No-Fault Divorce
The stories that comprise this collection are about the disintegration of the marriage of Richard and Joan Maples. The backstory of the how the marriage started off is revealed obliquely to satisfy the average desire to know, but the focus is on that part of marriage where things begin to unravel and inexorably to divorce. Inexorably, yet, but not necessarily inevitably. Rather than taking the easy way out by creating more typical story of husband and wife for whom the divorce can hardly be termed amicable, the collapse of the marriage here is presented as a heartbreak for everyone involved. It is a tortuous decision to part, not an opportunity to be pounced upon. The couple receive a no-fault divorce which further indicates how blame can be spread around rather than piled upon just one spouse or the other for being the epicenter of all the problems leading to marital discord.
Divorce is Hardest on the Children
It is a phrase repeated so much and effortlessly that it threatens to become a cliché, but the way in which Updike presents the effect of the crumbling marriage of Richard and Joan upon sons and daughters in an especially sensitive and complex manner. Especially notable is the way the author demonstrates how the reaction to the intensifying awareness of the marital discord in the home is often cued or guided not so much by the parents, but other siblings. The influence of older siblings on how younger siblings develop their perspectives, outlook and opinions is very subtly delineated through the gradual apprehension of the kids about the state of their parents’ union.
The 1960’s
Rather than finding either Richard or Joan singularly or even predominantly to blame for the deterioration of the marriage, the cultural revolution linking the 1950’s beginning of the romance with the 1970’s ending looms much larger as a culprit. Multiple allusions and references to the events of that decade—the Civil Rights movement, the Space Race, the rise of feminism, a loosening of sexual mores—are introduced primarily for the purpose of setting the time period for each individual story, but when viewed more collectively as if the book were a novel rather than a short story collection, it is more possible to to present an argument that the cultural shifts in American society which took place from the Eisenhower years to the Watergate era contributed to psychological shift in the point of view toward marriage as institution. The introduction of elements into the marriage which are almost impossible to conceive ever occurring when the Maples were first introduced in the mid-1950s—casual drug use, the equation of male and female promiscuity, and an “open marriage”—all tend to implicate the widespread evolution of basic fundamental “family values” as an intensifying pressure point upon the traditional “storybook marriage.”
