“Rat-trap wives”
After a busy fulfilling working life, he is now faced with mundane, boring, normality; the gulf in their relationship is ever increasing. Therefore when Bull gets the opportunity to return to Drab for two years he does not hesitate.
Bulls attitude to work is that of love; he describes work as:
“My tender mistress.”
Gardam is personifying Bull’s work, giving it the quality of a feeling, tenderness. However, there is also a pun on the word “tender” as it describes an application for a contract. Bull feels complete whilst he is working: in control. His work, unlike his wife needs him; he describes Moira:
“She doesn’t need me any more.”
He speaks of work with a passion he does not display to his wife; he also describes his accomplishments with an amount of pride; whereas when describing his wife there is only sadness and regret. There is the possibility that if they had been able to have children their relationship may have been more loving, and complete:
“I’m not unhappy.
No kids mind.”
Throughout he refers to work as his “mistress”: a replacement for affection and love.
With regard to physical love, Bull describes himself as having:
“a flutter in the old loins.”
He has met a woman by the swimming pool; this has happened on a Sunday; Bull is not working; not due to religious belief in Drab, but because somebody has delivered the wrong materials. Bull is reflecting over his loneliness. He has had time whilst not working to think. He thinks about the “orang-outang” who is dying from loneliness; he also likens himself to Adam in the Garden of Eden, who asked God for a mate to cure his solitude.
Bull appears quite conceited in his appraisal of his own attributes; he believes himself to be an impressive specimen of manliness:
“Me- I’m hard as iron. Neck two foot round….”
He is not however, as forth coming with praise for the woman who has chosen to sit by him; he refer arrogantly to her as:
“mingy…Like a hen”
Bull thinks he knows her. She has been rejected by a man; he has concluded this because she is reading a letter. He is judging the woman as shallow; this could be a reflection of Moira’s attitudes:
“not been to Cartier lately.”
Bull does not know this woman.
After dinner, the woman goes back to Bull’s room with him. Bull for a split second thinks about being unfaithful to Moira. He staves off his desires by reflecting on all the woman’s negative points:
“poor old hands………..necks…..patched brown….”
He takes her to the lift. He has had many experiences with women in similar situations before. He believes the crows would tell him:
“Keep off her, Bull. There’s no future”
He returns to Moira; he still has the extension to build.
The story “Stone Trees” is also an interior monologue; it is told by a female narrator whose husband has passed away. Her thoughts are comprised of disjointed syntax giving the feeling of melancholy, grief and loss. The woman gives the impression of being right on the edge of her sanity. Gardam uses the words, “So now that he is dead” repetitively; these give the feeling of being on a train journey; which is where the narration begins.
The narrator has been controlled by her husband; she has lived her life through him; never being independent. She was prepared to accept that she would never be the only woman in her husbands life. After his infidelities, he always returned to his wife: it would be as it was when they were first together:
“a short return to each other….I knew that you were one I’d never have to myself”
She considered herself not to be good enough for her husband; she describes her marrying him as:
“very temporary luck”
She describes their relationship as an “obsession”, a “mental illness”; she reflects that it was worse just before Tom and Anna, their friends, had gone away.
The narrator and her husband had gone on holiday together, shortly after their friends leaving. However, her husband had been very distant, different to how he had been after his other, affairs. The narrator believed he had fallen in love with his latest conquest:
“God, love-the killing sickness.”
She realises that Anna’s son, Peter, is her husbands child; she knows why it was that her husband was so sad after they returned from America. Her husband had fallen in love with, and produced a child with their friend. Her husband had betrayed not only her but his friend Tom also. She also acknowledges that her husband will live on in the child:
“Leave your wine and come,”
He has similar mannerisms, and the ability to control her, just as his father had:
“The boy laughs and looks at me with your known eyes.”
Anna has also been suppressed by her husband, Tom; from the onset of their relationship she had done, what she thought was acceptable by his standards. She had “ached” for him; however, time after time he did not notice her:
“Anna always in that church”
She had wanted to be loved. Tom, however, was oblivious to her needs. They had married and became “the Robertson’s”. Anna had lost her own identity. Tom had God to shower his affection on: whilst Anna had nothing. The attentions of the narrators, philandering, husband, were a welcome occurrence for the love starved Anna. Anna for her part loved him, and after his death is experiencing, grief and remorse for the secret she has kept:
“How Anna wept.”
The narrator has not been released from the emotional restraints her obsessive love has placed on her; she cannot relate to the young woman on the train who talk of freedom and rights. Her life has been consumed with adoring and forgiving her selfish husband. She has not even had the joy of a child to fill the void left “now that he is dead”.
Jane Gardam accurately retells two different types of obsessive relationship. There is that of Bull and his obsession with work and its repercussions; would they have had children if he had not been away so frequently? Perhaps his wife could not bear the thought of rearing the children alone? Perhaps she feels let down by him? Therefore, she makes materialistic demands to fill this void. Her life reflects un-fulfilment. Moira has become harsh, cold and self-contained. She does not know how to need Bull anymore, emotionally.
Jane Gardam writes the monologues in such away that you find yourself analysing both sides of the relationship. In “Stone Trees” one cannot help but feel sympathy for the narrator; however, she has accepted her husbands, behaviour, even condoned it. Her life is his life. Their relationship was symbiotic she lived off him. When faced with life alone she found another focus: his son. Anna and Toms relationship was full of lost opportunity, she loved him dearly, he loved God; if he had been more aware of Anna she would not of strayed.
Both couples, in both stories, lack in the shared, experience of children; this suggests that possibly there is regret tainting the relationships. There is also the similarity in both monologues regarding the husbands selfish behaviour. Bull and his desire to place work above everything, even his marriage, and the narrators husband a serial philanderer. The women have taken a back seat to their husbands ambitions; be it career wise or love orientated. The difference being that Moira has created her own identity whilst the narrator has hung onto the shreds of her marriage. Moira, it would seem, stays married for financial gain as opposed to any emotional attachment.
