and his adoration of his son and his struggle in finding a place in their marriage and the world, finds out about Bibber’s demise. I would have cried if I were not screaming in anger at the lack of response from Jill. Finally, the last nail in the coffin of my angry response to this story was in Jill’s mother’s response. She replied, “I can only thank God that I didn’t know him better,” and by inviting Jill to meet up in Paris “when [her] loss is not so painful” so that they can “revisit some of [their] old haunts.”

The lack of empathy from these ladies who literally do not after the emotional range of a teaspoon enrages me. They consider themselves too smart to be bothered by emotion or life or love. They consider their talents wasted on regular duties and they consider their energy wasted on regular people. These female characters are real and believable in how infuriating they are. This also forces Georgie to contort and stretch to fill many roles for the family. He has to be the mother and the father of Bibber, often including taking care of housework that is “beneath” Jill’s station. He questions his “manliness” often as he has to clean the house and polish the silver. But something Georgie never regrets or expresses remorse about is taking care of Bibber, because he often expresses that his son is the one he loves most in life, and does everything with his well-being in mind.

This story was so radically different from anything else I have read by Cheever, and the opposition between the husband and wife is so severe that sympathizing with Georgie guarantees that Jill is the enemy whose arrogance led to the demise of his only real love in life—his son. But John Cheever’s short stories are often strange in unpredictable ways, and it is hard to say which character is supposed to be the sympathetic one. This story is told from the point of view of a mysterious third person discussing the couple’s life, and the demise of their son and marriage that led to their divorce. This narrator talks down about Georgie and praises Jill, especially toward the end where he says, “I thought then how inferior he was to Jill, how immature.” Then, Georgie reaches out to the narrator to talk over lunch or a drink, and the narrator lies about being interested before throwing Georgie’s contact information into the garbage. The fact that Cheever gives this narrator so much detailed insight into the life of Jill and Georgie’s family, but the narrator still does not sympathize with Georgie over Jill is an interesting perspective. Cheever makes this world idolize Jill, like her intellect makes her worth more than anyone else. This society embraces this unsympathetic and emotionally-stunted woman more than they accept this blue-collar and tender-hearted man, and the narrator makes an effort to get the reader to align with those values. (Which failed miserably, if you ask me.)

The Angel of the Bridge (A-)

“The Angel of the Bridge” by John Cheever received an A- from me for a few reasons. I have never read anything even remotely like it. The man, who is nameless, is a husband and a father of college-aged kids. His mother is 78, deathly afraid of airplanes, and instead of crocheting or quilting, she waltzes around an ice rink. His brother is older, and “better” by the main character’s standards, but he is deathly afraid of elevators because he thinks the building is going to collapse while he’s in one. The story is in first person, so we read from this character’s mind. He continually critiques his family members for having fears that are so clearly illogical. Then, as we ride in the man’s head, his mind is engulfed by terror when driving over a large bridge in a storm.

The middle of the story is somewhat predictable but told in an engaging manner. The man denies that he has this fear for a few more drives, but after the chances of panic attacks while driving become much more likely, he tries to get help. He is not really invested in seeing a therapist or psychologist more than once, so he is disappointed and tries to get over his fear by himself. After seizing up and getting stranded on the side of a giant bridge, a hitchhiking girl gets into the car with him. Carrying a cardboard suitcase and a harp, she sings him across the bridge.

The story ends realistically. Dr. Anderson talks about a short story describing the most important days of that person’s life. This story fits because it shows how his phobia was so acute and started affecting him so suddenly. The ending does not have some grand psychological cure for his phobia, but he comes to peace with it and acknowledges that there are some bridges he can’t try to drive across. (Smaller, more natural-looking ones do not make him feel like they are going to collapse as he is crossing them.) He considers making amends with his brother, and apologizing for mocking his irrational fear of elevators, and sharing his own story. But the main character is convinced that the tiny detail that was the harp in his “angel’s” hands would make his brother believe that he was lying.

The greatest strength of this story was in the point of view. Since the reader is in the character’s head, we are reading along as this phobia strikes him, and as he acknowledges the physicality and tangibility of his terror.

The Ocean (A)

After reading a long string of stories that were drab and dull, “The Ocean” by John Cheever read almost like a mystery! A man is wandering through his life, completely paranoid that his wife is trying to kill him, but the kicker is that the ending does not clearly state if he survived the story or not.

Cheever starts the story by setting the narrator as the protagonist writing a journal in the fears that he is in danger. His wife is super weird, but he starts to suspect she’s going to murder him when she mixes the salad dressing with lighter fluid or marinates the filets with pesticide. His wife loves the goldfish more than him, and as much as he tries to fix his life, he fails. The story is extremely compelling because we are reading what the man has written about his wife’s actions and how he subconsciously or consciously keeps forgiving or brushing these activities aside. Cheever also draws us away from this one man’s conflict as he eavesdrops on a man in a restaurant expressing a very similar plight. Cheever’s storytelling is masterful because of his use of dialogue in a scene. Even a disregarded conversation between characters who are not even characters has enough depth in it to move the story forward. The ending was a beautifully sculpted scene of our protagonist apparently waking in the middle of the night. Though Cheever does not expressly say he has died, our narrator is now traipsing around Europe looking for the “cottage” where his wife and daughter are waiting for him. He sings about “luve” and writes it everywhere he can during his search. I genuinely love the way that Cheever let his typically dry tone make this read like a suspenseful mystery. I was pulled forward and compelled to continue reading because I was convinced that the narrator, the main character, was not taking the situation seriously enough, and that he was just brushing the warning signs aside. This seemed to be a very subtle way to give the suspense, but it worked. 

NY Times Cheever Interview
A Cheever bio
Buy his stuff