"Wednesday's Child" Perhaps Better From a Different POV

 In "Wednesday's Child" by Yiyun Li, a short story in the Jan. 16, 2023, on-line version of the New Yorker, Marcie, the nearly 16-year-old daughter of Rosalie, the story's protagonist, commits suicide by lying down across some railway tracks. This occurred just three weeks after Marcie began attending a "highly selective prep school" to which she had apparently been determined to gain admittance.

Marcie had been a precocious child who read challenging books and otherwise apparently walked to her own drum, such as in the manner in which she ate melon. That's about all readers are told about her.

The bulk of the story consists of Rosalie pondering her daughter's death as she travels toward a famous WWI battlefield where as many as one million soldiers died. An analogy for the apparently senseless nature of Marcie's demise?

What's odd about this story is that while her daughter's death is quite naturally a major preoccupation for Rosalie -- recalled here through associations with current events -- Rosalie apparently made no inquiries as to what may have transpired during Marcie's first three weeks in what was probably a pressured school environment. Or if she did, her findings were apparently of insufficient interest to recall or relate. 

Rather Rosalie thinks about what may or may not make a good mother and whether she mistakenly allowed her daughter -- and in one instance encouraged her -- to read age-inappropriate books. A version of the familiar female refrain: "It's all my fault." 

Perhaps Rosalie's self-absorption lies behind the untimely death of her daughter to even a greater extent than either she herself or the author of her story realizes. “Any time a child chooses that way out, you have to wonder what the parents did,” Rosalie’s mother at one time told Rosalie. One thinks the word "readers" could easily be substituted for the word "you" in that statement.

Rosalie considers the comment cruel and in line with her mother's streak of such behavior. But at the same time, "Rosalie and Dan (her husband) had received their verdict," or so the narrator would have readers believe, In view of the contents of the story, it's a classic case of tell, don't show. Readers are left with no depiction of the child's upbringing.

After finishing Ms Li's piece, it occurred to me that a story about Marcie, from her point of view, would have been far more interesting than the one I had just finished about Rosalie. Perhaps Ms Li will oblige, or maybe she already has. 

Chekhov's "The Darling:" Controlled Variation Says Saunders

 A "darling" is a beloved person who can do no wrong. One thinks of Peter Pan's friend Wendy. 

Wendy was quite literally a Darling -- that was her last name. The implication, of course, was that she was also a darling in the definitional sense and, as depicted by J.M. Barrie in his stories about Peter Pan, that seems to have been the case. She was indeed a beloved person and except that her difficult father at one point objected to her telling "silly stories" to her younger brothers, she was apparently about as perfect as a girl, and later a woman, can get.

But unlike Chekhof's darling, a woman named Olga Semyonova, or Olenka as she is known to family and friends, Wendy had to make a difficult choice: whether to stay in Neverland with Peter and remain a child forever, or return home and face adulthood with all of its challenges. Olenka, about whose background readers are told little, just drifts through life, falling in love with one male after another and then conforming her life to theirs -- sharing not only their activities but their opinions.

"The Darling" is one of three Chekhov short stories that American author and creative writing instructor Geoge Saunders elucidates in his recent book "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain." The book's look at seven Russian short stories is based on workshop sessions Saunders has conducted with students at Syracuse University over a period of about 20 years.

Olenka, "the daughter of a retired collegiate assessor," is presumably not uneducated. But her fundamental characteristic is that "she was always enamored with someone and could not live otherwise." Physically warm and comfortable, she's otherwise an empty vessel that needs to be filled from some external source and remains over the years unchanged in that respect. 

After first focusing on a French teacher, then on her now-dying father and then an aunt, Olenka as young woman first falls in love with a rather unattractive theater impresario because she feels sorry for him. When he somewhat mysteriously dies on a business trip shortly thereafter, she marries a lumberyard owner and lives happily with him for six years although they are unable to have children. Next comes as an army veterinarian (armies had a lot of horses back then), but he's married so her infatuation is removed and mostly one-sided. Finally, as a mother figure, she loves the now-retired vet's young son, who finds her annoying. 

End of the story.

For Saunders, "The Darling" is a "pattern story" -- a tale in which a basic theme recurs, but each time with slight changes that both give readers pleasure and appear to infer new meaning.  In his book about Russian short stories, he spends a lot of time explaining just how Chekhov went about constructing it.

Readers who like music will probably immediately recognize this technique as theme and variation. It's ever-present, such as when jazz musicians pass around various riffs on a particular melody, but I most enjoy it Handel's vocal music where theme and variation is ever present and with great imagination. Easily approachable in that respect is "Every Valley," the second aria from "Messiah." 

The technique is probably a lot less used in literature, and especially as blatantly as in "The Darling." And not without reason: as the tale proceeded, Olenka seemed came across for me as more caricature than character and, indeed, at one point Saunders admits she can appear to be somewhat robotic.

No matter how good a melody is, it can become boring if it is simply repeated in unchanged form. Likewise, Saunders warns against stories are too static in nature. One or more expectations need to be set at the beginning and resolution comes through a series of what he calls "escalations." In other words, the stakes have to get higher.   

At the end of the day, and in view of the fact that "The Darling" ends without a striking development that proclaims "Resolution!" one can't help wondering what the theme that was subjected to variation was all about.

In Saunders view, Chekov was writing about love, and how it can become a complete absorption for one person as opposed to a form of communication between two. Others, such as Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace," "Anna Karenina") have tried, Saunders said, to make tale about the nature, or natures, of women. There is, of course, the age-old question: "what do women want?" In Olenka's case, the answer would seem to be "to be a caregiver." 

Well, fine, but it still seems to be told as caricature, or too simplistic. Olenka lacks complexity and as such, it's tough to find her of any great interest as an individual. 

At the end of the day, Saunders said that he teaches "The Darling" as "a brisk little primer on just how much organization the story form can bear and will reward," adding that in this instance, he finds Chekov's tale "a beautiful system for presenting a tale of controlled variation."

Now let's see, where did I put my cd of "Messiah" arias and choruses? Talk about a beautify system of controlled variation!