Essay Questions

While it may be going too far to term Cheever an early “male feminist” what evidence supports the contention that he was at least a 1950’s “male feminist” author?

Most of the stories in this collection are set in what might be called the last golden age of male chauvinism in America. More than that, many of the stories feature exactly the type of male characters most likely to freely express that chauvinism: successful men who could easily separate their working lives in the big city from their domestic kingdom in the suburbs. Cheever seems to have been intensely aware of his strain of the belief and acceptance of male dominance as fuel that drove the engine of the 1950’s post-war boom. Neddy Merrill’s swimming pool odyssey is Cheever’s finest manifestation of how the emperors of suburbia had feet of clay on that side of the commuter line. Mr. Blake is the Neddy of the working end of the line. Both men are the apotheosis of the gray flannel suit set who look upon women as trophies to be won and put away in the attic when too must dust gathers. Arguably, perhaps, the symptomatic character which most personifies Cheever’s feminist principles is Cash Bentley who dies a deeply ironic death at the hands of his wife, accidentally receiving the justice which Blake avoids and which Neddy might one day wish for.

“The Enormous Radio” is uncharacteristically fanciful and whimsical for a Cheever story. How it might also be the most psychological autobiographical story in the collection?

Cheever’s story of a married couple who receive a magical radio capable of tuning into the private conversations of their neighbors can be interpreted as a metaphor for all his short fiction, but especially those taking place on the suburban lawns of his Shady Hill. More than just a whimsical exercise in magical realism, it is almost Hitchcockian in its meta-textual analysis of the process of storytelling. What drives Irene Westcott to an obsession that nearly reaches the point of mania is prying into the most intimate and hidden details of the lives of those around her without being seen. She is a darker version of the wheelchair-bound hero of Hitchcock’s Rear Window who simply enjoys the voyeurism without the moral qualification of trying to catch a murderer. Even more important, however, Mrs. Westcott is the symbolic doppelganger of Cheever’s readers. Just as Irene bears witness to the unseemly side of otherwise completely normal and average people, so does the reader do exactly the same thing each time they peer into the lives of the normal and average people about whom Cheever writes.

How is Cheever’s choices in narration an integral part of his process of producing fiction?

The narration in a Cheever story is an essential element. Very often how the story is being told is just as important—occasionally even more so—than the narrative itself. The latter is certainly true of “The Wrysons” in which the entire narrative voice loaded with wry humor plays off the name of the couple at its center so that the story becomes almost an exercise in pure form. This is also true to a certain extent in “The Brigadier and the Golf Widow” in which the typically knowing narrator occasionally seems bewildered by certain details of the story being related. The menacing tone of “The Five-Forty-Eight” is utterly dependent upon the narrative point of view being restricted primarily to Mr. Blake so that his paranoia and fear is shifted onto the reader; neither knows exactly what is going on. “The Swimmer” is a truly unique example of subtle narrative shifts that require things to be seen from Neddy’s point of view, but with the occasional view from the outside looking in to fully understand the circumstances of fragility in which the swimmer begins to find himself. One of the greatest single examples of the narrative voice being essential to a Cheever story when Jim Westcott is described as being “intentionally naïve” at the beginning but by the end the reader is compelled to wonder if this description is entirely accurate.