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Mrs. Bridge

4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 · rating details · 1,273 ratings · 225 reviews

Before Betty Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique" there was "Mrs. Bridge," an inspired novel set in the years around World War II that testified to the sapping ennui of an unexamined suburban life. India Bridge, the title character, has three children and a meticulous workaholic husband. She defends her dainty, untouched guest towels from son Douglas, who has the gall to...more

Paperback, 246 pages

Published September 1st 1990 by North Point Press (first published 1958)

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Jan 01, 2010 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ficciones

What a patient and subtle novel! Mrs. Bridge, portrait of an upper-middle class matron in 1920s-30s-40s Kansas City, would be less effective if Connell’s satirical sense were cartoonish or caricatural, or if he had chosen to distance himself from the milieu of his own childhood with rounds of wordy denunciation. It is easy to caricature those who strive to be unerringly conventional--absolutely, unthreateningly recognizable to whatever peers they’re set among--as edgeless and dull, with a vast u...more What a patient and subtle novel! Mrs. Bridge, portrait of an upper-middle class matron in 1920s-30s-40s Kansas City, would be less effective if Connell’s satirical sense were cartoonish or caricatural, or if he had chosen to distance himself from the milieu of his own childhood with rounds of wordy denunciation. It is easy to caricature those who strive to be unerringly conventional--absolutely, unthreateningly recognizable to whatever peers they’re set among--as edgeless and dull, with a vast unquestioning silence where a self should be. Connell shows us how such people are actually the opposite of placidly dull. In fact with a little quiet attention, and some graceful empathy, their inner lives soon reveal anxiety and torment, jagged emotions of loneliness and deprivation, consciousness crazed by fear of standing out in a negative way.

Connell traces Mrs. Bridge’s ingratiating gestures and careful clichés back to their turbid source: the need to conceal the sexual frustration and loneliness of her merely ceremonial marriage. Every aspect of boring propriety, every blandly genteel touch--at a certain age a boy must begin to wear a homburg, young ladies must never go out without a purse--Connell shows to be dictated by a complex machinery of calculation, a desperate vigilance over appearances. We all know a Mrs. Bridge: agreeable and sociably smooth with strangers and acquaintances (her husband numbers among those), but a nagging burden to intimates, especially to his or her children, the class implications of whose presentation and deportment provokes an untiring, inescapable fussing. She’s the kind of parent from whom the least adventurous child must hide its life.

Connell’s is the best anatomy of I know of the deathliness of the middlebrow, and of the poverty of affluent people who lack for nothing except a sharable, cultural language for difficult experience. Mrs. Bridge’s everything-is-just-perfect respectability denies her emotional complexity, and it denies the body without even the facilely antithetical pretense of exalting the mind. She occupies a decorous, euphemistic, airlessly artificial state from which both intellectuality and sensuality are barred. Her state makes me think of the Americans disassociated from the earthy peasant traditions and meaningful religious practices of immigrant ancestors by the upward mobility of their anxiously assimilative, suburbanite parents or grandparents, while at the same time having little access to the sensual and emotional wisdom to be found in the art-forms the mainstream routinely ghettoizes with the daunting label “high culture.”

Mrs. Bridge’s more spirited children Ruth and Douglas rebel by seeking out exotically (and to their mother, odorously) ethnic lovers; even the conformist Carolyn marries “beneath her.” The Bridge children are the very type of contemporary Americans who whine about “not having a culture”--and they’re absolutely right. Or say, they have a culture, but it’s not one you can live in. None of the things Mrs. Bridge wishes to ritually pass down to her children is at all sustaining or nutritive, none of it says anything honest or memorable about our emotions, our minds, our bodies. Ruth and Douglas flee from her because she has nothing to give, because when she talks to them about life she lies. The tragedy of the book is that she loves them so deeply but earns their distrust by always pretending they’re still little children who can be fooled. In a wonderful vignette, Mrs. Bridge wants to put together and hand down to her kids albums made up of clippings of the short philosophical quotations that appear in the local society paper. She finally abandons the plan when one of the usually affirmative and cheery maxims turns out to contain the difficult humane substance she habitually shuns:

Mrs. Bridge, being considerably interested in these maxims, had at one point thought of beginning a nice scrapbook with the idea of handing it on to the children. Though she had not found time for this she continued to try to memorize certain quotations, despite the fact that there never seemed to be an appropriate occasion to re-quote them. A line from Montaigne set her to thinking:

"I have always observed a singular accord between super-celestial ideas and subterranean behavior."

In less crystalline style she had observed somewhat the same thing and was puzzled by it: she recalled the strange case of Dr. Foster, who had been positively identified at the burlesque, not once--which could have been attributed to his gathering material for a sermon--but several times. Furthermore he never mentioned it.
Over the wisdom of Montaigne she brooded, eventually reaching the conclusion that if super-celestial ideas were necessarily accompanied by subterranean behavior it might be better to forego them both.

Foregoing those, what are you left with? Dainty hand towels no one dries hands on.
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Jan 28, 2008 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

If I had the power to bestow canonical status, I would do so for this quietly powerful book by Evan S. Connell. Mrs. Bridge is a collection of heartbreaking vignettes, glimpses into a Kansas City housewife's life (or what passes for one) in the 1920s-40s. Our title character is a member of the leisure class, a country-club matron and mother of three. Impeccably behaved and nearly dead inside, Mrs. Bridge longs to feel needed by her family, to elicit passion from her lawyer husband and win back h...more If I had the power to bestow canonical status, I would do so for this quietly powerful book by Evan S. Connell. Mrs. Bridge is a collection of heartbreaking vignettes, glimpses into a Kansas City housewife's life (or what passes for one) in the 1920s-40s. Our title character is a member of the leisure class, a country-club matron and mother of three. Impeccably behaved and nearly dead inside, Mrs. Bridge longs to feel needed by her family, to elicit passion from her lawyer husband and win back her children's love. In brief dilettantish bursts (seeking joy or self-improvement), she takes drawing lessons, reads about politics, tries to increase her vocabulary, plays Spanish records, and volunteers (gloved) with the poor. After reading Zokoloff, she drives to the polls expecting to vote liberal...but at the moment of reckoning, "she pulled the lever recording her wish for the world to remain as it was." Again and again, Mrs. Bridge's own fear of conflict or even discomfort quells every possibility for growth, squashing even her tiniest rebellions. She wants to please the world around her, not upset it -- even as that very world is what keeps her powerless and sad. What comforts Mrs. Bridge above all is "a unanimous vote."

Reading this book, you'll never have to remind yourself that many others (from European Jews to her own Black laundress) have it far worse than Mrs. Brige; remarkably and subtly, the book is about that, too: elitism, racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and sexism seething beneath the surface of the Bridges' world. Mrs. Bridge agreeably locks herself in her cage, singing the way she is told. Yet if she is complicit, she is certainly not evil.

In one of the book's finest chapters, a tornado hurtles toward the country club where Mr. and Mrs. Bridge are dining; all the other patrons (and even the waiters) retire to the basement, but Mr. Bridge is determined that no storm will deprive him of steak and wine. Mrs. Bridge never thinks of leaving her husband for safety, and while she is put out by his "obstinance," she is never really afraid.

This scene and this book feel very relevant today, especially this election season. Mrs. Bridge is a study of what's still the matter with Kansas City, the American view that everything is a threat but nothing can really harm us.(less)

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Mar 19, 2012 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: they-made-me-do-it, chicklits

I can't for the life of me figure out what makes this novel so great, but damn it is great. I wish I knew why.

You might protest and cry, "Oh but I have already read so many novels about repressed twentieth-century housewives!" But that is like being offered a plate of chocolate chip cookies and saying, "No thank you. I've tried those before."

Chocolate chip cookies are delicious and aren't less so for being frequently baked. And anyway, you haven't had a cookie quite like this one before.

Told in...more

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Jul 17, 2007 Becca Becca rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's amazing that Connell managed to write an entire book about the inner thoughts of a character who has absolutely no self-realized passion, dreams, thoughts, or desires...and that it's such a captivating and haunting novel.

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Aug 21, 2012 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-war-years

I enjoyed this book and the character of Mrs. Bridge more than I did Mr. Bridge, but I'm giving them the same rating because they were both so well-written and revealing about the era and the relationships of the late 1930's. Here's a quote that gives a sense of the style and the content:
“She was not certain what she wanted from life, or what to expect from it, for she had seen so little of it, but she was sure that in some way - because she willed it to be so - her wants and her expectations w...more

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Mar 05, 2012 J. Tyson-Capper rated it 5 of 5 stars

Indie.Lit.Matters.wordpress.com

Certainly don't judge this book by its cover!

Perhaps we are drawn, in part at least, to the stories of ordinary people slowly drowning in their own meaninglessness, not because we find relief in being different, but in the relief to read that there are others; that we are not alone in our struggle to attach significance to our lives, not alone in our petty victories nor indeed in our pathetic humiliations. And out of such identification comes a kind of aesthetic in...more

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May 20, 2011 Cyndy Aleo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

I first read the novel Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, along with its companion, Mr. Bridge, shortly after seeing the Merchant-Ivory movie based on the novels. When I started going through my shelves and boxes of books to determine what I should keep and what should go, I was eager to reread these two books, sure that they would stay in my permanent collection. I'm unsure now whether time or circumstance has changed my opinion.

::: Life of the Idle Rich :::

India Bridge is a woman as common as he...more I first read the novel Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, along with its companion, Mr. Bridge, shortly after seeing the Merchant-Ivory movie based on the novels. When I started going through my shelves and boxes of books to determine what I should keep and what should go, I was eager to reread these two books, sure that they would stay in my permanent collection. I'm unsure now whether time or circumstance has changed my opinion.

::: Life of the Idle Rich :::

India Bridge is a woman as common as her name was uncommon. Set in the years leading up to, and during, World War II, she leads a life stereotypical of the country club set in those days. A steady parade of manual servants does most of the work around the home, and Mrs. Bridge's main pastimes are shopping, socializing, and worrying, although not necessarily in that order. Her husband, a successful lawyer, puts in long hours at the office, and she seems adrift, trying to make herself busy yet never finding the time to do the things she wants to do.

The Bridges have three children: Ruth, an exotic beauty who never quite fits into the family structure; Carolyn, who has all the intelligence and "sameness" that Ruth seems to lack; and Douglas, the youngest, who seems to be very much all boy. As the novel progresses, Mrs. Bridge seems at times confused and left behind by each of her children in turn, and nearly abandoned by her husband.

::: Short and Bittersweet :::

Connell's writing style (which he continues with Mr. Bridge) consists of very short chapters, often less than a page in length, containing small snapshots of Mrs. Bridge's life. Reading Mrs. Bridge feels almost like looking at a photo album; small slices of life are there for you to peruse at your leisure, but you never can get quite the entire picture.

When I first read Mrs. Bridge, I was struck by the realism that Connell managed to convey in these short snippets; the constant underlying terror of Mrs. Bridge is palpable, as she feels that the world moves around her and past her, leaving her ever more in the dark. She has a repertoire of things she can say to keep the conversation moving, never letting on what she doesn't know, and always afraid to speak her mind or even disagree with her husband. In one scene, she and her husband are dining out at the club when a tornado warning is communicated to all the patrons by the steward. Her husband would rather continue to eat his steak rather than flee to the safety of the club's basement, and not once does Mrs. Bridge think to leave him and seek safety for herself, but rather goes to another table to get her husband some more butter, since the wait staff has disappeared.

The realism of Mrs. Bridge, though, felt weighty and depressing. It may be harder for me, as a stay-at-home mother myself who gave up my career to take care of my children, to view Mrs. Bridge as anything but a woman to be pitied. So completely has she given herself over to her husband and family that she has no real interests, and feels almost like a husk of a person. One scene in particular made me want to slap both her and her daughter; her daughter comes home searching for a pair of shoes she wanted to wear to an informal dance, and upon learning that they have been given to charity, pitches such a fit about wearing a different pair that Mrs. Bridge abandons a self-study lesson she was working on to go replace the shoes for her daughter. Every small moment that contains a flicker of personality and hope that Mrs. Bridge will find herself is as quickly squashed as this.

The last scene of the novel (and believe me, this gives nothing of the plot away) was set up differently in the movie version, and didn't convey the utter hopelessness of her life. As Mrs. Bridge is pulling out of her garage in the Lincoln she never did feel comfortable driving, the car stalls as it has often done in the past. She tries to exit the car, but discovers that the car has stalled in such a way that all four doors are unable to be opened, and there she sits, trapped in a car that symbolizes her life. It left me with such an utter feeling of despair that I couldn't wait to be done with the book and toss it in the pile of books I don't have any desire to read again.

This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Mrs_Br...
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Aug 31, 2010 Ellen Keim rated it 2 of 5 stars

This must not be my kind of book. I see that almost everyone gave the book four if not five stars, but to me the book was just "ok." Maybe I needed to read Mr. Bridge first. Or to have seen the movie that was based on both novels ("Mr. and Mrs. Bridge"). As one reviewer admits, there was no plot, which I can live with. But the fact that there was never any self-awareness on the part of the main character left me frustrated. The best part of the book was that it was made up of vignettes rather th...more

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Jun 20, 2010 Kieran Walsh rated it 3 of 5 stars

It’s a topic that's well trotted out now, I believe. The 'culture wars' continue to morph from generation to generation (or from administration to administration, depending on which way you look at it). For all Mrs. Bridge's conformity and predictability she is still a likeable character and unknown to herself makes a remarkable bellwether! For dealing with some amazing social and cultural (mini)revolutions: WWII, feminism, intellectualism, independent children etc she seems not just remarkably...more

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May 07, 2010 Don rated it 3 of 5 stars

One reviewer below describes this book as about "a 1930s upper middle class housewife struggling to find purpose in her existence in a changing world of modern appliances and a "perfect" husband provides everything so she has to do nothing." It's an apt description, up to a point. What I found most frustrating about the book--and perhaps this is just my own perspective as a '60's and beyond person--is that Mrs. Bridge, doesn't really "struggle"; time and again, she embarks on an effort to expand...more

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Sep 21, 2009 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Another annotation from the MFA/CW work at Goddard:

Tiny Bricks Build an Exquisite Structure: The Effects of Teensy Chapters in Evan S. Connell’s “Mrs. Bridge”

Writers use lots of words. Sometimes too many. What a contrast, what a pleasure and relief, to read the work of Evan S. Connell in “Mrs. Bridge,” built as it is with the tiniest of bricks -- microchapters of anything from a few paragraphs to a few pages, at most -- each of which is as exquisite as a good joke or a tight poem.
The format of t...more Another annotation from the MFA/CW work at Goddard:

Tiny Bricks Build an Exquisite Structure: The Effects of Teensy Chapters in Evan S. Connell’s “Mrs. Bridge”

Writers use lots of words. Sometimes too many. What a contrast, what a pleasure and relief, to read the work of Evan S. Connell in “Mrs. Bridge,” built as it is with the tiniest of bricks -- microchapters of anything from a few paragraphs to a few pages, at most -- each of which is as exquisite as a good joke or a tight poem.
The format of tiny chapters serves to render these surgical slices of Mrs. Bridge’s life without the need for extended exposition or authorial commentary. Each scene delivered in Connell’s microchapters presents so few elements that the elements that do make it into a given chapter shine upon each other with deep resonance, much as the elements in a poem or a joke, thanks in great part to their close proximity.
The resonance builds fast in such tight quarters, with the result that the final line of each microchapter is typically either funny or heart-wrenching or both. Take, for example, Chapter 30, “The Search for Love,” in which Mrs. Bridge acts out of character: She requests a declaration of love from Mr. Bridge. Unsurprisingly, what she gets is a grunt. When she becomes embarrassed and shifts in her seat, she accidentally trips the buzzer for the maid, Harriet, who “appeared in the doorway to see what it was that Mrs. Bridge desired.” (69)
Harriet’s appearance is nothing out of the ordinary, and Connell’s description of it would be banal if it weren’t for the fact that in the tight confines of this microchapter, the only elements we’re given are 1) Mrs. Bridge’s “terrifying, inarticulate need” (68) to be desired, 2) a symbolic wedge created by her own hands in the form of the floral centerpiece that separates her from her husband, and 3) his own utter lack of acknowledgement of her need.
Were these elements to be spread out across the span of a longer chapter length, it’s easy to envision them becoming diluted. Yet in the confines of Connell’s microchapter, the banality of Harriet appearing to see what her mistress wants is pathetic and ironic. Mrs. Bridge wants something desperately, yet she can’t get it from Harriett, the person whose sole function is to cater to the family’s needs. The simple banality of Harriett showing up to ask what Mrs. Bridge wants throbs with heartache because its description comes as the tail end of a terse selection of important elements. It reverberates in importance because it is one of the few things allowed to appear in the chapter.
Another of many examples of a terminal line reverberating with heartache in the cage of a microchapter is found in Chapter 69, “Non Capisco.” In this chapter, only two things happen: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge visit Ruth before departing for their European vacation, and Mrs. Bridge encounters a woman in “vast despair” who cannot speak English. Again Connell structures a microchapter that stacks a narratively important scene -- i.e., a brief glimpse of mother-daughter unhappiness -- with an everyday scene of no major consequence, and concludes with a line that reverberates with sadness: “‘I’m awfully sorry,’ Mrs. Bridge said helplessly. ‘I wish I knew what to do, but I just don’t understand.’” (149)
What is there that’s remarkable about this last line? Nothing, on the surface. It would seem trivial were it located at the end of a long chapter with other elements separating it from the image of Mrs. Bridge, baffled at her estranged daughter, Ruth, who has just turned on her mother “a look of implacable defiance.” (149) Because the two encounters are juxtaposed so closely in this microchapter, we have a seemingly irrelevant encounter able to illuminate the sadness of the far more important element: Mrs. Bridge’s inability to understand Ruth’s antipathy.
When they’re not heartbreaking, Connell’s terminal chapter lines are funny. He sets the tone for his funny microchapters as early as Chapter 2, “Children,” which wraps up the telling of Mrs. and Mr. Bridge’s child-bearing strategy with the conclusion that “Even if the third had also been a girl they would have let it go at that; there would have been no sense in continuing what would soon become amusing to other people.” (3) This line accomplishes its funniness in a few ways: First, it characterizes Mr. and Mrs. Bridge as a couple so adverse to nonconformity that they would allow even such a momentous decision as childbearing to be influenced by others. The primness of this sentiment in this context is so startling that it’s funny. The funniness of the terminal line also relies on the brevity of this three-paragraph chapter; we’re conditioned to expect a punch line at the end of such a short passage, and Connell doesn’t disappoint.
This is not to say that Connell isn’t funny when he’s heartbreaking or heartbreaking when he’s funny. Chapter 76, “Telegram,” is a prime, two-paragraph example of heartbreaking wit. After receiving a surreal, imaginative telegraph from Douglas congratulating Mrs. and Mr. Bridge on their “MEMORABLE OCCASION AND IN BEHALF ENTIRE COMPANY EXPRESS HOPE YOUR CONTINUED SUCCESS,” (163) a la the stereotypical butchered English of a fortune cookie, Mrs. Bridge thanks him for the telegram but misses the joke entirely: “... I do think the American Express company must have gotten their messages mixed up...” (163)
Do we laugh or cry at her cluelessness? We do both, throughout the book, grateful for the rhythm set up by this gifted mosaicist who, to steal from e.e. cummings, rattles like angry candy within the boxes of these exquisite microchapters. (less)

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Jan 10, 2013 Jodi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Jodi by: Marika Chronister

Shelves: book-club-books, books-in-a-series

Read this for my book club and probably would never have read it otherwise. Didn't know there was a book about Mr. Bridge either until I started reading it. I was kind of frustrated how uptight Mrs. Bridge was about making good impressions and worrying about her status in society. However, had I lived in the 1950's I would have probably been raised by a similar mother too. The story about the children combing their teacher's long greasy hair made me gag!! I could see so much of my boy in Douglas...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Angela rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club-suggestions

Aren't we all Mrs. Bridge at times? Wanting to say and do the right things (whatever our perspective of "right" is) but often not knowing how. Mrs. Bridge has the best intentions which made my heart love and ache for her at the same time.

In Mrs. Bridge, Connell was masterful in his ability to capture nuances. Like Mrs. Bridge, how often do we want to learn something new, create something, be someone, but in spite of having all the time in the world, can't find the time to do it.

I also hurt for...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bleak, moving portrait of an upper middle-class woman with no purpose to shape her days, no understanding from her husband, and ever-increasing alienation from her children. Mrs. Bridge lives in an artificial world proscribed by the etiquette of her social circle, yet she yearns mutely for more meaning in her life. Interestingly, it was written in 1959, right before women's lib. It's set in Kansas City in the 1920's through the 1940's, in the wealthy Country Club Plaza neighborhood with its Colo...more

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Mar 03, 2010 Jenn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This really is a brilliant book - it is a sensitive, subtle and ironic characterization of the bourgeois middle class housewife of the 1930s and 1940s. It is amazing to me how insulated Mrs. Bridge is from everything around her - not just her own feelings, but those of her children and her dearest friends or even those in her employ. She focuses so much on image and the way she appears to others that she gives up control over so many things in her life - as to become totally useless to her famil...more This really is a brilliant book - it is a sensitive, subtle and ironic characterization of the bourgeois middle class housewife of the 1930s and 1940s. It is amazing to me how insulated Mrs. Bridge is from everything around her - not just her own feelings, but those of her children and her dearest friends or even those in her employ. She focuses so much on image and the way she appears to others that she gives up control over so many things in her life - as to become totally useless to her family and friends.

In fact - she is so cut off and insulated from current events that affect the world - she doesn't even discuss the Prohibition - they have enough money that it doesn't affect them and they can continue to enjoy their cocktails. Even the Great Depression doesn't affect her shopping excursions and finding Veblen's 1899 "Theory of the Leisure Class" piques her interest and then her disgust. It's a reality she's not willing to face.

She's bored - she dabbles in learning Spanish and painting and other hobbies - her pursuit is half-hearted at best. She even manages some charity work - handing out hand-me-down clothing to the poor, with the other wives, all wearing gloves. But, like the other wives, she loses interest after a few months and wonders, "What's the use?"

When her painting class teacher appears, destitute, at her door selling magazine subscriptions - it doesn't really seem to register to her that this is happening all over the country. A robbery at a cocktail party makes it clear that not all is as it seems among her set. The thieves didn't even make off with as much as they expected as some of the guests presented better than they were doing. Diamond or zircon - does it really matter? Even that brush with the Great Depression elicits only a mild chuckle from the Bridges about crime.

Mrs Bridge has been used by her husband has as an object upon which to focus his efforts toward professional success and to lavish ostentatious gifts (like the fancy fur and the fancy car). She is somewhat embarrassed by these gifts - she knows she doesn't really need more things, but she accepts them because it makes him feel good to give them. Finally, she is surprised with a gift he promised when they were courting 20+ years earlier -- a European vacation. She is giddy with excitement -- one of the strongest emotions she displays in the book. After some brief attempts to experience life of the "other" - their vacation is cut short by the Nazi invasion of Poland!

Mrs. Bridge did her best to teach her kids her values - or values that she thought would help them get along better in life. Some of those vignettes are precious - such as girdles for the girls when they were 14, insisting her son start wearing a hat - because that is how it is done; explaining to her eldest daughter that ladies wear hosiery; keeping her son from wearing shirts with ragged edges - exclaiming that it wasn't a sin to be poor, "but we're not!"

Grace Barron is her foil - painfully aware of the absurdity of the pretense of "country club" culture and the velvet lined trap in which these wives find themselves. She raises questions of ethics and morality at cocktail parties. She finds hilarious irony in the local minister's sermons and when she is feeling low, demands that Mrs. Bridge not be "gay" all the time, but Mrs Bridge fails to understand the request for genuine connection and loses her friend.

Mrs Bridge is harmless and not helpful - she is pitied and gently treated by others. She finds it difficult to even drive or park her car - gratefully accepting offers from bystanders to park it for her, rewarding them with a half dollar and never suspecting that they might just drive off and steal the car. Her children grow up and grow distant from her - and it surprises her when she realizes the strong bonds they share with each other or even with Mr. Bridge.

She never breaks out of the role as "Angel in a Glass Box" - the barrier between her and the real world is so clear and brittle, but so palpable - and perhaps it is her fear of causing injury by breaking that barrier that keeps her in its confines. Ironically, that's how she meets her end.(less)

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Dec 12, 2009 Kirsti rated it 4 of 5 stars

Disaggregated, cool, remote. The book has its share of dramatic events, but nearly all of them happen "offstage," with the characters describing what happened or trying to piece together what has gone on. Most of the narrative and dialogue focus on everyday tasks, rainy days, and small talk. Weirdly, this novel reminds me of the nonfiction Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which is not nearly as polished or as powerful but has a similar sense of detachment.

Grace Barron is my favorite character (I sus...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Cody VC rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Cody by: Mom

I'm always impressed by authors who manage to draw out the malignity of (a particular variety of) suburban life while keeping all the principals sympathetic characters, and without going heavy-handed. You may not understand all these people and their motivations, but that's part of the problem of this sort of life - the false fronts, the small talk, the parties and outings and friends you only really know after they're dead - if you're lucky.

The structure's great - vignettes rather than chapters...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Longfellow rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not a plot-driven narrative. Chronologically presented but many scenes cover events that often remain in isolation, technically "un-concluded." A scene is described or observed sparely but vividly, and the reader pauses briefly to infer meaning. Connecting any scene to another is rarely prioritized. Instead, these short vignettes (117 chapters in 246 pages) create a portrait of Mrs. Bridge, her relationship with family and friends, her assumptions and prejudices, etc. I stole that word, "portrai...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Julia rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is a companion to Mr. Bridge and has been made into a movie with Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward. I must look for it in the movie store as it is not on NetFlix!

The era is 1930 - 1940 ish, Kansas City and the Bridge family is a middle to upper class family living a priviledged life. Mrs. Bridge is taken up with doing everything in an appropriate and proper manner and quite concerned with keeping up appearances.

She comes to realize that her life isn't all that happy or fulfilling. In...more

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Sep 03, 2010 Faith Justice rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, given-away

A brilliant book! Evan S. Connell anticipates Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique and "the problem with no name" by four years. Mrs. Walter Bridge is a pampered upper-middle class wife, clueless mother, and model community member who struggles with her own identity outside of her relationships with others. She's bored, empty, scared and has no language to express her needs. And she's not the only one in her set - a good friend commits suicide. Although the story is poignant and sad, the writin...more

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Jul 13, 2007 Margaret added it

This is the saddest book I've ever read. This book makes King Lear look like a bedtime story.

What's remarkable is that nothing that sad ever happens in it-- no genocide, loss, hardly even any death. It's just this relentless collection of tiny moments in a life. It's a huge achievement of craft, and it would never, NEVER get published today.

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Apr 05, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, merkins, penguin-classics

A quietly devastating portrayal of a housewife shorn of all personality or free will, raising her typical kids in a typical Midwestern breadbasket under the aegis of her all-powerful husband (who has a sequel in which to express his own typicality). The effect is similar to the poetic melodrama of The Book of Disquiet, but with a more lightly mocking and tender-heartedly sympathetic tone, and less insufferable moaning posing as philosophical profundity. In under 200 canny pages this novel slowly...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Cort McMeel rated it 5 of 5 stars

I happened to read this book and finish it on the day Evan Connell passed away, this past Thursday Jan 11 2013...What an incredible find! A novel of suburban upper class angst in the 50s really isn't my cup of tea and it just goes to show you great writing can make one care about any character. I was floored. So seemingly Simple in its sort of impressionistic layering of anecdotal chapters. Mr. Connell creates a full, vivid portrait of a lost, unfullfilled wife. Riveting and harrowing, the story...more

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Sep 21, 2007 Clare rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 5questions

This book blew me away with its crystal-clear, uncluttered prose and sly emotional impact. The author's use of little vignettes to show a wealth of information about his characters is so admirable - he's all show and no tell. I envy people who can write like Evan Connell a whole big lot. See, like that sentence? Just not very good.

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Jan 28, 2011 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club-reads

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 01, 2011 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting portrayal of World War II era American society. A satyrical work, but not always sharp edged. Obviously, Mrs. Bridge's narrow world view is not ment to be taken at face value, but it still made her an unlikeable character for me. She represented too much of what bothers me about some Americans; the "America-first" ignorance which is still prevelant today. What saves her character is that she makes overtures of trying to open her mind, although it never creaks open very far. Her ap...more

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Oct 13, 2010 Justin Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I go back and forth on this. Is it a great achievement of sympathetic yet ironic craft? Or is it an okay goy version of Roth's 'Goodbye, Columbus'? Is it masterfully subtle (compared to, say Pynchon), or eye-rollingly heavy handed (compared to, say, Yates)?
No matter what, the fact that the same author has also written a book called 'Diary of a Rapist,' and a novel of the crusades in which the characters, so I hear, speak in archaic English, means that I can't do otherwise than respect Connell's...more

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Feb 11, 2010 Cathy Day rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-my-students, books-i-love

I loved that this books is a novel in vignettes, short short stories. It's a big thing made of small things. It's also terribly funny, but ultimately poignant.

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Nov 05, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, edminster-group

"She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know."

This is a beautifully written novel. Built through a mosaic of vignettes and episodes in the life of the titular character and her family, the novel gently limns the world of the aptly named Mrs. Bridge. She is a part of the generation that tries to hold on to the past during the era between the wars. It is not immediately clear that her family is living throu...more "She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know."

This is a beautifully written novel. Built through a mosaic of vignettes and episodes in the life of the titular character and her family, the novel gently limns the world of the aptly named Mrs. Bridge. She is a part of the generation that tries to hold on to the past during the era between the wars. It is not immediately clear that her family is living through the depression, although early in the novel the hard work of her husband is emphasized, it is hard work that pays off in a better life for Mrs. Bridge and the family. Toward the end of the book, their son Douglas heads off to WWII, signalling an end to an era. While the senior Bridges are tradition bound and deeply conformist, their children and their society are changing rapidly. Evan Connell paints a sympathetic but fairly condescending portrait of Mrs. Bridge as she fights to hold back the tide of these changes. She struggles to preserve proprieties and appearances as her three children grow increasingly rebellious at the stifling social conventions that she seeks to force upon them.
Meanwhile, as the children grow away from her, and with Mr. Bridge completely focused on his legal work, Mrs. Bridge begins to sense an emptiness in her own life. At one point, a friend who later takes her own life asks : "Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tales--the ones who were all hollowed out in back?" This is pretty clearly Connell's point in the book, that Mrs. Bridge, however likable, is indeed hollow, that she is all deference to her husband, service to her children, and conformity to public mores, with no room left over for a unique and genuine person. He conveys this message with great humor and no little understanding, but it can't help but be a pretty harsh indictment of her essentially wasted life.
Then there are two scenes with Mr. Bridge, one where, having gone to their club to celebrate their anniversary, he refuses to leave the dinner table as a tornado approaches. The twister does indeed miss them, but the episode suggests the solidity of Mr. Bridge and of their marriage, both unyielding even to forces of nature :
"The tornado, whether impressed by his intransigence or touched by her devotion, had drawn itself up into the sky and was never seen or heard of again."
And in the most moving scene, Mrs. Bridge, despite having not cooked in years, tries to make Mr. Bridge's favorite dessert, pineapple bread, and biffs it horribly, Mr. Bridge gently tells her, "Never mind", and the next day brings her a dozen roses. Though Mr. Bridge is rarely even present in the book, these episodes capture the strength and essential goodness of the marriage.
Finally, though the children move away, even move quite far away, the most pleasant thoughts of the more rebellious daughter are of home and the other daughter returns whenever there's trouble in her own ill-advised marriage. And the son, Douglas, grows up to be a man very much like his father. They, like Mrs. Bridge, and like the author himself, seem to realize that though the life that the Bridges have made may at first seem emotionally stunted, overly circumscribed, and unfulfilling, upon further reflection, there is something powerfully compelling about it.
This book is terrific, by turns moving and funny and heartbreaking - there are many small moments of humor that both lighten and enliven the story. But in the end, the Bridges come off much better than they first appear, and forty years later they look better still. Would that we had a bridge back to the simple values they represent. (less)

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Jun 18, 2010 Hannah Messler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd finished Moby-Dick and was suffering that lost, faithless feeling where you probably are gonna end up having to read about six graphic novels just to tread water till you're able to believe the world of another book . . . and anyway all my books are in boxes, so. But just in case, I opened a box, and there on top was this little yellow paperback David Markson had been encouraging me to read, before I was fired, before he died. And so I did and it was wonderful. If you have not read it, do, a...more

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About Evan S. Connell

Evan S. Connell, over the last half century, has published nineteen books of fiction, poetry, and essays, several of which—including the best-sellers Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, and the erudite, anecdotal, and totally unique nonfiction book Son of the Morning Star—are American classics. I've admired his work for many years, since first reading Diary of a Rapist, and was happy for a chance to inter...more

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Quotes from Mrs. Bridge

“Her first name was India-she was never able to get used to it.” — 5 people liked it

“ She was not certain what she wanted from life, or what to expect from it, for she had seen so little of it, but she was sure that in some way - because she willed it to be so - her wants and her expectations were the same.
For a while after their marriage she was in such demand that it was not unpleasant when he fell asleep. Presently, however, he began sleeping all night, and it was then she awoke more frequently, and looked into the darkness, wondering about the nature of men, doubtful of the future, until at last there came a night when she shook her husband awake and spoke of her own desire. Affably he placed one of his long white arms around her waist; she turned to him then, contentedly, expectantly, and secure. However, nothing else occurred, and in a few minutes he had gone back to sleep.
This was the night Mrs. Bridge concluded that while marriage might be an equitable affair, love itself was not.” — 3 people liked it

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