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.
Themes
The Traditional Nuclear Family as the Place of Support or Condemnation
The main concept of the novel centers thematically around the notion of the all-American family, harmonious in their relationships and living a prosperous and peaceful existence in the rural northeastern US in the early 1970s. Michael and Corinne were born before World War II, yet the reality of this war never figures prominently in their story, almost as if Judd, born in 1963, is not even aware of this part of their lives. This is significant, because he presents their courtship and marriage as timeless, almost predestined, never touching upon the outside realities of their lives. This isolationistic character of their relationship is something they carry over into the family life, and Oates makes a clear point that this quality renders the Mulvaneys both impressive and distasteful to other members of their small-town community. Their four children, Mike Jr., Patrick, Marianne, and Judd, are at the same time popular and separate, essentially self-sufficient within their closely-knit family. Oates pushes the idea of the united family front to its limit, when the family becomes not an integral part of a wider society but a stubbornly detached entity that destabilizes the communal spirit of the small town.
As mentioned, such blatant and cheerful self-sufficiency within society elicits disparate responses, from grudging respect to open envy and mistrust. Thus the event that forever changes the Mulvaney family, Marianne’s rape, plays such a disastrous role in the unraveling of both their inner unity and the tentative ties that connect the Mulvaneys with the wider society. Regardless of the picture-perfect image of autonomy the family projects, Michael longs to belong to the Mt. Ephraim “upper circles,” wishing to display to other men his pride in his self-made business and the Mulvaney “clan.” Marianne’s fate crushes his social-climbing fantasy, and through his reactions, Oates reveals the inner instability of the Mulvaney family construct. The family’s response to the rape catches the whole family by surprise, their response anything but sympathetic, and the idealistic image of unconditional support and championing of the Mulvaney children unravels quickly and completely.
Michael and Corinne’s characters are deeply patriarchal, and we see this in Michael’s inability to accept his “despoiled” daughter, as he develops feelings of ambivalent disgust both towards her rapist and towards Marianne. Meanwhile, Corinne, whose religious upbringing further deepens the internalized patriarchy, makes the catastrophic decision to support blindly her husband’s reaction even when it means exiling their daughter from the family. Oates unflinchingly portrays the process through which a seemingly supportive and united family shatters like glass at the first crushing obstacle, which in its brutality represents the outside reality that the family cannot control or mold according to their own wish. From the title onwards, the novel chronicles the downfall of the myth of the perfect American family, depicting the harsh truth of the danger such a fantasy poses for the society where individuality sits uneasily with community, and the support is conditional upon acceptable behavior.
The Influence of Small-Town Society on Individuals
Although the novel is largely set in the 1970s, the way people think and act in Mt. Ephraim in upstate New York reminds us more of the 1870s than of the upcoming 1980s. This rural community still divides itself to the “right” and “wrong” kind of people. The “right” kind are those members of the community who abide by the rules of socially accepted behavior, attend church and country clubs, make money, and educate their children to become copies of their parents—they hold the power. In the novel, such families are “the Boswells, the Mercers, the MacIntyres, the Spohrs, the Lundts, the Pringles, the Breuers, the Bethunes” (100), the people from Mt. Ephraim Country Club, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and judges.
The “wrong” kind are the poor or the uneducated, people on the outskirts of society, like the Duncans: “The whole family, the Duncans—the mother’s an alcoholic, she’s got Indian blood. Comes from the Seneca reservation. That’s not what I heard. I heard they’re—you know, Negro” (48). Such people are victims of casual discrimination and represent an easy and acceptable target for the rich people to have their way in perpetuating the myth of their own strength. Thus, Della Rae Duncan is the victim of a gang rape at the cemetery by the “jocks,” the boys who are the virile sons of upstanding families. Of course, this event goes unreported and largely uncommented, except as holding bragging or sensational value.
The Mulvaney family sits uneasily between the two groups, at least according to the upper echelons of the Mt. Ephraim society. Michael owns a successful roofing business, but he comes from nothing, has no connections in the area, and his ostentatious pride in his success is suspicious. Therefore, the country club hesitates in offering him a spot, only reluctantly acquiesces and quickly rescinds it as soon as Michael “disobeys.” Corinne is too individualistic, disheveled, and “artistic,” uninterested in women’s clubs and acceptable pastimes. A telling scene is Corinne’s meeting Mrs. Bethune, the doctor’s wife, “always perfectly dressed and groomed, one of that species of attractive, capable women whose very being seemed a reproach to Corinne” (98).
Oates utilizes this unstable position of the Mulvaney family to exemplify how one event can overturn the popular opinion of the group toward the individual in such a close, conservative community. After Marianne’s rape by Zachary, whose father Mort, an investment banker, is Michael’s friend from the country club, the Mt. Ephraim society does not waste time in reaching a verdict on the event. As Michael says, “Between Mort Lundt and me, naturally they’re choosing Lundt. Siding with him. Because the bastard’s got money and connections, he’s one of them” (174). The phrase “he’s one of them” tells us everything about the society and Michael’s awareness that despite his aspirations, he will never belong to the select few. However, such is the power of attraction of such self-appointed select groups, that Michael cannot resist them even when faced with the devastating effects upon his daughter and family. Like Della Rae Duncan and Marianne, the Mt. Ephraim society will reject Michael as the usurper it perceives him to be.
Personal and Collective Consequences of Violent Acts
Oates reveals that under the seemingly peaceful and idyllic exterior of rural upstate New York, many passions seethe that often erupt into acts of individual or collective violence. Oates seems to indicate that such violent events are a necessary part of communal life, as they help perpetuate myths and ideals that maintain the established hierarchy. The strong prey on the weak, the many descend on the few, and in displaying violent behavior, in an almost animalistic fashion, the society upholds the order that represents the root and purpose of its existence.
The central violent act of the novel is the rape of Marianne by Zachary after the St. Valentine’s prom in 1976. Although Oates chooses never to depict the event, she details the consequences, starting with Marianne’s traumatized behavior after the act. The 17-year-old descends into a semi-fugue state, a confused and dazed condition that renders her incapable of directing her own actions. Zach has laced his abuse with flattery and appeals to things that Marianne holds sacred (her religious and moral beliefs), and Marianne finds herself confounded by the mix of anger, hurt, and guilt that will guide her decisions in years to come. For Zach, however, the violent act represents a drunken conquest, a matter quickly forgotten, especially as he faces no legal or moral consequences for his deed. Furthermore, when Patrick commits his own violent act of revenge against Zach, the monster Patrick has built up in his head is in fact a cowardly young man who has no recollection of what he has done.
The act of revenge has a liberating effect on Patrick, enabling him to abandon the life he has led up to that moment, the life that was largely a product of his family values and categorization of the boy as academically gifted. Thus, as a direct consequence of his obsessive, “righteous” violence, Patrick discovers a new side to himself that will lead him to a fulfilled existence.
In contrast, Michael, whose violence is the product of a largely unfocused sense of hurt pride and indignation, cannot find release through his violence. This causes him to be ferocious towards the society that rejects him (he throws his drink in the judge’s face) and towards his wife, who has unquestioningly supported him through the betrayal of their daughter. Michael’s actions cause a collective backlash, as the Mt. Ephraim society closes in on itself and squeezes the Mulvaney family out of its midst ruthlessly (exemplified in the way their peers treat the family during Patrick’s graduation, as they heartily welcome the Lundts and ignore the Mulvaneys). Oates depicts a similar collective reaction (creating a future parallel to Marianne’s experience), in Della Rae Duncan’s gang rape, where the act of violence communal, but the power of the collective reestablishes itself in ignoring the deed altogether.
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