Penury, Beer, & Butchery

Even though we had a really good discussion in class about "The Gifts of War" by Margaret Drabble, there were a few issues I wanted to explore more for my blog. The story really impressed me a lot with its complexity, and to me one of its strongest themes concerns the institution of marriage. When I first read the piece and before the class discussion, I felt that "The Gifts of War" was primarily focused on marriage, and the other themes of war and class fell to the background for me. I think this is because Drabble paints such a harrowing picture of marriage--the abuse stayed in my mind long after I finished reading the story.

One of the most interesting parts to me was how Kevin's mother (nameless--just another victim of the "war" that is marriage) felt that she had no choice but to accept her "lot" as she calls it. She says that she is ignorant and doesn't "expect to know anything" (2824); the wife has to just be silent and keep living her horrible life. This makes sense because I know many people who are this way in their marriages, especially because Kevin's mother is poor and really has no chance at a better life. Another reason she says she perseveres through life is because of her son. He is the only happiness in his mother's life, and her man-hating hasn't been able to touch Kevin yet because he is still young: "He wasn't a proper man yet, he couldn't inflict true pain" (2824). Drabble equates being a man with inflicting pain on others, and uses other unsavory adjectives to describe her husband such as, "stubbly, disgusting, ill, malingering, unkind" (2827). Kevin's mother is trapped in an abusive marriage, but luckily has her son to keep her happy (or as happy as she'll ever become).

The other really interesting part of this to me is how Drabble compares and contrasts Kevin's mother with Frances and the other younger girls. They might have different views from her about class and the war, but the most important and stressed differences are in how the two generations think about marriage and men. Kevin's mother says that she was "penniless then as now, but still hopeful" (2827) when she was a young girl looking for love. Today, she is penniless but has lost all hope in the idea of marriage; she even says that she envies the young girls who have romantic ideas about men because she is so disillusioned with the whole thing. Kevin's mother wants to say to these girls, "What do you think you're playing at? Where do you think it leads you, what do you think you're asking for?" (2827). Kevin's mother goes on to compare girls like Frances to "condemned cattle and sacrificial virgins" (2827). This shows exactly how the older woman feels about marriage: it is a trap and a sacrifice of good women. While for Kevin's mother's generation of wives, "time had taught them all" (2827), Frances is young and silly about love. She says that she spends hours thinking about her emotions and feelings for her friend Michael, and protests the war for him, even though it is the last thing she would have done herself. The contrast between the two women is drastic.

Clearly, "The Gifts of War" is about many different issues, but I saw marriage for women as one of the central ideas the story explores. That being said, I understood Kevin's mother's breakdown at the end of the story as an epiphany of sorts about her life in general. I thought that she finally understood she would always be defeated in her life no matter what, the same way she is defeated in her marriage. The woman is suffering from the war in general, but she is most affected and disillusioned with the world and the people around her because of the war that is her daily life in her marriage.