The Company of Women by Mary Gordon

First published: 1980

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: 1963-1977

Locale: New York City and western New York State

Principal characters

• Felicitas, the protagonist
• Charlotte, Felicitas’s mother
• Father Cyprian, a Roman Catholic priest
• Mary Rose, ,
• Elizabeth, ,
• Clare, and
• Muriel, friends of Father Cyprian
• Joe, Mary Rose’s friend
• Robert, Felicitas’s lover
• Sally and Iris, Robert’s other women
• Richard, Robert’s neighbor
• Linda, Felicitas’s child
• Leo Byrne, Felicitas’s husband

The Story:

Part 1, 1963. Fourteen-year-old Felicitas Maria Taylor travels with her mother, Charlotte, to Orano, in western New York State, to meet Elizabeth, Clare, Mary Rose, and Muriel for a summer retreat. Since meeting in 1932, the women made this retreat every year under the guidance of the Roman Catholic priest Father Cyprian, who conducts retreats for working women.

Felicitas believes she has to lie to her friends about how she spends her summer vacations because her friends are interested in “TV doctors” and will not understand the pleasure she has in being the center of attention for three of the four childless women and for Father Cyprian, who calls Felicitas the group’s “only hope.” Of the women who follow “Cyp,” as Charlotte calls him, only Muriel detests the child Felicitas and considers her a threat. The other women do not regard Muriel as one of them. She was excluded from Felicitas’s baptism, when Charlotte’s daughter was given not one but three godmothers—Mary Rose, Elizabeth, and Clare. Father Cyprian is the focus for the women, each of whom characterizes “Cyp” in a different way. He in turn has his own characterizations for them. For example, Charlotte is “down to earth,” Clare a wealthy and genteel lady, Mary Rose the divorced and wronged woman, and Muriel “an extraordinary soul” who does not fit with the other women and whom Father Cyprian always admonishes to fight against bitterness.

On a ride with Cyprian to inspect the family property that he recently acquired, thanks to Clare’s generosity, the car goes out of control and Felicitas suffers a concussion. She shares a hospital room with another fourteen-year-old, Gidget, who is smart-mouthed and worldly. Although she despises the girl, Felicitas finds herself betraying her relationship with Father Cyprian and with the women by telling Gidget that the only reason she puts up with the constant attention from the adults is because her mother promises to buy her a car when she turns sixteen as long as she continues to come on the group vacations. Felicitas’s guilt over this betrayal is increased by the loving attention that Father Cyprian and the women give to Gidget. When Felicitas is released from the hospital, she learns that Gidget is dying of Hodgkin’s disease, but this knowledge does not soften her heart.

Each woman reflects on the gifts she gives to Felicitas while the child is in the hospital. Felicitas’s favorite gift is a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) given to her by Elizabeth. Her least favorite gift, a collection of inspirational religious pamphlets, comes from Muriel.

Part 2, 1969-1970. Felicitas transfers to Columbia University from the Catholic college she attended. She is very concerned about the Vietnam War and takes a political science class in addition to the Latin and Greek courses in which she is majoring. At first sight, Felicitas falls in love with her political science professor, Robert. He advises her to drop the class so that they can become lovers. Completely under his spell, Felicitas not only drops the course but also moves into Robert’s “free love” household, where two of Robert’s other women, Sally and Iris, live in an uneasy equilibrium. Sally, who hates Felicitas purely, has a son, Mao, by Robert but refuses to tell Robert that he is the father.

Felicitas finds herself very involved in training the dogs of Robert’s neighbor, Richard, who spends most of his time in Robert’s apartment. Felicitas gives the animals dog food, as opposed to the vegetarian meal they were getting, and within a week she house-trains them. During the time that Felicitas lives at Robert’s apartment, Clare, Mary Rose, and Joe Seigel all visit her. They are all concerned about her, but only Joe has the worldly experience to see what is actually going on in the house. He warns Felicitas that men do not want what they can have easily, and he suggests that Felicitas move out.

Robert tires of Felicitas quickly and advises her to make love with other men. To please Robert, Felicitas sleeps with Richard, who falls in love with her. When Felicitas becomes pregnant, she cannot be sure who the father is. After seriously considering abortion, Felicitas decides instead to have the baby. She takes the dogs, Ho, Che, and Jesus, from Richard’s apartment and goes back to her mother’s home.

Part 3, 1977. Felicitas, her mother, Clare, Muriel, and Elizabeth all go to live near Father Cyprian after learning of Felicitas’s pregnancy. Father Cyprian, the women admit, was magnificent. When he learns of Felicitas’s pregnancy, he says merely that perhaps the pregnancy saved her from greater sin. Each of the women builds a house near Father Cyprian’s. On the way to Cyprian’s, they rename the dogs Joe, Jay, and Peaches. Felicitas does not have any say in the matter of the move, which, she feels, is just as well.

When her child is born, she gives her the common name of “Linda” in the hope that she will have a “normal” upbringing. Several years later, Felicitas plans to marry a very quiet, slow man named Leo Byrne, who is close to the earth and its workings. Felicitas tries to give her daughter the most ordinary upbringing she can. By marrying Leo, she hopes to assure her girl an “ordinary childhood,” something she thinks she herself missed.

Charlotte continues to work to maintain herself, her personality, and her equilibrium. She feels lucky to be near her daughter—“As if that explains it,” she says at the end. Elizabeth is content to remain near her friends and Father Cyprian, to whom she is especially devoted; it seems that Felicitas’s child gives her a sound reason to position herself closer to those she loves best. Muriel, who feels “inconvenienced” by the other women’s descent on Cyprian, believes that eventually her own self will be lost in the vision of God and that she will die as the “first beloved of no soul.” Clare’s voice articulates the beauty of their surroundings. In her old age, she turns her attention to the house she built.

Father Cyprian, who has a heart attack and suffers from failing health, ends his days believing he was a failure as a priest. He feels that he was not true to the perfection of the Mass. He recalls his love for Felicitas and his feeling during the years of her rebellion “the bitterest of Jesus’s sorrows,” likening his intolerance to Christ’s agony in Gethsemane.

Linda, in her childish understanding, knows that Cyprian will die. She knows death, she says, from having seen dead animals along the road, and she compares herself and her mother and grandmother to Cyprian: “We are not dying,” she says.

Bibliography

Bauman, Paul. “A Search for the ’Unfettered Self’: Mary Gordon on Life and Literature.” Commonwealth 118 (May 17, 1991): 327. Offers brief but highly useful comments.

Bennett, Alma. Mary Gordon. New York: Twayne, 1996. Introductory overview, with brief biography and chapters devoted to an analysis of each of Gordon’s books published during the first twenty years of her career.

Detweiler, Robert. “Sisterhood and Sex: Agnes of God, Mariette in Ecstasy, and The Company of Women.” In Uncivil Rites: American Fiction, Religion, and the Public Sphere. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Examines Gordon’s novel and two other Catholic-oriented works in which an impressionable young girl becomes enmeshed in the intricacies of sex and religion.

Gordon, Mary. Conversations with Mary Gordon. Edited by Alma Bennett. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. Reprints previously published and broadcast interviews with Gordon, in which she discusses her life and work.

Gray, Francine du Plessix. “A Religious Romance.” The New York Times Book Review, February 15, 1981. Gray focuses on the religious themes in Final Payments and in The Company of Women and notes Gordon’s conclusion in both novels that friendship is the most important requirement for human happiness.

Kessler-Harris, Alice, and William McBrien, eds. Faith of a (Woman) Writer. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Susan Ward’s chapter, “In Search of ’Ordinary Human Happiness’: Rebellion and Affirmation in Mary Gordon’s Novels,” is a thoughtful, interesting study of the heroines of Gordon’s first two novels.

Lardner, Susan. “No Medium.” The New Yorker, April 6, 1981. In this review of The Company of Women, Lardner compares Gordon’s second novel to her first, Final Payments, and notes that the overriding theme in both is the question of whether female self-sacrifice is a form of self-indulgence.

Pearlman, Mickey, ed. American Women Writing Fiction: Memory, Identity, Family, Space. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989. An interesting collection of essays, each followed by bibliographies. While John W. Mahon’s essay on Gordon focuses on her third novel, it comments briefly on The Company of Women. Includes bibliographies of writings by and about Gordon.

Perry, Ruth. “Mary Gordon’s Mothers.” In Narrating Mothers, edited by Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. Perry explores the nature of what she calls the “motherlessness” of the mothers in Gordon’s fiction. The discussion centers primarily on Men and Angels (1985) but can be applied as well to The Company of Women.

Seabury, Marcia Bundy. “Of Belief and Unbelief: The Novels of Mary Gordon.” Christianity and Literature 40, no. 1 (Autumn, 1990): 37-55. Seabury’s analysis of the female protagonists in Gordon’s first four novels and her critiques of other scholars’ analyses are insightful.