I

Anne Tyler's first novel If Morning ever Comes was published in 1964 when she was twenty-three years old. Writing consistently since then Tyler has published thirteen novels in the course of over thirty years apart from four dozen short stories, numerous articles and excellent book reviews. Her literary career up to now spans three important decades of American socio-cultural history. But even after the publication of her seventh novel Anne Tyler was merely regarded as just another writer representing “the gradual decentralizing of American culture that characterizes the post-Vietnam period” (Braudy 1979:128). Such a lukewarm response can be attributed to the fact that the unpretentious format of her domestic-psychological novels lacked the dynamism of her contemporary writers Mary McCarthy, Eudora Welty, Randall Jarrell and John Updike among others.

However since 1985 the reclusive, sober and sedate Anne Tyler has become the focus of critical interest. She has been the recipient of America's two prestigious literary awards. She won the national Book Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist in 1985. This is also Anne Tyler's first novel which has been made into a movie. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons in 1988. She has been compared with Jane Austen, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Saul Bellow. Critics have detected discernible traits and influences of all these writers in her fiction.

Anne Tyler's work is important for through her fictive world she emphasizes the need for a sense of harmony absent in the fragmented lives of her intrinsically good, average characters belonging primarily to the middle middle-class. This need is what her protagonists feel and this urge for accommodation and harmony can be identified as a positive step towards a more integrated self and society. Her domestic-psychological novels are primarily patterned exposures of some of the common complexities that oppress post-modern American society. The conflicts Tyler identifies are graphically represented on a personal level but have wider, impersonal implications. Her focus of attention is the average middle-class American family and its members, but simultaneously the focus is on the American social culture that such families typify.

Close reading of a text ignoring the context is restrictive and often misleading. “Literature is a social institution, using as its medium language, a social creation. … Literature is really not a reflection of the social process, but the essence, the abridgment and summary of all history” (Wellek and Warren 1986:94-95). Literature through the ages has recorded, assimilated and sublimated tradition, culture, innovations and idiosyncrasies. The French historian Hippolyte Taine identifies three co-ordinates race, milieu and moment, which determine the sociological implications of a text. Regional geography, history, religion, politics, the socio-economic power structure have all been an integral part of literary texts from pot-boilers and best-sellers to classics.

Regarding literature as “asocial,” “amoral” or “transcendent” is attributive to a misdirected reader-response for literature assimilates social culture and tradition which become implicit and interiorized in a text. Historicity is an inevitable aspect of literature. The historicity of texts and the textuality of history is a reciprocal concern according to the New Historicism theorist Louis Montrose. Literature does not represent a “trans-historical” aesthetic realm which is independent of economic, social or political awareness.

From such a point of view Anne Tyler's fiction may be regarded as a felicitous fusion of social and individual consciousness with emphasis on the latter, a common characteristic of postmodern literary art. Twentieth century literature reflects the “imperative inwardness of modern society” (Simpson 1980:269). There prevails a marked tendency to internalize history. The philosopher Benedetto Croce's 8 observations sum up the modern consciousness with insight, “we no longer believe … like the Greeks, in happiness of life on earth, we no longer believe, like the Christians, in happiness in an other-worldly life. We no longer believe like the optimistic philosophers of the last century, in a happy future for the human race … we no longer believe in anything of that, and what we have alone retained is the consciousness of ourselves, and the need to make that consciousness ever clearer and more evident, a need for whose satisfaction we turn to science and art” (Hughes 1961:428-429).

II

Most of Tyler's characters are white Americans of Baltimore, but this does not make her novels tedious or repetitive. On the contrary due to this reason the middle middle-class American society that she represents appears more convincing. The fixed locale in Tyler's novels recalls the celebrated exchange between Darcy and Elizabeth in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Darcy's supercilious remark, “In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and unvarying society” is countered by Elizabeth's perceptive reply, “But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed forever.”

Anne Tyler is never over-ambitious with her objectives and her remarkable restraint and ability to restrict herself within her well comprehended limited orbit is perhaps one of the distinctive features of her texts. While not ignorant of Freud, Lacan or sexual-textual politics, the virtue of Tyler's art lies in its sincerity. While modern writers represent self divorce from society, Tyler concentrates on portraying self in society.

Unlike Jane Austen who excels in pre-marriage and courtship complications, Tyler's domestic-psychological novels are generally narratives of marriage years after the first flush of ecstasy. The mid-life progress novel that Tyler writes represents the daily experiences, expectations and frustrations of the American family often on the verge of disintegration. Her earlier novels explore and expose disintegration or fragmentation but her last four novels Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985) Breathing Lessons (1988) and Saint Maybe (1991) reveal an inclination towards a more decisive and positive conclusion.

The novelist John Updike notices a lack of development in her novels as her characters do not show any recognizable evidence of growth or change—“a tendency to leave the reader just where she found him” (Stephens 1990:12). Tyler's penchant for authenticity restrains her from idealizing the insular, average, bourgeois American man and woman, leading a placid life where involvement, shock, disappointment or happiness emanate from domestic crisis or domestic harmony. Unlike the existential protagonists of Sartre or Camus, Tyler depicts her middle class characters exactly as they are instead of as they should be. John Updike's criticism does not seem quite valid, for inclusion of growth or change patterns in her average American characters would have been a glaring superimposition, taxing credibility.

The plots of her novels are such that subtle variations, realizations, resolutions and readjustments register greater positive impact than a noticeable change or a radical transition from the starting point. Maggie Moran, the prototype American middle aged mother in her late forties with adult children queries, “what are we two going to live for, all the rest of our lives?” (Tyler 1988:326). She finds the answer as the novel concludes as she realizes that tomorrow is a new day and her conjugal life would continue in the same spirit of shared love and understanding. Similarly in Saint Maybe Ian, the non-conformist detached participant, realizes, “Tomorrow he would view this in a whole new light” (Tyler 1991:243). Tomorrow to Tyler as to Margaret Mitchell promises a new beginning, holding fresh hopes for the disenchanted, or disillusioned, person.

A discerning reader will discover two levels of issues competently blended in Tyler's novels. The personal-familial issues form the primary level of her texts. The non-domestic or social issues occupy the secondary level. On the primary level personal-familial issues range from adolescent rivalry, jealousy, boredom, lack of idealism to matrimony, divorce, negativism, moral and spiritual vacuum, lack of religion, secular attitude, identity crisis, lack of personal and familial integrity.

The non-domestic social issues comprise teenage marriages, divorce, single parenthood, abortion, mugging and gangsterism, rock and pop culture, racial discrimination and war. In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant there are two references to the Vietnam war: “So she went to Illinois in July, traveling with a train load of fresh faced boy soldiers on their way to Vietnam” (Tyler 1982:181). In the second sequence Tyler writes, “on the evening news, a helicopter crewman who'd been killed in Laos was buried with full military honors. An American flag, folded into a cushiony triangle, was handed to the parent …” (ibidem:201). The mother speaking on the microphone declares that they are “strong and fine.” One of the children listening to the news reacts promptly … “it's just a bunch of hogwash …” she ought to say, “Take your old flat: I object: I give up” (ibidem). But Tyler does not linger on this socio-political issue. Attention is immediately transferred to some old snapshots as a “distraction” (ibidem:202).

Anne Tyler seems uniformly reticent about social issues that she represented. She does not qualify, criticize or make value judgments. In Breathing Lessons the racial issue, which is very much a part of life in Baltimore, Maryland is presented in an indirect and subtle manner. Though the digressive incident of Mr. Otis and the loose wheel is apparently quite funny and inconsequential, but a few remarks reveal the undesirable background of racial discrimination which is a reality—“not only was he old. … He was black” (Tyler 1988:136), “He thinks we're racist or something and lied about his wheel to be cruel” (ibidem:137), “Next time you might not be so lucky. Some crazy white man going to shoot your head off next time.” The other non-domestic issues that Breathing Lessons explores are the impulsive marriage of teenagers, equally impulsive divorces, the misery of single parenthood affecting both child and parent and abortion. Tyler describes in some detail the anti-abortion picketing in front of a nursing home. Fiona the estranged daughter-in-law of Maggie Moran is seventeen when she becomes a mother. She is compelled to bring up her daughter without a proper home, job or life partner, while she is not more than a girl herself.

Also, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant there are occasional references to the dismal law and order situation, the dangers of carefree rambling: “Every alley in this city is full of muggers. … Every doorway and vacant building … every street of Baltimore” (Tyler 1982:243). The statements in the context of the novel seem exaggerated when uttered by a paranoid woman. But in Tyler's very next novel, The Accidental Tourist, the apprehension becomes a reality. The twelve year old Ethan, son of Macon Leary, is killed in a fast food restaurant by a trigger-happy gangster without provocation. Gangsterism is another serious social problem that Tyler highlights.

But social issues occupy the periphery of Anne Tyler's domestic-psychological novels. Tyler's primary concern is with the middle class American family focusing on two or three generations—grandparents, parents and children. Tyler's sensitive portrayal of children from infants to adolescents and young adults is executed with uncanny veracity. Similarly middle-aged parents, married and unmarried young adults and aging grandparents are presented with enthusiasm and artistry. Tyler seems to conform to T. S. Eliot's view that the primary channel of transmission of culture is the family.

In one of her latest novels Saint Maybe (1991) Tyler projects an extremely daring and controversial issue—the need for religion in postmodern America. Restructuring the cliched Abel-Cain biblical anecdote, Tyler's protagonist, Ian holds himself responsible for the accident—suicide(?) of his elder brother Danny. Guilt-stricken and mortified, Ian seeks solace in religion. He atones for his error by being a surrogate father to Danny's three children, thereby sacrificing opportunity for higher studies. He works as a carpenter in a furniture shop and Tyler emphasizes that Jesus himself was a carpenter. Ian exercises admirable self-restraint abstaining from pre-marital sex, and is derisively described as “King Careful. Mr. Look-Both-Ways—Saint May Be” (Tyler 1991:264).

Yet when invited to be formally ordained into priesthood Ian declines. Not unlike Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath Ian feels that he cannot be a spokesperson for organized religion. But Ian feels the need for prayers and visiting the church. Ian's need is cogently summed up in Philip Larkin's poem, Church Going:

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground. …

(Twaithe 1988:97)

Whenever he is perturbed uncertain or confused Ian turns to the church, “To steady himself he bowed his head and prayed. He prayed as he almost always did not, forming actual words but picturing instead this spinning green planet safe in the hands of God, with the children and his parents and Ian himself, small trusting dots among all the other dots” (Tyler 1991:266). Ian's reliance and sense of security derived from his faith in God, may be Tyler's message to the perplexed and uncertain Americans to return to the reassurance of the Church for moral and spiritual support and harmony. Saint Maybe is Tyler's bildungsroman.

Also, in Breathing Lessons Maggie Moran appears in some respects as an unflinching seeker of harmony without realizing it. Her feminine intuition, care and concern set her apart as a dynamic middle class American mother who, though leading an insular life, plays a significant role as friend, wife and mother. Maggie Moran is neither Doris Lessing's Martha Quest nor Sylvia Plath's Esther Greenwood, but a mellower and more integrated woman. She is not a self-obsessed feminist, hostile towards a complacent phalocentric society. In her we witness no protests, no desire for independence, no eagerness for striking out a new path. Neither politics nor religion inspire her in any way, yet her preference for a simple and happy domestic and social life reveals her as a more committed social activist than many members of women's organizations.

Some of the binary oppositions which recur in Tyler's fictive world are masculine/feminine, complex/simple, external/internal, social/personal, universal/domestic, reflective/perceptive, aggressive/passive, self centered/compassionate, white Americans/blacks and foreigners. Tyler's dialectical approach is directed towards integrating antithesis through negotiation and interaction in order to arrive at a synthesis which is satisfactory for many, not one. This conscious resolution of the polyphonic voices in her domestic psychological novels is indicative of a positive attitude when contemporary writing is mostly evasive, ambiguous, ambivalent and open-ended. Tyler's characters, Babbitt like, measure out their lives with coffee spoons, participating endlessly in such activities as super market visits, watching TV or cooking, washing, cleaning and visiting. Yet as they readjust to the demands of their families, their environment and their own consciousness they become vibrant individuals and also representative members of middle class American society.

Anne Tyler writes with astonishing precision, in a quiet, unobtrusive, dignified style with an undercurrent of humor, seeing the universal in the particular, preserving the local flavor without ignoring wider implications. Such a style as Tyler's is destined to stand the test of time despite present literary taste demanding a much more accelerated grimace. Anne Tyler's emphasis on adjustment, reconciliation and androgyny is not a tame succumbing to the patriarchal system, it is not a negative process of resignation and mindless acceptance but a positive motivation towards harmony and integration. Unlike her previous novels as A Slipping Down Life (1970) or The Tin Can Tree (1965), in her later novels Tyler shows that it is possible to step out of the self-imposed prison of one's self and reach out to others in a spirit of tolerance and understanding. Such an attitude has a therapeutic worth which the cynical postmodernist intellectual milieu finds difficult to accept. Despite her overtly passive manner of approach and style, Anne Tyler is actually a committed crusader for harmony and adjustment, the two prerequisites of a happy family life everywhere.

Interestingly, in one of her letters (January 19, 1995) to me, Anne Tyler writes, “I would tend to agree there's more social concern in my later books, just because as I grow older I see more to be concerned about—but it has not been a conscious literary development.” Such a candid and matter-of-fact self-appraisal is rare. Anne Tyler's ability to state the truth simply yet convincingly is one of the singular virtues of her texts.

Jean Paul Sartre's observation, “No writer is an instantaneous consciousness, a pure timeless affirmation of freedom, nor does he soar above history, he is involved in it,” (Trivedi 1984:140) bears out the fact that while maintaining artistic distance social concern is an inevitable part of the consciousness of a mature artist. Social concern is distinctly implied in Anne Tyler's later fiction and this is all the more remarkable for she simultaneously maintains her characteristic artistic detachment. Alice Hall Petry's (1990:17) summing up, “Humanists like Anne Tyler are after all, very rare indeed,” is undoubtedly a precise and perceptive assessment of Anne Tyler.

Works Cited

Braudy, Leo. 1979. “Realists, Naturalists, and Novelists of Manners.” In Hoffmann: 84-152.

Hoffman, Daniel. (Ed.) 1979. Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hughes, Stuart H. 1961. Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought. New York: Vintage Books.

Petry, Alice Hall. 1990. Understanding Anne Tyler. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press.

Simpson, Louis P. 1980. The Brazen Face of History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Stephens, Ralph. 1990. Editor. The Fiction of Anne Tyler. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.

Trivedi, Harish. 1984. Editor. The American Political Novel. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.

Twaithe, Anthony. 1988. Editor Philip Larkin: Collected Poems. London: Farrar Straus Giroux.

Tyler, Anne. 1982. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

———. 1985. The Accidental Tourist. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

———. 1988. Breathing Lessons. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

———. 1991. Saint Maybe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. 1986. Theory of Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin.