The Bad Husband Parade

Roughly a decade ago I read Middlemarch, and immediately understood, having just completed The Brothers Karamazov prior, Woolf’s famous description of Eliot’s novel, as “one of the few English novels for grownup people.” Really, the descriptor isn’t limited to the English, though – Middlemarch is one of the first grownup novels in any language. Karamazov was published later, and remains an enjoyable, but decidedly adolescent, work – full of the Sturm und Drang and heady philosophical ideals of youth. Having read it just before Middlemarch, the contrast between the two books couldn’t be more stark.

            There’s certainly a place for such works, and shelf space should be reserved for Karamazov and its brethren – the novels of Camus, Celine, Doblin, Kafka, and Orwell, among others. But certain books are best read before 30, and philosophical novels, and philosophy generally, should predominate in those intellectually formative years.

            However, since life doesn’t, in fact, end at 30, a different sort of novel has to sustain us for the majority of our lives, and, for those seeking serious intellectual stimulation (as opposed to “mere” entertainment), that brings us back to the novels for grownups, such as Middlemarch (or Woolf’s own works: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse).

            When I read Middlemarch, at 25, the character that jumped off the page was the noxious Casaubon. He was utterly loathsome, provoking the same response as Dickens’ Uriah Heep, but, even more revolting, dared to be a fully-fleshed character, and not a mere Dickensian caricature. Casaubon wasn’t a scraping sycophant, but instead a bitter, frustrated, jealous miser of love, whose last act before dying is to create a vicious will against his young wife, with the intent to shame and hurt her for the rest of her life.

            So it was, for the past decade, that Casaubon was my go-to for bad husbands in literature.

            Unintentionally, however, for the past six months, I’ve encountered a slough of terrible, fictional, husbands. Consequently I thought I’d consider them here, especially in light of the fact that, also during the past six months, I’ve gotten engaged. Good time to take stock.

            When I pick up a book I don’t want to know anything about it. Usually I read the first few sentences, and decide from there. Occasionally I’ll pick a work because I feel like it’s the right time, or prioritize a book I’m not interested in, but that’s on my shelf regardless. There’s an aspect of delayed gratification: I’m going to read this low-priority novel first, and then the one I really want after. That delayed gratification is how I came to The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford, which I was not excited for.

            To be fair, the main character in Ford’s novel, Frank Bascombe, is a divorcee, not a husband. Bascombe is intellectually dishonest, delusional, and a hypocrite who blames others for faults he is blind to in himself. Really, it’s not all that surprising he’s divorced. His myopic self-centeredness and hangdog self-pity make him tiresome and unpleasant company for a few hundred pages.

            After what I had assumed would be light fare, I polished off The Sportswriter, and moved to heavier, more enjoyable, stuff. Two of the heaviest novels I began to read were both by Nobel Laureates, and both bricks. Tackling these tomes would take months. Unwittingly, too, though, both would be examples of bad husbands in literature.

            First, Norwegian author Sigrid Undset wrote an 1100-page magnum opus called Kristin Lavransdatter. Set in Norway in the medieval 1300s, it’s a vast story of a woman’s life told in three parts: her youth, her middle age, and her autumn years and death. But the great challenge of her life (beyond the novel’s central themes regarding Catholic guilt and sin) is her husband, Erlend. Circumstances transpire to create a standoff between Kristin and her husband, and Erlend, in his stubbornness and selfishness, screws up everything about their life, wasting their chances for happiness. His hubris is his unrelenting convictions: at one point it nearly gets him killed, solely out of pride, while managing to lose his estates and wealth; at another juncture it leads to him losing his child; at a third his wife is dishonored and is going to be exiled or executed before he gives in, at the last moment, to try and save her.

            As Dorothea suffers Casaubon, Kristin suffers Erlend – with the primary difference that she, Kristin, deeply loves Erlend, and vice versa. But their affection for each other only makes Erlend’s stubbornness worse, denying them the happiness they could and should have had together. Near his death, when Erlend finally gives up his tiresome moral high ground and ends the standoff, his realization comes with the same sort of tragic insight as Alec Guinness’ Col. Nicholson, in The Bridge on the River Kwai, when he exclaims, “What have I done?” But, like Nicholson, it comes too late for Kristen and her husband.

            While I was reading that tale, I began a different novel, again, unwittingly continuing the Bad Husband Parade. This new entry was by British author John Galsworthy, namely his lengthy novel cycle The Forsyte Saga, for which he was specifically awarded his Nobel citation. Unlike Undset’s Kristin, however, with Galsworthy our main character is the bad husband in question, the despicable Soames.

            Galsworthy writes with irony, and clearly is no fonder of Soames than we are. The purpose of his work is to critique middle class Victorianism, and the petty bourgeois with their obsession over property. Soames takes property, and the mania of ownership, to a disgusting conclusion, namely the ownership of his wife, Irene. She separates from him after he rapes her, yet, a decade later, he feels as if he still owns her, and is owed a son. Spending time with Soames, who wanders around London in a miasma of middle-class propriety and self-righteousness makes you mighty glad to have been born long after Victoria’s reign.

            Three novels, then, in six months, all dealing with wretched husbands. After this Casaubon is no longer alone in my mind as the sine qua non of lousy spouses: he has become merely the central figure in a larger pantheon of terrible partners. Erlend, Soames, and Bascombe – the cause of their hubris varies with each. Soames suffers from an obsessive need to possess. Bascombe is blind to his own egotism, and instead considers himself humble and virtuous. Erlend is well aware of his faults, but too proud to sacrifice his ideals, spreading misery, heartache, and hardship.

            From this accidental survey embarked upon during my period of engagement, we’ve really only gained further examples of what most people have known all along: that all these bad husbands (and for that matter bad spouses of any gender) have the same problem, namely, selfishness. While in manifests in different forms with each, selfishness is the primary flaw for the jealous Casaubon just as it is for the possessive Soames. Inflated self-worth defines both Bascombe and Erlend. If there is a warning to be taken from the Bad Husband Parade, it is that, in any romantic partnership, you must put your relationship, and your partner, before yourself. Fail to do so, and, besides inviting predictable romantic unhappiness into your life, you will also find yourself defying the prudence and wisdom of the grownup writers.