Mrs. Bridge (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Evan S. Connell, Jr.
- First Published: 1959
- Type of Plot: Satiric realism
- Time of Work: From the early 1920’s to the early 1940’s, chiefly during the last ten years of that period
- Setting: Kansas City, Missouri; Southampton, England; Paris; Monte Carlo; and Rome
- Principal Characters: India Bridge, Walter Bridge, Ruth Bridge, Carolyn Bridge Davis, Douglas Bridge, Grace Barron, Mabel Ong, Dr. Foster, Harriet, Alice Jones, Paquita de las Torres, Jay Duchesne
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Satire
- Subjects: Family or family life, North America or North Americans, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Mothers, Parents and children, Marriage, 1940’s, Midwest, Paris, 1920’s, 1930’s, England or English people, Women’s issues, Upper classes, Lawyers, Missouri, Rome
- Locales: Paris, France, England, Rome, Italy, Kansas City, MO, Missouri, Monte Carlo, Monaco, Southampton, England
The Novel
The central focus of Evan Connell’s Mrs. Bridge is the protagonist’s uncertainty about her own identity and about the meaning and purpose of her life. The first sentences of the book, linked to the epigraph from Walt Whitman, establish this emphasis: “Her first name was India—she was never able to get used to it. It seemed to her that her parents must have been thinking of someone else when they named her.” In her own eyes, and in those of the narrator of Connell’s novel, from the start of the book she is “Mrs.” Bridge, wife of the successful...
[The entire page is 2540 words long]
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