62 pages • 2 hours read
Joyce Carol OatesWe Were the Mulvaneys
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 34-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The Pilgrim”-Part 4: “Hard Reckoning”
Chapter 34 Summary: “Tears”
Corinne finally calls Marianne, saying her father is ready to see her, a call Marianne has been awaiting for years. Taught that crying is attention-seeking, Marianne has come up with “shrewd tactic[s] for disguising her tears” (308), always afraid of putting pressure on others to comfort her, because “If you accept kindness undeserved, even worse will happen to you” (309).
Chapter 35 Summary: “Green Isle”
Marianne feels a lot of pain due to her family’s rejection, at times wondering aloud, “Don’t you love me?—I’d thought you all loved me” (311). She throws herself into hard work in the Green Isle Co-op, neglecting her studies. Her guiding motto becomes a line by Charlotte Bronte, “Out of obscurity I came—to obscurity I can easily return” (313). Abelove begins to trust her with more activities, which Marianne performs exceedingly well. Abelove shares with her his experiences in starting the commune and seeking sponsors, and Marianne often wonders if she has developed romantic feelings for him.
Chapter 36 Summary: “The Pilgrim”
Marianne never speaks of her home, but one day she receives a call at the co-op from Aunt Ethel, telling her grandmother Ida Hausmann has died. She also tells her, “Corinne does not want you to come to her mother’s funeral, please don’t ask me why” (324). Hewie Miner, a carpenter and a member of the co-op overhears the conversation and offers to drive her to the funeral, and Marianne decides to go. Having arrived to the church, Marianne decides she cannot face the family; she watches the funeral hidden behind a wall, observing that her father has not come with Corinne and Judd. Hewie then drives her to Mt. Ephraim, where she finds her father’s offices closed, and then to the High Point Farm, where she sees the “For Sale” sign. Marianne believes Hewie might be in love with her, so she tells him, “I’m not what you’d call stable, or reliable […] I disappoint people. My family especially” (342). As they arrive back to Kilburn, Hewie admits this has been “the happiest day of his life” (343), admitting, “Hell, you know I love you, Marianne—it doesn’t matter what you do, or did” (343).
Chapter 37 Summary: “The Proposal”
Marianne has trouble sleeping after finding out about Hewie’s feelings. The next morning, Abelove admonishes her for leaving the co-op abruptly and without warning. Marianne feels “like a tethered creature, horse, dog, goat—aware only now of how closely she was leashed” (346). To her surprise, Abelove expresses jealousy towards Hewie and abruptly offers Marianne the position of associate director at the co-op. From that, he veers into voicing his love for her, while admitting he is legally still married and has two teenaged children. Although she believes she loves him back, Marianne is overwhelmed; she flees Abelove’s office.
Chapter 38 Summary: “Rag-Quilt Life”
During the night, Marianne leaves the co-op in secret, taking most of her belongings and Muffin the cat, to begin, what her mother called “her rag-quilt life” (352).
Chapter 39 Summary: “Hard Reckoning”
Judd recalls how he, too, left his family, after a physical fight with his father. The family sold the farm and moved to Marsena in Spring 1980, as his dad finally declared bankruptcy. Michael is rarely home and starts drinking too much. Corinne attempts to organize a new life in the “temporary” house—“a tacky ‘split-level ranch’” (359) on a country highway—that Michael has bought without consulting anyone. Corrine worries over Michael obsessively, and in the meantime, she has lost contact with Patrick and Marianne. Mike Jr. rarely visits. Corinne feels she is losing control, so Judd believes he must take care of his mother, even though he wants to start fresh and live his own life. Judd misses Patrick, wishing he could talk to him about the way things are beyond his control, as he feels they have connected over Patrick’s revenge on Zach.
One day, Marianne calls, “cheerful, sunny-sounding” (372), to say she is living in Spartansburg as a companion to a poet Penelope Hagström. Several days later, on June 11, Michael, who is now usually “swinging between lethargy and mania” (374), arrives home late and drunk, and finds out Corinne’s car has broken down. They fight, and Judd runs out to help his mother, when Michael, with “a red-flushed sweaty face like a mask” (376), slams him against the house and hits him on the head.
Chapter 40 Summary: “On My Own”
Judd moves out on his own, a month before his 18th birthday, feeling “that Michael Mulvaney Sr. had died, and another man had taken his place” (377). Luckily, soon he finds a job with the Marsena Weekly Packet as a journalist. His mother supports him, even though she is sad, still defending Michael.
Part 3, Chapters 34-40 Analysis
Part 3 of the novel bears the name “The Pilgrim,” through which Oates likens Marianne’s journey as an exile from the Mulvaney family to a holy pilgrimage of a wretched soul in search of redemption. Marianne drifts from one place to another, looking for an existence without strong ties because she hopes for a reunion with her family. Chapter 34 offers an internal prolepsis (a glimpse into the future moment when Corinne will invite Marianne to come back and visit her father’s deathbed). From Chapter 35 onwards, Oates charts Marianne’s pilgrimage, commencing with the time she has spent at the Green Isle co-op, and slowly building up to the moment when the events indicated in Chapter 34 will take place. The slow, gradual buildup makes narrative sense, because Marianne’s whole being has slowed down to a way of functioning that radiates patience and waiting.
Marianne does feel the hurt of rejection, but she places the blame on herself. Her mantra becomes a quote from a letter by Charlotte Bronte, “Out of obscurity I came—to obscurity I can easily return” (311), which fits with her new, self-effacing behavior, one that aims to eliminate Marianne’s agency, her femininity, and her right to feel. Marianne’s unfailing loyalty to the Mulvaney family dictates her behavior at this point. She must commit these acts of repentance to earn her way back into the protective fold: “Marianne perceived that to be without a family in America is to be deprived not just of that family but of an entire arsenal of allusive material as cohesive as algae covering a pond” (313). In that sense, Marianne’s character, her religiousness, and her Mulvaney upbringing conspire against her in creating a negative fantasy of her sinful conduct.
Chapter 36 serves as a continuation of Marianne’s experience at the co-op but also introduces elements that help shape her future mode of behavior. She receives news of her grandmother’s death and a clear message that her mother does not want her at the funeral. Marianne attempts to make a decision based on her own feelings for once by deciding to go to the funeral despite her mother’s wish, but, once there, she balks and settles for observing the ritual from a hiding place. Her impulsive act shows a glimpse of a different Marianne and attracts spontaneous, confused love declarations from Hewie and Abelove, which only serve to prove to her that she has again behaved foolishly and dangerously.
Marianne cannot accept love at this point: “Where once (as a cheerleader, as “Button” Mulvaney) she’d been the silliest vainest shallow person, now she could barely force herself to contemplate her reflection, not just in a mirror but in her mind’s pitiless eye” (332). For this reason, Abelove and Hewie’s intimations have no meaning for her except as confirmation of Marianne’s sinfulness and only serve as reminders that she must “return to obscurity.” Her escape from the co-op under cover of night in Chapter 38 shows how she was swept away from her home in a blink of an eye, only this time Marianne decides to remove herself from a place that poses a threat to her penitential, psychic hermitage.
The beginning of Part 4 focuses, for only the second time in the novel, on the experiences of “Judd the character,” by this time a 17-year-old high school student. Judd describes the point at which “Judd the young man” starts to transform into the grown man who will eventually narrate the novel. The “hard reckoning” (tautologically repeated three times in quick succession to stress its significance) involves Judd’s final conflict with his father and a break that allows the last remaining Mulvaney child to leave Michael and Corinne, this too in consequence of the chain of events stemming from Marianne’s rape. As opposed to his older brothers who, despite their ostensibly expressive characters, retreat quietly from the family, Judd gets in a physical fight with his father, thus becoming the only sibling to take direct action against Michael. By this point, Michael is a man who is in the process of losing everything, including his sense of self, and his behavior is openly abusive and aggressive.
The teenaged Judd has reached a breaking point, “a knife blade turned in my heart. I will never, never forgive you, I thought. Not knowing who you was” (357). In the absence of a deeper understanding of “who” is to blame, living in a new house that “was not home and would never be home” (366), Judd must make a choice to save himself from drowning in his parents’ despair. He becomes arrogant and distant, a reflection both of Michael and Corinne. In the absence of anyone with whom he could share his troubles, to remove himself from their proximity becomes a psychological necessity for Judd, of which his fight with Michael and his leaving home to start a life on his own are only the final manifestation.
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