The Women on the Porch

by Caroline Gordon

One of the most remarkable novels ever written by an American woman about women. First published in 1943, the story follows a woman's flight from Manhattan and her unfaithful husband to her rural ancestral home. Southern Classics Series.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Womens, Southern, American, Womens Fiction

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Caroline Gordon was an American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and an O. Henry Award in 1934.

Reviews

[Candi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was much I liked about this 1943 novel by Caroline Gordon, and a few things that were a bit dissatisfying. Primarily, I fell in love with the setting – alternating between New York City and Tennessee, the southern landscape captured my attention the most. I also appreciated much of the author’s writing – prose that sometimes sparkled and reflections that were often very penetrating. What failed for me in this book was what I felt to be a lack of cohesiveness in the plot. There were many threads to this story that I had trouble tying together initially, although by book’s end, I believe I grasped the main point. Still, I think the overall reading experience would have been more enjoyable for me personally if the story did not jump between multiple characters and numerous points in time with a very loose chronological framework. Furthermore, I had no strong feelings towards any of the characters - whether positive or negative - except perhaps the horse.

The novel begins with Catherine Chapman fleeing her husband and New York for her ancestral home of Swan Quarter in Tennessee – this following her discovery of her husband, Jim’s, infidelity. The description of Catherine’s feelings upon the realization of this betrayal is very realistic as well as rather powerful: "It had been three days since she had discovered her husband’s infidelity. The time seemed longer than all the rest of her life put together. There had been first the terrible quiet. You looked out on the street and you could have pushed the houses over with your hand and the cars and the people did not move. If you could have stood there while it flowed around you, flowed over you, stopped your eyes, your ears, but you knew that at any second sound would come like thunder, and then you knew that it was your own least movement that would set it crashing all about you…" Here you can truly sense the overwhelming feeling of this shock. Upon her arrival in Swan Quarter, Catherine is reunited with the Lewis women - her grandmother, her Aunt Willy and her Cousin Daphne. All are living on their own in the old homestead with no living male relatives; they struggle to make ends meet. In contrast, their neighbors, the Manigaults, are moneyed and of a higher social class. Tom Manigault, however, is a bit of an enigma to his mother, Elsie, as he seemingly represents a contradiction to everything she holds true. Each character has a short moment in the spotlight, if you will, when we get a snapshot of a point in his or her life that provides us with an inkling of what shaped their current position in life. At times, the narration switched suddenly and momentarily confused me. We also hear a whispering of ghosts; it seems Swan Quarter is mired in the past. Caroline is caught between two worlds and must make a choice between the past and the future.

This was my first book by Caroline Gordon. Even though this one didn’t particularly win me over, that which did appeal to me is tempting enough to perhaps try another of her novels. I have to wonder if what she was attempting here was just sort of lost on me. I plan to take a look at her other titles and see if something else catches my eye for future reading.

"It seemed to her that she was alone in the woods and the glittering light had a voice, a voice that would have spoken but for the command laid upon it, and then suddenly the stilled woods gave tongue and the air all around was quivering with the wild, high-pitched, despairing cry that brought her to her feet and sent her racing towards the house."

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether the fault is with me or with the author, I'm not sure, but I could not get fully invested with this novel or these characters because there were so many points of view, branching off into different tangents and thoughts that I easily lost the thread. There was no real main character and no main story; every character seemed to have his or her own story. I didn't particularly care for any of them, though I wanted to, and tried hard to have some sympathy for their difficulties. There's a lot I did appreciate. The setting and the descriptions of the southern landscape were wonderful. Her portrayal of the black characters as intelligent, feeling, complex human beings was very good, although it was offset by the treatment of them by their white employers. This book was written in 1943, so it was simply a book of its time. Horses and dogs factored heavily in this novel, being appreciated and cared for by their owners.

The ending was a little abrupt and confusing, so, while I'm glad I read this, it was not a favorite.

[Camie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written in 1943 this is the story of Catherine who leaves New York City after finding out her husband Jim has been unfaithful to her and returns to her southern roots in Swan Quarter. She seems more happy in the rural setting and the company of her matriarchal family which includes her Grandmother Kit, Aunt Willy, and cousin Daphne. The women all have in common a love of the countryside, the old farmhouse where they gather on the porch, a horse named Red, and the fact that they have all been disappointed by the men in their lives. From the forward we know this is the retelling of the tragic tale of Eurydice and Orpheus, but nowhere in the book does it mention that connection. It also says the book also puzzles many readers, and I was certainly among them. I found it to be downright confusing ,without chronological order, and with no beginning or end. A mishmash of a book with a couple of chapters that seemed to be thrown in at the end just to complete the sheer confusion. The best character was the horse. Read for OTSLT- Feb 2 stars

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Set in the South in the early 40’s, Women on the Porch is the story of Catherine Lewis Chapman, a woman living in New York, who has just caught her husband in the middle of an affair. She packs her bags and returns to her roots, Swan Quarter, a home place occupied exclusively by the women of the Lewis family, in Tennessee. At Swan Quarter, we find the elderly Miss Kit, Catherine’s grandmother, Catherine’s aunt Willy, and Willy’s cousin, Daphne, living without men and subsisting on a farm that was mortgaged and partially sold away by Willy’s now deceased brother, Jack.

It seems to me that life at Swan Quarter is in suspension. These women live in the past, trapped in a routine that is seldom broken and which shields them from life and perhaps from disaster. The men who have stepped through the lives of these women have mostly left them trampled and scarred, and Catherine promises to join their number if not very careful. Catherine steps into this world, fully alive, and she struggles with her urges to continue living or to sink into the rocking chair existence that lulls and pulls here.

One of the most marked themes, to me, seems to be nature vs. man and city vs. country. The contrast between Tom Manigualt and Jim Chapman is stark and striking--they are not just two different men, they are two different ways of life. Tom is a younger, verile, but troubled man, who lives as close to the earth as he can manage, much to the chagrin of his pompous society mother. Jim is a professor, who roams the city, has little understanding of this woman who shares his name, and has sacrificed most of his early promise to a life that is unfilling and undistinguished. But, Jim lives in the future and Tom is frantically trying to recapture the past.

Much of what Gordon shows us is life moving on, change taking root, and the women of Swan Quarter left behind, trying to cling to something long gone and nearly forgotten. Over and over again we see illustrations of how disastrous attempts to expand beyond this limited horizon can be for them.

When Catherine arrives, her Aunt Willy begins to think about Catherine’s mother, Agnes. She sometimes had to remind herself that Agnes was dead. It was as if she were living on there in New York, only they did not get letters from her as they used to. They live so isolated a life that they can hardly realize the effect upon themselves, even when the outside event touches their lives intimately.

There are elements of this book that will make a person squirm with discomfort. Those elements deal with the relationship of these people and the blacks who work for them. The depiction is a true one, however, and serves to remind us that some changes are worth their weight in gold. Gordon’s view is not unkind or unappreciative, but the character’s views often are. I was encouraged by the fact that the black characters are accorded personality and intelligence. Life is changing for them as well, and Maria and Joe, particularly, seem to realize that the future is not going to look anything like the past for them.

In the end, each of these women has an individual story that reeks of disappointed hopes and dreams, and they are as isolated from others, and indeed from each other, as the farm is isolated from the world it inhabits.
What we are seeing is a way of life crumbling and sweeping its inhabitants into the future or out of the world altogether.

[Sharon Huether · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of conversations between neighbors and friends, that live in the same area in the South.
This book shows the thoughts and feelings of Southern folk.
A very interesting read, but nothing connects.

[James Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very enjoyable.

[Jean Bowen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not find it cohesive, it felt unfinished like Gordon had several short stories she wanted to make into a novel so tried to fuse them together. I also did not find the ending believable but it had some beautiful lines and interesting stories in it.

[Sue Tegge · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought there was too much description. The story moved very slow. I did not enjoy it

[Ruthie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing but confusing narrative - chapters jump between characters, and sometimes it is not clear who is speaking and at what time period. The sense of ghosts and/or spirits in this novel did not work for me. Things are referred to as having happened - but when/where/why is unclear. The ending bothered me and was disturbing. The aspect I enjoyed was the descriptive writing - there was a clear sense of place, mood etc.

[Sheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catherine has left her husband after discovering a letter proving infidelity. She goes back to her rural ancestral home to recoup thoughts and feelings.
The book is vivid in characters and the landscape comes alive in your mind's eye while reading. Although her choices are hurried and not well thought out, she ends up deciding to try to put the pieces of her marriage back together. I doubt I would be so accommodating.
It was an interesting story with plenty of history. I always enjoy stories of the South.

[Lelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caroline Gordon had a keen eye for the techniques that make narrative fiction great. Flannery O’Connor sent most of her stories to Gordon for critique. And Gordon’s How to Read a Novel is a highly engaging and perceptive analysis of the gears and levers writers use to shape the reader’s experience. Yet Gordon’s own fiction is often criticized as rigidly driven by technique at the expense of emotional engagement. James E. Rocks wrote in The Mississippi Quarterly 1967-8 issue, that Gordon’s “fiction is the work of painfully careful craftsmanship” and “her limitations as an artist rest primarily with an inability to abandon herself” during scenes of climax or confrontation.

I think we are missing out if we only meet Gordon at the level of failed craftsmanship. In How to Read a Novel, Gordon says the reader, “must lay aside his own opinion for the time being, and ask himself not why Mr. Chandler or Count Tolstoi didn’t write the kind of book he would like to see them write, but what kind of book they have actually written. That is, he must try to understand what the fiction writer has accomplished before he allows himself to express an opinion on how —or why—he went about accomplishing it… It is our way of collaborating with the author, a kind of collaboration which every author has the right to demand of every reader.”

If we’re willing to collaborate with Gordon as we read Women on the Porch, we discover that beneath a veneer of emotional austerity is a responsiveness to the natural world that forms the heart of the novel. Catherine Chapman is a cool woman, with an aloofness that is at times off-putting. But through her interactions with animals and her response to the countryside we see that her reserve is not an absence of feeling.

The novel opens with Catherine behind the wheel of her convertible, mentally rehearsing the route she’s taking from New York City to her family’s home in Tennessee. The narrator, mapping the route, switches from 3rd to 2nd person— “Another rattle and the car was off the bridge. Before her the road rose steeply. Pigeon Hill. If you kept on over the hill you would come to Carthage. You would drive on. To Nashville…” The effect is to keep our attention (and Catherine’s) focused away from Catherine’s inner world. But we get a hint of an inner vulnerability: she’s brought her animal companion, her black dog Heros, with her on her journey. Heros is a link to Catherine’s heart. Whispering to Heros to “be good now,” Catherine’s next thoughts disclose what has driven her from her home in New York to her mother’s people in Tennessee — her husband has been having an affair.

If every book teaches you how to read it, we know from the opening pages of The Women on the Porch that watching a character’s response to nature is far more indicative of what’s happening below the surface than their interactions with each other. We see it again when Catherine enters the glade hidden behind boulders and allows herself a moment of emotional release. We see it in each character’s response to the stallion, Red, and in Maria’s memory opening after she chews half a tobacco leaf, “gazing … at the sycamore tree just outside the door.” The “airy look” things get when Maria chews tobacco allows her “to think about anything then,” including her son Jesse’s imprisonment for murder. But it’s the tree, “its branches spread like arms,” or like a crucifix, that alert the reader to the symbolic quality of this family, Maria, Joe and their sacrificial son, Jesse.

Women on the Porch is written with restraint and mythic depth. I’m not sure the book ‘succeeds.’ Gordon’s use of multiple narrators scatters the reader’s attention and several of these narratives are left dangling like loose threads. Catherine Chapman remains self-contained, with a profound reserve that keeps her remote from the reader and, perhaps, from herself. In some ways emotional reserve is the hallmark of the novel, creating deep pools of feeling where some characters stagnate, and which others attempt, with varying degrees of success, to bridge.

[Ivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caroline Gordon follows the rich Southern tradition established by Faulkner and continued by Flannery O'Connor, Reynolds Price and many others. Like O'Connor, she sees things darkly.

The Women on the Porch is a story of betrayal and loss. Caroline's husband betrays her, so she returns to her Southern home, Swan Quarter. She is fashioned as a modern (late 1930's) Eurydice descending to the entrance to Hades, where her grandmother, aunt, and cousin live like ghosts among the living. Swan Quarter is a rambling southern mansion, abandoned to age and neglect, portrayed as the eerie "porch" on the brink of the underworld. Caroline's husband, Jim, must play Orpheus and come to Swan Quarter to retrieve her.

The story has the heavy feel of most Southern Gothic fiction; hope is wiped out by grim reality. Since the story takes place just before America's involvement in WWII, the grimness is understandable. It is a tale of it's time: the white perspective on black Southerners is clearly depicted and likely offensive to 21st century sensibilities.

I've read a great deal of Southern fiction, and Gordon's novel has been on my reading list as one of the lesser known Southern classics. It's worth reading if you share a similar interest in the genre.

[Stacielynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

i sought out this book after reading that the author and her poet husband had lived in my hometown -- Princeton, NJ -- in a house that is currently the subject of dispute over preservation vs. demolition. i had never heard of caroline gordon and, what with the quarantine, i have lots of time for reading. so i ordered this title.

it was written in the 1940s as the second world war was in full swing in europe but did not yet involve the US. it is a very good glimpse into the time, the culture, the people and day-to-day life. the book does depict an era in which casual racism and homophobia are just assumed and taken for granted. really captures one's focus, especially in light of the Black Lives Matter marches and demonstrations and civil unrest currently gripping the country.

the author spends a lot of time on words and descriptions and lyrical musing. perhaps a bit more character development would not be amiss. but she does hide little hints here and there and offer just enough backstory to make the characters' actions plausible.

the story is very southern in it's pace, resembling a slow and meandering pool of honey dripping from a spilled jar. all in all, it's a fairly interesting read that is -- at heart -- a very sad and somewhat bleak view of the world.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best book to start the year with. It was enjoyable at times, but mostly confusing—especially the ending. I did enjoy the changes in perspective, but it moved too slowly for me and had very little payoff.

[Catherine Vastola · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tough read- jumps around

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-composed novel, full of allusions and sub-texts. It’s a bit slow, and not my favorite from Gordon, but with a strong ending that makes you think back over the story and how it unfolded.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read The Women on the Porch about 15 years ago, shortly after moving into Benfolly, the old house on the Cumberland River where the author and her husband Alan Tate lived during the 1930's. Although I remembered liking the book enough to give it 4 stars and suggest it for our Book Club reading, I have found on its rereading that I didn't remember much about the book - or perhaps now am noticing different things about it than I did then. I have wanted to reread this book for years and am so glad that I finally have.

One of the things that has always struck me about Caroline Gordon's writing is her clear and distinctive descriptions of the natural world in which her characters reside and the story unfolds. Her thoughtfully detailed verbal illustrations of scenes carries me totally into the world she is describing, mesmerizes me with memory and recognition. Her notice of the smallest leaf picking up light, the aspect of the sky, the quality of air, the surrounding flora works to capture the very essence of the outdoor world in beautiful wording that vividly illuminates the setting for each scene in the story, placing the reader solidly into the place of which she writes.

And sense of PLACE is a very important aspect of Gordon's writing.

[Curtiss Matlock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting read, but I skipped a lot about all the Greek mythology, as well as strange scenes where Gordon attempted to display the ghosts seen or remembered by the characters. I found much of her writing murky and convoluted; very often it is difficult to tell who is doing the talking. I have totally different experiences with stallions and did not believe certain scenes she presented--but it is, after all, fiction.

At one point I almost put the book down because I found it quite pompous. I'm glad I finished it. Gordon proved to do a masterful job with her characters, creating real, fully faceted people. I never truly like anyone, but each one in his way does redeem himself. By the end of the book, I related to everyone in some manner. Gordon's strength was her knowledge of the South, the land and the people and the heritage they hold so dear. The book was written in 1942 and gives a look at the way we were. I can recall such country stores and the scents and sounds.

This is my second time reading this book. I enjoyed it best the first time. Now I am older and more experienced and have little patience with many parts of the book. Still, it is interesting.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel written about women by a woman. Caroline Gordon, a Southern, writes a strong story about women living in the South in the culture of the time. The front porch was an important place in their daily lives. When Catherine returns to her family home, after years of being gone, her first view is: "...and saw at the end of the green tunnel the gray, spreading bulk of the house. Women were sitting on the porch."

A strength of the work is the sense of place Gordon crafts.
Gordon's attention to detail - particularly to the details of nature - put this reader on the land, in the mist, touching the wet moss.

The Women on the Porch was published in 1944; some of the language and some word choice is dated.



This book was a Christmas present.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting.

[Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this twice and it was better the second time, easier to figure out who is talking.

[Anne Arney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very old fashion southern. Worth the read.