Angle of Repose: Analysis of Major Characters
"Angle of Repose" explores the complex lives of its major characters, primarily through the lens of Lyman Ward, a retired history professor confined to a wheelchair. As he delves into the past of his grandparents, Oliver and Susan Burling Ward, he confronts his own biases and struggles with the realities of their marriage. Susan, an aspiring artist from the East, grapples with her discontent in the West, attempting to reconcile her dreams of gentility with her tumultuous relationship with Oliver, a visionary engineer whose stubbornness and ambition lead to a loveless union. The narrative also introduces Shelly Rasmussen, a liberal caregiver whose candid inquiries challenge Lyman’s perspectives, and Augusta Drake, an embodiment of Eastern sophistication whom Susan admires. Additionally, characters like Frank Sargent, who has ties to an affair with Susan, and Lyman's estranged wife, Ellen, serve to highlight themes of fidelity, societal expectations, and personal growth. The interactions of these characters reveal a rich tapestry of human emotions and conflicts, ultimately prompting Lyman to reflect on his moral standing and the complexities of love and forgiveness across generations.
Angle of Repose: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Wallace Stegner
First published: 1971
Genre: Novel
Locale: California, the Dakotas, Colorado, Idaho, and Mexico
Plot: Historical realism
Time: The late 1860's to 1970
Lyman Ward, a retired University of California history professor and past winner of the Bancroft Prize. Lyman, in his late fifties and suffering from a degenerative bone disease that confines him to a wheelchair, has been abandoned by his adulterous wife, Ellen Hammond Ward. To pass the time, he begins researching the personal history of his grandparents, Oliver Ward and Susan Burling Ward, who spent most of their adult lives in the American West, his academic specialty. He is extremely opinionated, and his attitudes toward the social experiments of the 1960's could not be more negative. He begins with a strong bias against his grandmother, who probably also committed adultery. Lyman is a protagonist and also the novel's narrator; during the telling of the multigenerational saga, he encounters much evidence that exposes his need for self-serving conclusions. He finds that history challenges him to be a more sympathetic and forgiving human being than the subjects of his study: He must consider allowing his estranged wife Ellen to return.
Susan Burling Ward, an Easterner and a magazine illustrator with ambitions to be an artist. Born in 1848 and reared in a small New York town, she fails to attract an aristocratic New York City husband and so marries Oliver Ward, a mining engineer, and accompanies him to California, Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, and other parts of the West. Her snobbishness and desire to return to the East prevent her from judging her husband by criteria other than those of New York City salons. After her dreams of wealth and gentility clash repeatedly with the realities of their married life, she considers leaving, and at the very least she flirts with Frank Sargent, one of Oliver's assistants. After several separations, she returns to the marriage, but it has degenerated into a kind of truce, and it never improves.
Oliver Ward, an engineer and a practical visionary. Initially, to Lyman, he is the bearer of all virtues, a strong, energetic man too large to tolerate the conventional social scene of the East and not sympathetic to its economics. He is a builder, not an exploiter. He has the knack for thinking “big ideas twenty years ahead of their time,” such as a formula for cement or an irrigation scheme too large for private funding. His principles cost him several jobs, but his skills earn the respect of experts such as John Wesley Powell and Clarence King. His stubbornness, however, does not allow him to be a sufficiently sympathetic husband, and in Lyman's speculation, the Oliver-Susan marriage was loveless from 1890 until their deaths almost fifty years later.
Shelly Rasmussen, a young woman hired for the summer of 1970 to care for Lyman and to act as his scribe. Shelly is a young and candid California woman of the 1960's, extremely liberal, and a constant foil to Lyman. Her impertinent questions expose many of Lyman's contradictions and biases, and her politics elicit much preaching from him.
Augusta Drake, a New York City socialite and friend of Susan Ward. Augusta is Susan's ideal: Eastern, wealthy, and polished. The rather stuffy letters she sends Augusta from the West provide Lyman with much evidence for his historical narrative.
Frank Sargent, an assistant to Oliver Ward at the Idaho irrigation project. Young and handsome, Frank is for Susan a beautiful compromise between masculine energy and social grace. He kills himself after the drowning of the Wards' daughter Agnes and confirms for Oliver the suspicion of adultery.
Rodman Ward, a sociology professor and the son of Lyman and Ellen. A cocky and ironic man, Rodman finds his father hopelessly out of touch. His sociological methods, both personal and academic, define for Lyman the superficiality of the 1960's.
Ollie Ward, Lyman's father. Born in 1877, he grows up to be a bitter man, alienated by the Eastern education to which Susan sent him. He returns the favor by taking no part in the rearing of Lyman himself.
Ellen Hammond Ward, Lyman's estranged wife. Ellen, a shadowy presence, has run off with the surgeon who amputated Lyman's leg. In the end, she seeks a reconciliation and presents Lyman with what he sees as the ultimate test for his moral philosophy: Can he be a better man than his grandfather?