SOURCE: Wilhelm, Albert E. “Private Rituals: Coping with Change in the Fiction of Bobbie Ann Mason.” Midwest Quarterly 28, no. 2 (winter 1987): 271–82.

[In the following essay, Wilhelm discusses the effects of social change on the lives of everyday people, a primary theme in Mason's stories.]

As her double given name might suggest, Bobbie Ann Mason was a Southern country girl who made her way to the sophisticated East. She grew up on a small dairy farm in Western Kentucky. Later she worked for a publishing company in New York City and earned graduate degrees from universities in New York and Connecticut. As a child she avidly read Nancy Drew and other girl-detective mysteries and as a young woman she published a critical study of Nabokov's Ada. Her book of collected stories, Shiloh, and Other Stories (1982), won the Ernest Hemingway Award (for the year's most distinguished first fiction) and was a finalist for the American Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In the early 1970s Mason was a teacher at a small state college in Pennsylvania; now her own stories appear prominently in anthologies used in thousands of college classrooms. Mason's critical reputation continues to grow, and her fictional world has been described by Maureen Ryan as “paradigmatic of the contemporary South” and much of modern America (294).

Such diverse biographical data may help one to appreciate a major theme in Mason's fiction—the effects on ordinary people of rapid social change. Indeed most of her characters are residents of a typical “ruburb”—an area in Western Kentucky that is “no longer rural but not yet suburban” (Sheppard 88)—and they usually suffer the bewildering effects of future shock. A young woman in one story observes that one day she “was listening to Hank Williams and shelling corn for the chickens” while the next day she “was expected to know what wines went with what” (207). In another story a divorced mother laments the fact that families “shift memberships, like clubs” (167) and a stepfather is “like a substitute host on a talk show” (173). Almost all of Mason's characters share, to some extent, the plight of the mentally retarded adults in “A New-Wave Format”; they “can't keep up with today's fast pace” and “need a world that is slowed down” (217).

Mason, of course, can document such problems because she too has experienced cultural dislocation. In an interview with Professor Yu Yuh-chao (Louisville, Kentucky, February 22, 1985), she contrasted her work with that of the writers of the Old South. “In the older generation,” she said, “there was a much stronger sense of the place of the South, sense of the family, and sense of the land. I guess the newer writers are writing about how that sense has been breaking down. … There is a difficulty retaining identity and integrity in the face of change.” Mason went on to compare her personal situation with that of Nabokov: “I was strongly influenced by his vision of things. … He was an exile and he carried around two cultures in his experience. I feel the same way about the South and the North and I feel like an exile.”

In describing her “ruburb,” then, Mason provides much more than sociological documentation. She is primarily interested in exploring the crises in individual lives that are provoked or intensified by radical changes in social relationships. To be sure, such crises are hardly new. Arnold van Gennep pointed out many years ago that “the life of any individual in any society is a series of passages … a succession of stages with similar ends and beginnings: birth, social puberty, marriage, fatherhood, advancement to a higher class, occupational specialization, and death” (2–3). In traditional societies, however, these transitions were usually marked by definite ceremonies which served to bridge the gap between old and new. Such rituals for “incorporating the individual into the group and returning him to the customary routines of life” helped to “cushion the disturbance” or buffer the shock which necessarily accompanied any transition (ix). In the society portrayed by Mason, though, one casualty of rapid change has been ritual itself. Painful transitions have become more frequent and more intense, but the adaptive and adjustive response previously offered by ritual is frequently lacking. In some of her stories Mason concentrates on certain universal and inevitable life crises like entering puberty and growing old—transitions for which specific rituals were once vital but are now largely abandoned. In other stories she deals with family crises like separation and divorce which have only recently become commonplace and for which most Western societies have never developed any adequate rituals. Thus, many of Mason's characters suffer from what Orrin Klapp has termed “poverty of ritual” (126). In the absence of any clearly established common ceremonies, they must frequently improvise or develop impromptu ritual. Old rituals have become relics or “empty events”; any new rituals are often “despairingly privatized” (Klapp 137).

The story in Mason's collection which is most explicitly concerned with a time of passage marked by specific rituals in traditional societies is “Detroit Skyline, 1949.” This story documents a rather confused and unceremonial passage from childhood to adolescence. In a pattern that is typical of many initiation stories, Peggy Jo leaves the protected environment of her farm home and journeys to the big city. For the innocent Peggy “everything about the North [is] confusing” (40). She is especially bewildered by Lunetta Jones whose elaborate clothes and thick lipstick (described as “man bait”) exude adult sexuality (40–41). To make matters worse, Peggy is alternately invited to grow up and exhorted to remain a child. When she watches Howdy Doody and Lucky Pup on television, her cousin says she is “too old for those baby shows” (41). When she expresses an interest in adult problems, she is told, “That don't concern younguns” (43). In short, the initiate has no adequate guide to lead her through this uncertain urban landscape. In one key scene Peggy says that her mother “seemed as confused as I was” (49). Although Peggy experiences much that is new, her journey of self-discovery is surely incomplete. In fact, she never actually sees Detroit—only a fuzzy picture of its tall buildings on the TV screen. The climax of Peggy's experiences is not her own rebirth but her mother's miscarriage. Her mother loses the baby she didn't know she had, and Peggy's own search for a mature identity is abortive.

In “The Climber” Mason focuses on the problems of growing older and, specifically, on one individual's frightening intimations of mortality. For Dolores that discovery of a lump in her breast portends a dramatic change, but, as her name suggests, she remains an isolated lady of sorrows who can share her fears with no one. The story begins with a comment about “walking with Jesus” (109), but TV evangelism has replaced any real community of believers. Instead of meaningful liturgy Dolores hears only a disco spiritual with no words other than the constantly repeated title. When Dolores needs supporting hands, the only ones she can visualize are those of Phil Donahue, and they are nothing more than dots of light on a video screen. The only ritual of reassurance in which Dolores can participate is her regular telephone conversation with her friend Dusty, but Dusty remains a disembodied voice who never actually appears in the story. In the absence of real ritual, Dolores tries to make her own. Like those who must deal with grief in Emily Dickinson's poem “The Bustle in a House,” Dolores repeatedly performs the rituals of housecleaning. Later, after her doctor assures her that she has fibrocystic disease rather than cancer, she is happy that he prescribes a strict diet. In her formless world this diet will provide a “welcome guide for living, something certain” (119). At the same time, however, she feels slightly cheated. Her brush with death has not really been a significant existential crisis since the threat has not been strong enough to provoke a real conversion.

In “The Ocean” Mason introduces a retired farmer and his wife who barrel down the highway in their super-deluxe cabin-cruiser and yell out to a perfect stranger, “Which way's 65!” (148). This query contains a significant pun since Imogene and Bill Crittendon are seeking not only the proper interstate to Florida but also a route that will allow them to reach old age with dignity and meaning. By asserting that the interstate highway is “like the ocean” (148), Mason suggests that the Crittendons have really been set adrift. Like many old people today they have few meaningful contacts with family or friends. Florence sends identical postcards with the same meager message to their three children who are scattered all over the country. Having sold his farm, Bill feels lost without a cow or dog. When he tries to pet someone else's collie in a campground, he discovers that the dog bears the ominous name Ishmael. In fact, the Crittendons too are modern-day Ishmaelites. Their literal journey to Florida soon ends, but they never reach their spiritual destination. When they arrive at the beach, Bill is repulsed by the campground full of old people. Finding no ritual to guide him toward his own old age, Bill feels only fear and loathing.

In well over half of the stories in Mason's collection, a major character is confronted with divorce or separation, and this emphasis begins in the title story “Shiloh.” If van Gennep's schema of rites of passage remains applicable today, Leroy and Norma Jean Moffitt are bogged down in the intermediate or liminal stage of transition. The stability of their old relationship is clearly gone, but they can discover no way to progress to a new mode of existence. Leroy's tractor-trailer rig, a symbol of his old lifestyle, has been wrecked, but “he is not sure what to do next” (1). Thus, his “temporary disability” is more than the physical injury to his leg; it becomes emblematic of his and Norma Jean's overall condition.

Finding no common ritual to accommodate their personal crisis, the Moffitts try to invent their own. Thus, Norma Jean's days are filled with the contemporary equivalents of sympathetic rites—ceremonies “based on belief in the reciprocal action of like on like, of opposite on opposite, of the container and the contained … of image and real object or real being” (van Gennep 4). For example, her efforts to build a new body by lifting weights reveal also her efforts to build a new self. She doesn't know exactly what to make of her husband and her marriage, so she frantically makes all sorts of other things. By making electric organ music she strives for new harmony. By cooking exotic new foods she hopes to become what she eats. Even though her double given name may suggest a typical good-old Southern girl, Norma Jean is definitely striving to be a new woman.

Her husband Leroy also has an ironic name since he is no longer the king of his castle. Even though he must sometimes dodge the barbells swung by Norma Jean, he too is obsessed with making things. He occupies himself with craft kits (popsicle stick constructions, string art, a snap-together B-17 Flying Fortress) as if putting together these small parts can create a more comprehensive sense of order. No doubt he is also seeking craft in its root sense of power or strength. At one point Leroy reveals his yearning for some sort of rebirth by commenting that his popsicle stick cabin “reminds him of a rustic Nativity scene” (1). In an effort to create a real home, Leroy toys with the notion of “building a full-scale log house from a kit” (2). Having failed to make a family because of the accidental death of their baby, he and Norma Jean must now join together in a cabin-raising and “create a new marriage” (3).

One major component of a traditional ritual of passage was a journey—either actual or symbolic. This story also ends with a trip, but this time the pilgrimage is clearly futile. In an effort to find peace, the Moffitts go to a battlefield. The final irony which caps this ill-fated second honeymoon is that Leroy and Norma Jean discuss their failing marriage while sitting in the Shiloh cemetery.

In “The Retreat” Mason describes another couple who are experiencing marital problems, but here she also comments on the diminished role of church rituals in helping deal with life's crises. In this story sermons are full of words like “pucelage” and “maturescent,” and the elements for Communion come straight from the Kwik Pik Market. For Shelby Pickett, a rural Methodist minister, the annual church retreat is a vital part of life's cyclic rhythm. In the middle of winter he looks forward to this time of spiritual renewal. For his wife Georgeann, however, the retreat offers nothing more than a shallow workshop on Christian marriage enhancement which concentrates on seven kinds of intimacy. Here the mystical number has clearly been shorn of all its magic. Georgeann likes to attend wedding ceremonies, perhaps because her participation in the ritual reaffirms old values and provides reassurance, but lately it seems that Shelby has been preaching nothing but funerals.

Even though church rituals no longer serve their intended purpose, Georgeann does experience a ceremony of change. In order to be reborn, she must first become an outcast. When she is infested with body lice, she is treated almost like a leper and must perform an elaborate “ritual cleansing, something like baptism” (141). Later she escapes the restrictive boundaries suggested by her husband's surname (Pickett) and makes an extended journey without taking a single step. She explores both outer space and her own inner space merely by piloting a Galaxian rocket ship in an electronic game arcade. Finally, in an action that is reminiscent of traditional rituals of sacrifice, Georgeann chops off the head of a sick chicken. Earlier she had tried to heal the chicken, but now her action is swift and decisive. Similarly, she no longer hesitates with regard to her own situation. She has decided to abandon her respectable role as preacher's wife in order to pursue a new identity.

Mircea Eliade has commented that ritualistic “death provides the clean slate on which will be written the successive revelations whose end is the formation of a new” person. Indeed, the old person “cannot be changed without first being annihilated” (xiii). In “Graveyard Day” Mason focuses on the difficulty of terminating old relationships so that new ones can develop. Waldeen has been divorced from Joe Murdock for several months, but she can't “get rid” of her ex-husband “just by signing a paper” (172). In fact, Waldeen is now dating another man named Joe and comments that the important men in her life seem interchangeable because all have born this same first name. Waldeen needs a dramatic break with the past, and she resists marrying this latest Joe because he would be like a “sugar substitute” (166).

Even though this story contains no ritual to help carry Waldeen beyond the confusion of divorce, it does display a continuity of ritual in response to death. Twice each year Joe McClain or his relatives clean the family cemetery. The cyclic pattern of death and rebirth described by Eliade is echoed here by the fact that pots of live geraniums are brought out to the cemetery each spring and taken away for winter storage each fall. The regularity of these rituals to honor the dead is so reassuring to Waldeen that she apparently tries to embrace them to serve her own needs. As she watches Joe McClain clean tombstones and rake leaves, she suddenly has a comforting thought—that “the burial plot, not a diamond ring, symbolizes the promise of marriage” (177). If she marries her new Joe, she will eventually take her place beside him and earlier generations of McClains in this rural graveyard. Her final action in the story is to jump headlong into the leaves that are piled for burning on the very spot that she has imagined will be her gravesite. To be sure, such an impulsive action leaves the story very open-ended, but the curiously mixed images here suggest that she is finally willing to let the old be burned away so that she can rise from the grave as a new being.

In “Drawing Names” Carolyn Sisson has also experienced divorce, and she is currently observing the disintegration of her larger family unit. The family gathers for a holiday celebration, but it is, in fact, breaking apart because the old rituals necessary for maintaining family solidarity are gone. The decay of such rituals parallels that of the “broken” and “crumbling” ornaments which decorate the “pitiful tree” (102). Carolyn's mother observes that “it don't seem like Christmas with drawed names” (94). She means, of course, that giftgiving this year has become less personal and more like a marketplace transaction. Anthropologists such as Raymond Firth have pointed out that the formal rituals of giftgiving reaffirm “the social relationship that the gift symbolizes. The transfer of the material thing is a recognized expression of the importance of the immaterial relationship between the persons, and this is enhanced by removing the gift out of the sphere of everyday transactions” by such means as special wrappings and presentation ceremonies (Symbols 376). At this family gathering, however, such ceremonies are extremely perfunctory. Another almost universal ritual of solidarity, the shared meal, is also painfully truncated in this story. Christmas dinner begins without ceremony “when the plate rattles” (100), and no one even bothers to ask Pappy to “turn thanks” (101). Carolyn's boyfriend never arrives for the meal, and her father leaves the table abruptly after eating only a few bites. Even the simple rituals of greeting, interpreted by Raymond Firth as “telectic rites” to mark the “putting off of the old and putting on the new” (“Verbal and Bodily Rituals” 3), are badly jumbled. As family members arrive, the constant “noise of the TV” almost drowns out the greetings (96–97). Jim Walsh, the lover of Laura Jean, is not really accepted by the family. As if to compensate for his feelings of insecurity, his artificial greetings come forth in “a booming, official-sounding voice, something like a TV announcer” (98). Carolyn's mother is a seamstress, and at one point in the story she comments that she could not find a dress pattern large enough for one of her customers. Rituals, of course, are patterns for living, but this extended family seems to have outgrown its old patterns for fashioning solidarity.

Other stories in this collection contain numerous additional examples of inadequate or improvised rituals. In their accelerated world Mason's characters confront all the life crises common in traditional societies as well as some troubling new ones. But all too often they must do so without the support of shared ceremonies. Writing some fifty years after the initial publication of van Gennep's key work on ritual, Solon T. Kimball has argued that “rites of passage deserve attention within themselves” even in contemporary society. He goes on to explain: “The critical problems of becoming male and female, of relations within the family, and of passing into old age are directly related to the devices which the society offers the individual to help him achieve the new adjustment. Somehow we seem to have forgotten this—or perhaps the ritual has become so completely individualistic that … an increasing number of individuals are forced to accomplish their transitions alone and with private symbols” (xvii–xviii). In her “few square miles of native turf” (Towers 38), Mason clearly documents such a poverty of ritual and shows a variety of characters valiantly trying to cope by means of their own improvised rites of passage.

Works Cited

Eliade, Mircea. Birth and Rebirth. New York, 1958.

Firth, Raymond. Symbols: Public and Private. Ithaca, 1973.

———. “Verbal and Bodily Rituals of Greeting and Parting.” The Interpretation of Ritual. Ed. J. S. LaFontaine. London, 1972.

Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago, 1960.

Klapp, Orrin E. Collective Search for Identity. New York, 1969.

Mason, Bobbie Ann. Shiloh, and Other Stories. New York, 1982. Citations to Mason's fiction derive from this volume.

Ryan, Maureen. “Stopping Places: Bobbie Ann Mason's Short Stories.” Women Writers of the Contemporary South. Ed. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw. Jackson, Mississippi, 1984.

Sheppard, R. Z. “Neighbors” [a review of Shiloh, and Other Stories]. Time, 3 Jan. 1983: 88.

Towers, Robert. “American Graffiti” [a review of Shiloh, and Other Stories]. The New York Review of Books, 16 Dec. 1982: 38–40.

Yu, Yuh-Chao. Interview with Bobbie Ann Mason. Louisville, Kentucky, 22 February 1985. Typescript provided the author by Professor Yu.