Family Happiness

Ok, it's true that I can be something of a moralist; witness the blog title. But when I set out to find something by Laurie Colwin, who I've heard so many good things about from so many different people I can't keep track of them all, I thought I could enjoy one of her most-recommended novels, Family Happiness, without getting too stuck on how the main character, Polly, is unfaithful to her husband.

I was wrong, though. I found the whole experience of reading Family Happiness unpleasant because of how approvingly Colwin presents Polly's adulterous affair with a single man.

Maybe part of what disturbs me about Polly is how much any female reader is likely to identify with her--she thinks she needs to be "less needy and less angry" when it's clear that she needs to express more of both emotions.

Maybe what really got to me is how the characterization of her husband, a successful man who sometimes pays too much attention to his work and too little to his wife, reminded me of someone (I passed the novel over to Ron and asked him to read a page, but I don't think he saw himself there as much as I did).

For whatever reasons, I hate the choices Polly makes and I end up hating her. Even extraneous things about her--like the way she likes to lounge around with her family on a bed for the evening--irritate me (the "horizontal evenings" they spend remind me of a line from one of my favorite scenes in Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, when Harriet looks in on an old lady who stays in bed all the time and thinks what a terrible life that would be, saying about bed "in and out, that's my motto." It's always been mine, too).

Family Happiness is, of course, an ironic title. Polly doesn't get along well with her parents or siblings, although an outsider would probably see them as close, since they see each other a lot. The moral of the novel seems to be that "it's nice to know that other people who you think have perfect lives have trouble, too."

I don't find the element of schadenfreude very satisfying, though, and really don't like any of Polly's ideas about how to cope with troubles.

I do, however, like this xkcd comic, about constructive commenting (and don't miss the mouse-over).