“Marriage Quarantine”
by Kate Walbert
from the December 6, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
There are likely only going to be three stories in December, and the first is “Quarantine Marriage,” by Kate Walbert. Walbert has appeared in The New Yorker a couple of times before, most recently in 2019. She has written six novels, though I’ve read only her debut, The Gardens of Kyoto, which I really liked.
Here we get a story about a marriage in the pandemic. Mary Jane and Daniel
Mary Jane follows her husband, Daniel, from room to room, words pouring out of her, yammering. Or hammering, as he has said, as if she must hit every nail on the head. What does he mean by that, she wanted to know.
What do you mean by that? she had asked, but Daniel shrugged.
No idea, he said.
I’ve gotten a ways through the story already and am enjoying it. Walbert is very good at narrating their inner lives as they inhabit a close, shared space. I’m anxious to see where it goes!
I hope you’ll share your thoughts on the story. Have a wonderful week, as we get into this final month of 2021.
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Nice compact story. I’m not big on dysfunctional marriage/domestic/relationship stories, but this was ok. At first I thought it was about how COVID impacted marriage. Then I thought it was using covid and quarantine as a metaphor for some marriages. So if this marriage is in quarantine, what is its metaphorical covid?
William,
I looked for the metaphorical covid and the closest I could get was the fragment, “things unseen but present, the unaddressed” in a discussion of things structural. She also asks him a question about what he meant by something he said in the beginning of the story and he replied he didn’t know. So their marriage is present in that they can sit apart from one another and talk. But the relationship is unseen in how there doesn’t appear to be one the way they talk to one another. And so unaddressed. Covid is unseen in that its germs are unseen and present by observable symptoms but unaddressed in that till now there is no drug that can directly annihilate all the germs at one go.
This story reads like a shrink going all through the back story of their married lives and family relationships to try to find out what the problem is. People who marry are probably in the best communication with each other on their honeymoon and then everything gradually goes to hell from there.
Also with ivy league professional people they tend to have to pursue their individual lives separately within the framework of their marriage and need to isolate to a certain degree for professional survival. The irony to me is that these are very smart, very intelligent people who should be smart enough to figure out how to have a good marriage. They seem a little too self absorbed so they are sort of self isolating on an automaticity as though their marriage will persist no matter how self absorbed they become.
The problem seems structural in that all the elements of marriage are there but the two entities are separated from one another because what initially bound them to each other has either disappeared or his detached or isolated itself from their perception of one another.
This story is maybe unable to explain what caused a particular condition. But it is very clever at revealing the existence or presence of a very far from optimal marriage.
Larry —
I think you’re on to something here:
“So their marriage is present in that they can sit apart from one another and talk. But the relationship is unseen in how there doesn’t appear to be one the way they talk to one another.”
However, I don’t think being smart, intelligent, educated professionals has anything to do with having a good marriage. A relationship is an emotional activity. I think that “self-absorbed” is pertinent. Marriage is a situation in which a person needs to be able to speak their perceptions feelings and ideas and to hear those speakings from their partner.
William,
Totally agree with you on that last sentence. That’s the ideal result of a great relationship. Even getting close to that ideal mitigates some of the difficulties that the couple in this story face. I shouldn’t be harsh on smart people. It is still a pretty good story in terms of encountering dysfunction, searching out causes and leaving it up in air as far as what will happen.