Rating: 
Summary: Dutiful Drudgery
Review: What is it that holds one within a family, a marriage, outside of love and duty? Lack of courage perhaps, or misguided religious inclinations. The protagonist puts up with more than many might because of her strong religious beliefs, dogged beliefs which leaves her a husk of a woman. I cannot emote an empathy for this, but I can empathise with sticking it at all costs even when all is bleak and hopeless and hard by. Ellen's inlaws are mean and spiteful, harsh and narrow minded, and set off Ellen's insecurities to best (worst?) advantage. Her husband is henpecked, not by Ellen who does not know how to and is too spineless to do so, but by his embittered, cruel, old world parents. Everything falls most burdensomely on the children of the marriage, who feel the misery around them, but cannot understand why there is such, save for the fact that it must be all of their fault. Ansay's prose is relentlessly descriptive, the details she pays mind to myriad and minute. Not a good read, not a good ending, but rather a painstaking portrait of a time, a culture, and a mindset.
|
