Category: SOCIETY

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov. Vol 1

By: Anton Chekhov

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Anton Chekhov in 1989 (Author, 1860-1904, physician and philanthropist.)

Most societies in the 1800s have variations of the same story. However, one recognizes there are societal remainders that carry through to modern times. Anton Chekhov’s short stories tell much of what is evident in today’s Russia just as stories of the wild west is in today’s America. In both Russian and American history (as well as most of the world), women are considered the inferiors of men. Children were generally seen as a burden until they could take responsibility for work that had to be done. Rarely did women work outside the home except as servants to families with means to pay for their work. In the 1800s, both Russia and America had a gap between the rich and poor.

Chekov’s first story is of a young woman who is characterized as beautiful, vivacious, and promiscuous.

She chooses or is seduced by a man who is not her husband. She is caught in an embrace with this man by her husband who berates her for her flirtations. The cuckolding suiter offers 100,000 rubles to allow the husband’s wife to divorce him and leave her husband to marry the alleged seducer. The husband agrees but at a price of 150,000 rubles. This is an example of two transgressions. One, a human being treated as property and two, a woman having a right to choose how she wishes to live her life. Just as in most of the world today, this Russian story shows women being treated as unequal to men.

Uneducated Americans and Russians in the 1800s took advantage of the environments in which they lived. One of Chekov’s stories addresses a peasant who removes a nut from a railroad track because he needed a weight for his fishing line. He is taken to court for removing the nut because there were incidents of derailment from peasants who took several nuts from railroad track bolts for not only a single fishing line but for nets used for the same purpose. American killing of bison for sport is a similar ignorance that reduced a major resource for food and protective clothing of native Americans.

Serfdom in Russian history is long and sustained as a social and economic reality.

What Chekov’s short stories tell listeners is that though there are similarities, there are differences. Serfdom never takes hold in America, but its consequence extends into the mid 19th century despite Czar Alexander’s decree to eliminate it and Catherine the Great’s effort to end it. Even with the Alexander’s decree, serfdom remains a law until 1861 with its true abolition only begun during Catherine’s reign. Of course, America’s tragic faults are black slavery and Indian displacement with consequences that extend into today’s century.

Because serfdom did not take hold in America, the growth of capitalism created economic opportunities not available in mid-19th century Russia.

American capitalism is a two-edged sword that undermines the ideals of equality by denying equal opportunity for all. An underclass exists in both Russia and America, but Russia’s underclass suffers from slower economic growth as well as discrimination.

Though economic growth is turbocharged by capitalism it creates an underclass based on easily identifiable racial, ethnic, and sexual differences.

Social position in Russia came through military experience and promotion, or in association with unique opportunities offered to peasants by wealthy landowners. Capitalism had little place in Chekov’s mid-19th century history of Russia. What mattered to Russian citizens is social hierarchy. This seems evident even in today’s Russian kleptocracy.

In almost every Chekov story, heavy drinking is a common part of Russian men’s, if not women’s, lives.

Reasons for the Russian tradition of drinking may be related to the economic, or socio/political environment but its tradition is evident in today’s Russia. Not that alcoholism is not a problem in America, but in Russia alcohol seems an ever-present libation in all political and social recollections of modern events.

Wealth grows as a societal leveling influence in America while Chekov shows wealth only reinforces societal separation in Russia.

He tells a story of a woman actress that makes more money than her husband. The husband sees that reversal as a challenge to his ability rather than a benefit to his family. The husband acts like a petulant child when his wife is awakened late in the night by his drunken arrival in which he rants about money needed to start a business that has little prospect of success.

As with all short stories of an era, there is much to be learned about a nation’s cultural roots. Most of Chekov’s stories in this first folio are well written and informative. One will find them entertaining and interesting, maybe even enlightening.

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Mrs. Bridge

By: Evan S. Connell

Narrated by: Sally Darling

Evan S. Connell (American Novelist, 1924-2o13., died at age 88.)

Evan Connell captures a woman’s middle-class life in the twentieth century. “Mrs. Bridges” is a story of a twentieth century woman whose life begins in the middle-class and rises to the upper middle-class. She marries, has three children (one boy and two girls) with a husband who becomes a highly successful lawyer. Her son is characterized as moderately intelligent with two sisters, one sister characterized as smart and haughty and another quiet and reserved. The story is set in middle America.

In 1959, “Mrs. Bridge” received the National Book Award in fiction. The novel became a moderately successful movie, “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge”, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

“Mrs. Bridge” will resonate with many women’s and men’s aspiration in America. It is a reminder of what it is like to be an American in a world ruled by white men, i.e., not women or people of color. “Mrs. Bridge” is a wife slowly becoming aware of an evolving society that is far from the ideals of equality of opportunity outlined by the 1868′ 14th Amendment.

The Bridge’s smart and haughty daughter graduates from high school, chooses not to attend college, and decides to move from the Midwest to New York. She moves to Greenwich Village and finds a job as a manager’s assistant while living a bohemian life that mystifies her mother.

The son chooses to go to college and appears on his way to becoming an engineer with a fascination for measurement and construction. He seems to have a plan to achieve his father’s success. However, he rebels in a different and similar way to his sister by dating girls who do not reflect the staid relationship of his parents. On the one hand, the son strives to emulate his father, on the other, he rejects the privileges of wealthy upper-class existence in white America.

She turns to religion. Ironically, she abandons her religious obsession, marries a plumber’s son who drops out of college to take over his uncle’s business with the ambition of becoming a financial success like his new wife’s father. That goal is unrevealed in Connell’s story, but he shows their marriage is rocky, presumably because of their societal upbringing. The husband unjustifiably strikes his wife. He apologizes but Connell infers the reason for their conflicts is because of the different economic circumstances in which they were raised. The Bridge’s young daughter is accustomed to having housework done by servants while the plumber’s son is self-reliant and an ambitious doer. The story infers they stay together but it is an untold exploration of their remaining lives.

Nearing the end of this family’s story, Connell illustrates the growing boredom in Mrs. Bridges’ life.

The children grow away from her. She feels a sense of loss of purpose in life. Housework is now entirely done by servants. The children no longer listen to her or seek her advice. Her husband is consumed by his work. No one seems to need or care about her. The only solace seems to be in wealthy women friends who are experiencing a similar ennui. One of these upper-class women commits suicide. Mrs. Bridges suggests to her husband that she should see a psychiatrist for her growing depression. Her husband suggests that is nonsense and the idea is dropped.

The life of the Bridges family is disrupted by WWII. The son chooses to leave the university and enlist in the Army. The implication is that life goes on for the family as it had before, but the experience of war is only reinforcing the dynamics of their family’s socialization.

Self-interest permeates human life. In a capitalist culture, self-interest is measured by wealth.

One suspects some who have lived this twentieth century life see themselves in Connell’s story of the Bridges family. In socialist culture, self-interest is measured by power. In a communist culture, self-interest is a combination of wealth and power as evidenced by Russia’s and China’s rule in the 21st century.

The value of Connell’s “Mrs. Bridge” is in its dissection of American society, and not just of its time but of today.

Its story implies American wealth should not be a measure of human value. The gap between rich and poor is a measure of how far America is from the intent of the Constitution’s statement “all men are created equal”. Connell’s story infers the statement in the American Constitution should have been “all people are created equal”, not just men. In being created equal, the 14th Amendment stipulates all citizens are to have equal rights in pursuit of life, liberty, and property.

Connell masterfully shows the strength and weakness of American society. Its strength lies in freedom to exploit human self-interest. Its weakness is in believing wealth is a measure of human value.

The only way wealth can be considered a measure of human value is when all human beings have equal opportunity, as their interest and ability allow.

There must be no discrimination in society based on sex, race, religion, or ethnicity for equality of opportunity to evolve. That is aspirational in America, but whether equal opportunity can ever be achieved is problematic based on the nature of human beings.