RUSSO'S BRIDGE OF SIGHS: THE WOMEN

Thomaston, NY at left ???

Banjo GPA on Bridge of Sighs: 3.7

To follow up on the Banjo52 post on July 22, here are some questions about the female characters in Bridge of Sighs. I suppose these amount to study questions for a course including The Contemporary Novel as a topic, but to me it's not just an academic exercise; I'm really interested in any responses--which is to say, I'm not positive about my own answers.

Do Tessa and Sarah amount to a pair of (almost?) kindred spirits?

If so, are Noonan’s mother and Nan Beverly their foils, or at least a very different pair? What is the basis for comparison? Is it the characters’ strength and integrity as women and as humans?

How do Sarah’s mother, Owen’s wife, Brindy, and Karen Cirillo fit into the scheme, if a scheme is what this amounts to?

Is Tessa a strong woman who does what’s necessary, or is she a simplistic, stone-hearted wench? If there is tenderness in her, where and how do we see it? Does it balance the scale against her hard, sharp edges?

When I use the term "sympathetic character" below, I mean a character with whom the reader sympathizes; in literary lingo, sympathy, unlike pity, includes respect for an equal. We might not admire or approve of the character's every action or word, but we are interested in, drawn to, her or him more than we judge, or recoil from, or are bored by the character. Also, a sympathetic character might appeal to us against our better judgment, might challenge our preconceptions, especially in a moral way.

Sarah's conflict concerning romantic love, which includes other major choices about how she'll live her life--does that conflict make her sympathetic or weak, or duplicitous, or some other bad thing? At any point in the narrative, but especially at the end, has she made the right choices?

Are the male and female characters about equally sympathetic?

Are male and female readers likely to respond differently to any one of the female characters or the females as a group? (Ditto for the male characters).

Although questions remain about the role of destiny in the novel, or, in psychiatric terms, "repetition compulsion" and the shaping power of parents, I might now be finished with Bridge of Sighs here, depending in part on visitor interest.

Despite some reservations, I’m glad I invested time and thought in a novel that provokes so many questions. One of the best mentors in my career claimed that no English teacher should ask a question for which he already has an answer. That's bolder than my own view, but I absolutely believe in the spirit of his remark.

Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs

Has anyone out there read Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs? What did you think? I’d be especially glad to hear women readers responding to Russo’s female characters, who strike me as fascinatingly complex and individual, yet fulfilling certain archetypes of womanhood. I think he keeps them constantly above the level of stereotype, but I wonder what the other gender would say.

As usual for long novels that I finish (in this case, I have about 100 pages to go, so don’t tell the ending), the architecture of the main plot and its subplots and the interplay among its main and minor characters create a structure that gives me the shivers. I cannot imagine anyone’s planning and then accomplishing this. Applause, applause.

For what it’s worth, in terms of plot(s) and main characters, I’ve come to think of the whole as a river with dozens of tributaries, or a freeway with many entrance ramps. So it's astonishing that any mere human can make sense of so many factors, the wiggles of each stream. Not one of Russo's events or characters takes an unrealistic turn, yet very little in plot and characterization is predictable.

I’m pretty sure I see sentences better than I see chapters, trees better than forests, and I must add this: Shame on Mr. Russo and his editors for not taking better care of his syntax or otherwise clunky sentences that pop up too often. Is this what the computer age has brought us? Speed reading over careful editing? Deadlines over details? And I don’t mean typos; I mean phrasing, diction rising above cliché, and deletion of unnecessary words and phrases that over-explain.

But I cannot, would not, quit reading Bridge of Sighs, with its complex characters, almost every one sympathetic in one way or another, as are their relationships. I’m impressed by Russo’s avoidance of simplistic solutions to complex moral, sociopolitical, and psychological issues. I care about every character and what will, or has, become of them.

I guess this is the bottom line: I rarely, rarely, finish a book this long, but these people have become part of my life, as do the characters in other compellingly realistic novels. I will miss the folks in this irrelevant, yet essential upstate New York town fed by its contaminated river.