Novels

I Lock My Door Upon Myself

This novella is my first Joyce Carol Oates tale. Only 98 pages long, it was completable in an afternoon, and it leaves an afterglow in my mind. It’s lyrical, melancholy, compulsively readable, and filled with questions that hover just below the surface.

The story is inspired by, and takes its title from, its cover illustration: a painting of a dreamy-eyed, arresting red-head by Belgian symbolist Fernand Khnopff. Here it is in full, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The tale takes place along the Chautauqua River in Upstate New York, the setting (so I’ve learned) for many of Oates’ stories. It chronicles the life of Edith “Calla” Honeystone Freilicht, a white woman considered strange and incomprehensible by her family. Living around the turn of the century, her life takes a traditional course: an arranged marriage, childbirth, wifely duties. But she is indifferent to her husband, indifferent to her life, and often wanders off. During one of her wanderings she meets Tyrell Thompson, a black water diviner, and the two embark on a torrential affair that culminates in a rowboat ride over the falls.

Despite its subject, it struck me as a novella not focused primarily on making a point about race, but rather about human relationship and identity, personal autonomy and self-possession and freedom, womanhood, and story-making. The tale is narrated by Calla’s granddaughter, but Calla herself frequently erupts into the prose and speaks for herself. As the above painting suggests visually, the Calla of the story emerges as an abstracted person who wonders at times whether she is living in a dream, and if so whether it’s hers. Where does anyone’s story — and where does this narrative in particular — originate? Whose consciousness is it located in?

These sound like quite cerebral questions, but they arise almost unconsciously from a tale that’s more myth-like than analytical. I have no answers to them. I do have a deep respect for this author who inhabits the space of the story she’s created so fully that it seems to write itself. Although I wouldn’t say I loved this particular story, this is an author I’ll be reading more of for sure. (Lots to choose from…)

I enjoyed reading this review and this one.

Comments Off on I Lock My Door Upon Myself