game of life

Around page 300 I started to imagine that John Cheever had a dollhouse.  Instead of sitting down at his typewriter, I think he sat down in front of his dolls each morning and got them dressed for the day.   It is funny to see how the characters are loaded up with accessories.  First you have the man, who is dressed up in  a suit and hat and given a briefcase to hold.  Then he gets his wife with her dress and her stiff hair.  Then one or two children.  The man is given a job.  The woman is given some social responsibilities in the neighborhood.  The children are given toys and, occasionally, pneumonia.  

At the outset of almost every story you meet a man weighted with responsibilities.  Most of the time, it is his desire to shirk these responsibilities that creates the drama of the story.  At first, I was irritated by these men.  I wished they hadn't gotten themselves into the domestic mess in the first place if they were only going to want to get out of it.  But then I began thinking about how little choice they must have had.  It would have been expected of them to marry and set up households while they were still quite young.  I can't imagine what mayhem might have ensued if that had been expected of me.  Actually, I can, and there is still a part of me that thinks my inevitable nervous rebellion would have been glamorous and sophisticated and character-forming.  But that's just because I spent all my adolescent summers reading John Cheever for Teens.

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