Book Review: Mrs. Farrell

[osprey_archer]

You guys, you guys, I've finished William Dean Howells' Mrs. Farrell (originally published in serial version under the title Private Theatricals) and it is TWICE as gay as John W. Crowley's The Mask of Fiction led me to believe, because there is not only a shippable m/m couple but ALSO an f/f possibility!

The potential f/f definitely gets less development over the course of the book, but it starts off with a bang, as the widowed Mrs. Farrell flirts incessantly with her Rachel Woodward, a New England girl with a talent for drawing whom she means to make her protegee. Mrs. Farrell lolls against a boulder, causing Rachel to glance "with a slight anxiety at the freedom of Mrs. Farrell’s self-disposition, whose signal grace might well have justified its own daring.

'Rachel,' said Mrs. Farrell, subtly interpreting her expression, 'you’re almost as modest as a man; I’m always putting you to the blush. There, will that do any better?' she asked, modifying her posture. She gazed into the young girl’s face with a caricatured prudery, and Rachel colored faintly and smiled."

Soon, however, two young men interrupt this idyll. They are Easton and Gilbert, who fought together in the Civil War and have retained ever since a tender attachment to each other. Easton, Gilbert tells his sister-in-law, “is a man’s man, you’re right; he’s shyer of your admirable sex than any country boy; it’s no use to tell him you’re not so dangerous as you look.”

Howells repeatedly compares Easton and Gilbert's friendship to a love affair. Literally: when Easton tells Mrs. Farrell the circumstances of their meeting in the army, she replies, "it’s quite like a love-affair.” There's also a scene where Gilbert drops by Easton's room after Easton has gone to bed, and Howells notes that "the bright moon would have made [the room] uncomfortable for any but a lover." Gilbert, notably, appears perfectly comfortable.

(He does, however, leave the room at the end of the scene: they're clearly not sharing the bed. Howells also singles out the moment when "Gilbert came and laid his arm across his shoulder—the nearest that an American can come to embracing his friend," as a somewhat unusual display of physical affection. Lovers they may be, but "lovers" in the Victorian "I would kiss your footprints but scarcely dare to touch your hand" sense, clearly.)

And then you've got this exchange between Mrs. Farrell and Gilbert, which I think I've got to quote in full, because there's SO much going on here.

“How very droll!” said Mrs. Farrell. Then she said, looking at him through her eyelashes, “It’s quite touching to see such attached friends.”

Gilbert stirred uneasily on his block, and answered, “It’s a great honor to form part of a spectacle affecting to you, Mrs. Farrell—if you mean Easton and me.”

“Yes, I do. Don’t scoff at my weak impressibility. You must see that it’s a thing calculated to rouse a woman’s curiosity. You seem so very different!”

“Men and women are very different, in some respects,” calmly responded Gilbert, “but there have been quite strong attachments between them.”

“True,” rejoined Mrs. Farrell with burlesque thoughtfulness. “But in this case they’re both men.”

“Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head.

“You praise me more than I deserve. I didn’t take all your meaning. One of you is so mightily, so heroically manly, that the other necessarily womanizes in comparison. Isn’t that it? But which is which?”

“Modesty forbids me to claim either transcendent distinction.”

But this attached friendship is not to last: Easton and Gilbert both fall for Mrs. Farrell's lustrous beauty and wanton habit of draping herself over rocks. Or rather, Easton falls in love with her. Gilbert, despite scoffing that Mrs. Farrell's "flirtatiousness is vast enough for the whole world," falls against his better judgment into a lust for her so passionate and unreasoned that he attempts to woo Mrs. Farrell away from Easton while Easton is too ill to rise from his sickbed. GILBERT. DUDE.

(Mrs. Farrell, no angel, but a better man than Gilbert, ultimately begs Gilbert's sister-in-law to use her influence to make him leave before any more mischief can be wrought. Exeunt Gilbert, much wroth.)

"At the best," Howells muses, "love is fatal to friendship; the most that friendship can do is to listen to love’s talk of itself and be the confident of its rapturous joys, its transports of despair. The lover fancies himself all the fonder of his friend because of his passion for his mistress, but in reality he has no longer any need of the old comrade..." And so forth. Passionate male friendships were seen as a specific life-stage thing: they're sweet for young men in their teens and twenties, but they're meant to be set aside when as young men grow up and get married. ​



I was betting that the book would end with mix'n'match pairings: Easton would end with Rachel (Gilbert notes repeatedly how similar they are in temperament) and Gilbert with Mrs. Farrell.

However, I was quite wrong! No one ends up with anybody! The concluding chapter is set two years later, at Mrs. Farrell's theatrical debut in Boston. Howells hints at possible future pairings: Rachel is studying art in New York and perhaps being courted by Gilbert, while Mrs. Farrell and Easton are friends again, and she might love him after all.

It's unclear whether Easton and Gilbert ultimately reconciled, although tbh it sounds pretty hard to get over "You tried to lure away the woman I love while I was sick in bed with fever."

Comments

[luzula]

Interesting! And those are some great quotes. But the part about passionate friendships only being a stage in life does sound a bit sad...

[osprey_archer]

The passionate friendships as a life-stage thing reminded me of Edward Prime-Stevenson and the romantic friend of his youth, who eventually did the expected thing and got married, leaving EPS to pine, which certainly would make any future friendship awkward. (Admittedly I only know EPS from Imre but that ABSOLUTELY gave me the idea of him as a person who would sit at his friend's new fireside gazing at him fixedly while the friend and his wife awkwardly offer muffins.)

[regshoe]

I was just thinking of that! EPS wrote about a thinly fictionalised version of them in one of the stories in Her Enemy, Some Friends and Other Personages, which I (not knowing the real-life context at the time) thought very much seemed to be playing with the idea of same-gender romantic friendships as a juvenile thing to be put aside for marriage and what happens when that's not enough.

that ABSOLUTELY gave me the idea of him as a person who would sit at his friend's new fireside gazing at him fixedly while the friend and his wife awkwardly offer muffins.

XD Oh dear, I can see it...

[osprey_archer]

I think it's the way that he has Oswald spilling his ENTIRE life story on Imre before he finally gets to his confession of love. Anyone who could have one fictional character do that to another would be up to any amount of socially awkward staring at his former best friend who went and got MARRIED, the blackguard.

[anna_wing]

Passionate male friendships were seen as a specific life-stage thing:

The equivalent of girls in (single-sex) boarding-schools having crushes on older girls? I understand from the literature that that was a thing, though I noticed nothing like that in mine. But then I was only there for the 6th form, thus avoiding the Darwinian savagery of the Middle School.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, although in the 19th century the time period seems to last longer - it's not a school-specific life stage, but one that stretches on till the late twenties, when there's a growing expectation that the young men should get married already.

[troisoiseaux]

One of you is so mightily, so heroically manly, that the other necessarily womanizes in comparison. Isn’t that it? But which is which?

I'm not sure whether or not to be surprised that "but which of you is the 'wife'?" is a question that's been around since at least 1921, but here we are.

[osprey_archer]

The book was originally published in 1875, so it's far older than that, apparently!

[troisoiseaux]

Huh. Not sure why Google told me 1921??

[osprey_archer]

It's because the book has a long and circuitous publishing history. It was first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1875, under the title Private Theatricals, but it wasn't republished in book form until 1921, after Howells' death. I'm really curious if this was something that Howells had planned, and if so whether he revised the book first, as he often did when a serial became a book. Specifically, is the original even gayer?

[oracne]

This book seems to be crying out for fanfiction.

[osprey_archer]

It's a small tragedy that I didn't read it in time for Yuletide noms.

[regshoe]

Well, that certainly sounds like a lot :D There seems to be something about fighting together in the American Civil War, remembering Two College Friends...

Passionate male friendships were seen as a specific life-stage thing: they're sweet for young men in their teens and twenties, but they're meant to be set aside when as young men grow up and get married.

Which is what made this sort of thing so acceptable to write about openly, I suppose. A shame—although not having the endgame m/f pairings is something. Possibilities for fix-it fic? I shall have to read this one, in any case...

[osprey_archer]

I'm now reading another Howells book with a pair of attached friends who met in college, so apparently college and the War were THE places to make an intimate friend you would have to shuck off a few years later in order to get married.

But yes, Howells is writing about it very openly! Is it even subtext when one of the character literally muses that the friendship is quite like a love affair"? I guess that "quite like" gives a gossamer covering of plausible deniability, but that subtext is mere millimeters away from breaking through into full text.

[kore]

Passionate male friendships were seen as a specific life-stage thing: they're sweet for young men in their teens and twenties, but they're meant to be set aside when as young men grow up and get married. ​

That sounds sooo much like the supposed Greek ideal between the young Beloved and the older Lover &c &c.

[osprey_archer]

I think there's less expectation that there will be an age gap - Gilbert's only a little bit older than Easton, although possibly the fact that Gilbert started out with a higher army ranking makes up for this fact? However, by the end of the war, Easton is higher-ranked, and this is a point of soreness between them (partly because it came about as a result of shenanigans on the part of an officer who disliked Gilbert, but you do wonder if the role reversal just plain grates).

But yeah, I do wonder if the 19th century guys reading Plato and going "Ooooooh" were actually projecting onto Plato lots of stuff from intimate friendships in their own time. "Exactly like this, except it's ancient Greece so it's kind of okay if they have sex! Except Plato says sex is degrading, but nvm, KIND OF OKAY." And then later, when intimate friendships were no longer a recognized form of relationship/life stage, guys reading Plato for relationship inspiration just took it as read that it could only have ever have been like this long ago and far away in ancient Greece, OBVIOUSLY not in their own cultural context EVER. And by ever I mean fifty years previously.

I have zero proof of this, I'm just spitballing.

[kore]

That is intriguing spitballing! (menstrual migraine is starting up, bleah)

[littlerhymes]

No one ends up with anybody... ok so eventually the women end up together, that is my imagining.

As for the men ok well, trying to steal your bro's girl while your bro is on his NEAR DEATHBED might prove an obstacle but I am confident we can find a way.

[osprey_archer]

Mrs. Farrell shows up at Rachel's rooms all "Would you like me to pose for you... for your own private life class???" and Rachel is like "Well that probably IS more modest than going to a life class with lots of other people in it," and things.... progress.

Not sure how Gilbert and Easton will get over "trying to steal your bro's girl while your bro lies NEAR DEATH," though. I think Gilbert would have to save Easton's life or something like that.

[asakiyume]

“True,” rejoined Mrs. Farrell with burlesque thoughtfulness. “But in this case they’re both men.”

“Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head.

--That made me giggle. And then the next lines!

"the bright moon would have made [the room] uncomfortable for any but a lover." Gilbert, notably, appears perfectly comfortable. --That made me laugh too, and that was *you*, not Howells.

The trope of the woman ending a male friendship is so common ... I have always hated it. Right now The Lion King is coming to mind. The fact that you get it in Disney movies does feel like a holdover of the notion that men are supposed to put aside friendships when they get married--or at the very least, as the friends suggest, that the friendships are going to be lackluster shadows of their former selves.

... I mean, it's definitely true that when you change your circumstance significantly, how you interact is going to change too. Putting aside questions of the human heart, if a guy is suddenly going to be supporting a household, that's going to take up time that in the past he had free for cards and madcap adventures and whatnot. But if he had to suddenly take up the chief executive position in his father's diamond mine, or become king (hello, Henry IV), he's *also* have less time for his male buddies.

[osprey_archer]

"What friendship gets broken up in The Lion King?" I wondered, before at last recalling that Simba leaves behind Timon and Pumba, sort of. I think child!me never put it in that category because I felt Timon and Pumba were Bad Influences and therefore best left behind... and also they're there with Simba at the final battle, so no matter how they gripe about it, they're not as left behind as all that!

[asakiyume]

Yeah, they're the ones I was thinking of. Or like in Bambi, where someone (Thumper?) talks with disgust about their friends getting "twitterpated," and then one by one everyone pairs off.

Regarding not being left behind, I'm presuming even in Victorian literature, it was still conceived that the gentleman would see his old friends from time to time--at "the club" or whatever--but it just wouldn't be The Same (read: As Good).

[osprey_archer]

I shouldn't have cut that "love is fatal to friendship" quote short (although it's soooo long); it goes on, "The specter of friendship is sometimes invited to haunt the home of the lovers after marriage; but when their happiness has been flaunted in its face, when it has been shown the new house, the new china, the new carpets, the new garden, it is tacitly exorcised, and is not always called back again except to be shown the new baby. The young spouses are ever so willing to have the poor ghost remain; the wife learns whether it takes two or three lumps of sugar in its tea; the husband bids it smoke anywhere it likes, and the wife smiles a menacing acquiescence; but all the same they turn it out-of-doors. They praise it when it is gone, and they feel so much more comfortable to be alone."

So yes, I think the presumption is that after the marriage you will indeed see your chums ONLY at "the club," whereas before they could drop by your bachelor pad at all hours and smoke up a storm.

I will say I see something of this same dynamic in recent discussions about female friendship; obviously not everyone is like this, but it's apparently a Known Thing where your friend pairs off and then she practically falls out of your life. I think there must be a certain quantity of people who basically see their friends as temporary spouse stand-ins, to be left behind when Real Spouse shows up.

[asakiyume]

I was thinking about the case for women! I think it *is* similar, but somehow less focused on, maybe because in the past a woman's One True Purpose was go get married, so discarded friends had to see it as inevitable. It's *almost* inevitable for men, but not quite in the same way? Like maybe they're going to have to go get hitched and procreate, but their true purpose can still be researching fossils or decoding Mayan manuscripts or defeating the Russians or whatever. For men, marriage is a side hustle, which is why one can understand their buddies' being aggrieved when it takes up a lot of their time. Whereas, Alas, Poor Woman. You Must Put Aside Fossils and Mayan Manuscripts and defeating the Russians AND your friends, and devote yourself entirely to your husband's whims and comforts. Delightful!

[osprey_archer]

Curiously, 19th century American women actually had much more latitude to continue their intense romantic friendships after marriage - they continue to write really gushing letters to each other etc., which men tended to stop doing after marriage. Obviously there's still a difference in terms of "how much time do you have to hang out with your friend when you both have ten children," but I think practical difficulties fall into a different category than You Must Drop Your Friends Because Society.

This may be tied to the general feeling that It's Only Sex If There's a Penis Involved, which is kind of unfortunate, but nonetheless the women DEFINITELY got the better deal on this one.