Herself in Love and Other Stories by Marianne Wiggins

First published: 1987

Type of work: Short stories

Form and Content

Marianne Wiggins’ volume Herself in Love and Other Stories includes thirteen stories ranging in length from a few pages to twenty-four. Each follows the general outline of the short story, focusing on one major character and one specific situation. Since the settings of the stories vary in time and place, Wiggins uses a style and language appropriate to the locale and type of character she has created. Likewise, the tone of each story varies from delightful humor to biting satire to lyrical pathos. Each story is almost a perfect miniature, making the volume a collection of thirteen perspectives on life. An examination of three stories can serve to illustrate the major aspects found in Wiggins’ writings.

The story “Stonewall Jackson’s Wife” is based on the life and death of the Confederate Civil War General Thomas Jonathan Jackson (1824-1863), known as “Stonewall” Jackson. It is evident that Wiggins has researched the history of the general’s life at the time he was mortally wounded and the subsequent funeral for Jackson, who next to Robert E. Lee was the South’s greatest and most loved general. Also evident is a fine portrayal of the facts surrounding his family life and home in the South; his deceased first wife, Eleanor; his second wife, Anna; and his daughter Julia.

The story is, however, not written in the traditional style of historical fiction. The narrator—a first person “I”—is the spirit of Stonewall Jackson’s first wife, who comments, often disparagingly, on the events from the time that the news of the general’s death first reaches the household in Richmond, Virginia, until the funeral train departs for Lexington, Kentucky. As narrator, Eleanor allows all the characters to speak in their own voices—ranging from the slaves who first report the death, to the dying words of the general, to the often unpleasant and unfeeling discourse of the genteel second wife.

It gradually becomes obvious that the personality of the general changed significantly during the time between his first and second marriages. The younger Jackson was a joyous and passionate man, while the older man seems concentrated on being a devout Calvinist engaged in long periods of prayer and a morose fighting man primarily intent on serving his country. The second wife is portrayed as a loveless woman whose only concern is to ensure that General Stonewall Jackson receives a burial befitting a great military hero. Anna feels slighted when the ongoing war makes it impossible for the military hierarchy to attend the funeral, she despises the masses of ordinary people and soldiers who come to mourn, and she cannot understand why those whom she ignores in turn reject her and pay homage to the general’s daughter. There is a haunting similarity between the people’s response to their young general—who is called Jack by those who love him—and the funeral and cortege of another young Jack—President John F. Kennedy—who was also shot, dying exactly one hundred years after Stonewall Jackson.

“Gandy Dancing” is the story of a modern alienated man who, in a moment of recognition of his state of being, strikes out and does the unexpected. One day shortly before Christmas, a businessman arrives as usual by commuter train at New York’s Grand Central Station. Rather than going to work that day, he decides to see the country by train. His itinerary has him fly to Atlanta, continue to New Orleans, board The Sunset Crescent to Los Angeles, and return immediately on the Desert Wind to Chicago, from where he will fly home. The entire trip should last eight days. Although the man’s real name is not revealed until the last page of the story, during his journey he goes by the name of “Redcar,” an epithet he acquired on the spur of the moment while still in college. It is obvious that this man can only enjoy life when fantasy allows him this special appellation; otherwise, he answers to a terribly common name.

On his journey through the United States, Redcar, like any other normal traveler, meets his equals: a zipper manufacturer from Wheeling who wears fancy lizard-leather shoes, a man and wife from Phoenix whose six-year-old son is probably a normal child (he claims to have forgotten his absent sister’s name), or a group of inebriated gamblers en route from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Yet Redcar does not recognize himself in these people while traveling in his dream world. His world is the world of trains: the long-distance trains with famous names, the architectural splendor of railroad stations, and most important, the train’s operating personnel. He is especially drawn to the train’s fireman, whose only duty these days is checking the condition of the tracks at redblocks (that is, when the signal lights adjacent to the tracks are red). The highlight of Redcar’s journey comes when he is actually invited to join Thayer, the fireman, one night in Colorado as he examines the tracks. During this inspection period, Thayer tells Redcar in an almost mystical and highly lyrical language of the beauty of the world of empty tracks, suggesting that this experience was indeed “gandy dancing.” Redcar had become one with the glorious world of the train’s fireman and thereby fulfills his dream.

Although the theme of the alienated individual or life in a dream world has been used by other writers, Wiggins does not allow her protagonist to escape completely from the reality of his life. Redcar periodically realizes that he should have telephoned his wife, but he does not make the call until he arrives in Chicago. The climax of this story reveals that this vagabond dreamer has temporarily left a real family—a wife, two daughters, a suburban home, and a station wagon—who agonize over his disappearance. Despite the fact that the main character is an alienated man, the reader is reminded that there are also women and children in this alienated world.

The enigmatic tale entitled “Pleasure” offers the reader the story of two women and several children who watch a whale beach itself, return to the deep, and die by never surfacing again. Yet that is only the superficial plot of this story. Wiggins’ primary purpose in this narrative is to consider the mystery surrounding the actions and demise of the largest and oldest known mammal and the corresponding mystery of the ultimate fate and destiny of the older of the two women. The reader who may ask about the cause of their deaths or the sins that they may have committed will receive no answers.

When the dying whale first comes ashore, these naïve but compassionate people are bewildered. They have never encountered such a creature in close proximity and react in a predictable but totally inappropriate manner. The children believe that by merely telling the whale to return to the sea, as they might address a pet, the whale will leave. They even attempt to push the huge creature with their tiny bodies. The younger woman is likewise unable to understand and is sent away with the children to fetch men and machines to right the problem of the dying whale.

Once alone with the whale, the older woman begins a discourse of passion and compassion; they become one in spirit. Just as this large sea creature is condemned to defeat and death for having lived a life of beauty and grace, so the older woman must suffer for her life of passion in a world that does not condone such human pleasure. They have met on the edge between land and sea, and they have learned of their fate. The whale returns to the deep, never to surface again, and the older woman returns to the land where, like Lot’s wife, she is turned into a pillar of salt. “Pleasure” is perhaps the most complex story in this collection. Its symbolism and highly lyrical prose make for difficult but rewarding reading.

Context

Almost all the characters in this collection of fiction are women, but Wiggins is by no means a writer who only writes and speaks about her own gender. She concentrates on that very fine point where her protagonists encounter an impossible world—indeed, where they attain the position of the classic heroine, but in modern dress.

One can only speculate and wonder what the outcome of the Civil War might have been if “Stonewall Jackson’s Wife,” Eleanor, had not died and could have continued to provide her husband with a life of reason, passion, and love, rather than the commitment to war he acquired after her death. Another unanswered question is raised in the story “Pleasure,” unanswered even when it was first included in the book of Genesis. Neither story provides any evidence that the unnamed woman had committed a sin. She is turned into a pillar of salt; she falls accidentally from a state of innocence and grace into a state of woe for no apparent reason. Marianne Wiggins raises many such questions, but she does not supply answers. She believes that it is the task of the writer “to touch the nerve that otherwise, untouched, lulls us to complacency. I write about the things I fear.” Her readers are taught to fear in the same way.

Bibliography

D’Evelyn, Thomas. “Parable, Satire, Romantic Parody.” The Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 1987, p. 17. A review article which concentrates on “Quicksand” and “Gandy Dancing.”

Eder, Richard. Review of Herself in Love and Other Stories. Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 16, 1987, p. 3, 15. An article that examines Wiggins and her stories, with special emphasis on “Herself in Love” and “Stonewall Jackson’s Wife.”

Kakutani, Michiko. “Books of the Times: Herself in Love.” The New York Times, August 19, 1987, p. C20. A review article of this collection of stories, with an extended discussion of “Gandy Dancing.”

Lambert, Mark. “Adele Goes West.” London Review of Books, September 17, 1987, 19. A review of Herself in Love and Other Stories with a more extensive examination of “Stonewall Jackson’s Wife.”

Rich, Barbara. “Miniaturists at Work.” The Women’s Review of Books, March, 1988, 20. A review of the stories that examines Wiggins’ language and technique in particular.

Wiggins, Marianne. Interview by Michele Field. Publishers Weekly, February 17, 1989, 57-58. An interview with Wiggins that provides useful biographical and bibliographical information.