Essay Questions

Why is Olive upset when Christopher's wife stands up for her?

It's not really the fact that Christopher's wife stands up for her that upsets or concerns Olive; it is the way in which she does so and what it means in terms of the way that Olive parented her son. Christopher yells at Olive, and is extremely rude to Jack, in a very inappropriate exchange between mother and son. His wife is angry that he has spoken to his mother like this, and because he has raised his voice to her, and she wastes no time in telling him he is wrong to do so, and to firmly putting him in his place. Although Olive appreciates the gesture of respect and support towards her, it also saddens her to see her son being spoken to by his wife in the same way that she spoke to her husband.

Olive begins to realize that she has given Christopher a false impression of marriage, and the roles of each of the players in it. She largely henpecked Henry, and was bossy at best, scathing at worst, all of which was witnessed by Christopher, who appears to have sought out a wife whose personality is very similar to that of his mother. She feels that she has not only failed as a wife, but that she has also failed as a mother, because she has shown him an example of a relationship that does not contain enough love or respect for the other person, and this has fundamentally affected his life in his choice of life partner.

All of the stories that make up the novel have some connection to Olive. How does the author manage this?

Sometimes, the stories are about Olive, or her immediate family. A story about her son focuses upon his visit to her home with his wife and children. Three stories about Jack, her fiance, are also in some way written with her at the center; in the first, the couple have separated, and Jack is trying to avoid running into Olive by driving too fast to get in and out of town, and earns a speeding ticket for his trouble. Although she does not feature in the story in person, she is the reason for its existence. Similarly, in the second story about Jack, his relationship with Olive prompts him to think back sadly about his relationship with his first wife and with a subsequent girlfriend.

Other stories have a more tenuous connection to Olive. Two feature her previous students, and she is the catalyst for an epiphany in their lives that they experience after running into her. The epiphany that is experienced after a meeting with former student Andrea L'Rieux is more of an epiphany for Olive, though, in that Andrea writes a poem about her that shows her to be a very lonely person. Although Olive, with her multitude of friends, is initially offended by this characterization, she comes to realize that Andrea is actually right, and that she has lived most of her life very lonely but at the same time surrounded by many different people.