Saint Maybe (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Anne Tyler
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The 1960’s to the 1980’s
- Setting: Baltimore, Maryland
- Principal Characters: Ian Bedloe, Lucy Dean Bedloe, Agatha, The Reverend Emmett, Rita di Carlo
- Genres: Long fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, 1970’s, Child rearing or parenting, Suicide, Gender roles, Guilt, 1980’s, Brothers, Single parents or single-parent families, Duty, Death or dying, Baltimore, Sacrifice
- Locales: Baltimore, MD
Form and Content
Saint Maybe, through its male protagonist, Ian Bedloe, focuses on the difficulties and responsibilities of single parenting. Doug Bedloe, Ian’s father, has only once in his life changed a diaper. His son Ian’s life will be more complicated—a mixture of the traditional male role of breadwinner and the traditional female role of nurturer for his dead brother’s three children. At the age of nineteen, Ian quits college and becomes father and mother to Agatha, Tom, and Daphne. For the next twenty years, until 1988, when he is forty-one, he finds...
[The entire page is 2032 words long]
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