[Below, Malin examines three of Stafford's short stories, noting that her "poised, beautiful style" is a "perfect frame . . . for the hideous withdrawals, self-deceptions, and perversions of her heroines. "]

Perhaps the clue to Miss Stafford's obsessive themes and images can be found in the last line of "I Love Someone": "My friends and I have managed my life with the best of taste and all that is lacking at this banquet where the appointments are so elegant is something to eat."

Her thirty stories deal with the warped "management" of life. They are arranged in four sections—"The Innocents Abroad"; "The Bostonians, and Other Manifestations of the American Scene"; "Cowboys and Indians, and Magic Mountains"; and "Manhattan Island"—but they tend to return to (or begin with) an isolated heroine who is afraid to leave her troubled self. She is hungry, withdrawn, and frail. She constantly tortures herself. It is only when she escapes from consciousness that she is relatively comfortable and "satisfied."

My favorite stories are "The Echo and the Nemesis," "A Country Love Story," "The Bleeding Heart," "The Interior Castle," "In the Zoo," "Cops and Robbers," and "The End of a Career." These give us the typical motivations, I have stated, but they are able to embody them in striking images.

"The Echo and the Nemesis," for example, deals with the relationship of Sue Ledbetter and Ramona Dunn. Although Sue is attracted to Ramona's vast philological knowledge, she is also troubled by her fatness. The obesity seems to grow as the story progresses—it becomes inescapable. At first we, like Sue, tend to think that it is something to be simply avoided, but we gradually learn that it is demonic. Ramona cannot let go of it because it remains her secret weapon against the world (and herself); it is inextricably bound to her madness. She is torn by what she is and what she was; she consumes food to avoid consuming herself. Sue is not let off easily. We understand that although she is unlike her friend, she is a bit too thin and innocent to be healthy. She really wants to be devoured. Thus the story turns upon grotesque reflections; it subtly demonstrates that humanity itself is both "echo and nemesis."

Such insistence upon the damaged body makes the stories more than exercises in narcissism and/or masochism. Miss Stafford suggests that we are trapped in "the body's cage" (to use Benjamin DeMott's phrase) and that no matter how much we try to avoid flesh and food, we must return to them. She makes us terribly aware of mortality.

"The End of a Career" offers a devastating portrait of a Beautiful Woman. Angelica Early regards herself as "simply and solely a beautiful woman." She is neither a "wit, or a catalyst, or a transgressor." She lacks substance because she is so body-oriented. The irony is that as she grows old, she begins to realize that the various plannings of her face cannot renew her. She dies of a weak heart, no longer able to endure her mortal, ugly hands.

I believe that Miss Stafford makes the beautiful grotesque here—what an inversion!—to warn us that we must accept the body and go beyond it. She is metaphysical in being so physical. It is, indeed, this ironic marriage which gives her best stories such power. Although some reviewers have condemned her poised, beautiful style as unnecessarily artificial, they have not realized that it is the perfect frame—or should I say body?—for the hideous withdrawals, self-deceptions, and perversions of her heroines. The tension between style ("the best of taste") and content (perverse hunger) is highly charged.

"In the Zoo," perhaps the finest story in the collection, begins with this paragraph:

Keening harshly in his senility, the blind polar bear slowly and ceaselessly shakes his head in the stark heat of the July and mountain noon. His open eyes are blue. No one stops to look at him; an old farmer, in passing, sums up the old bear's situation by observing, with a ruthless chuckle, that he is a "back number." Patient and despairing, he sits on his yellowed haunches on the central rock of his pool, his huge toy paws wearing short boots of mud.

The bear is a wonderful symbol of mortality. He is incompletely resigned to his cage. He is wounded but beautiful. He is old but he has "toy paws." He somehow transcends his awkward condition—he is more than a "back number"—because he "ceaselessly shakes his head." Usually Miss Stafford's heroines refuse to shake themselves; they are lifeless, mad, or hungry. But when they fight their cages, knowing that they can never really break them open, they see themselves clearly and, moreover, help to liberate us.