Suburban Dissolution: Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road

When The Petrified Forest flops, April spirals into depression. She resurfaces with a plan: Frank will quit his job, and they will move to Paris. She will support the family working as a NATO secretary and hence will allow Frank the opportunity to discover the untapped potential the corporate world is draining from him. Frank acquiesces, and at first, their marriage is rejuvenated, as is Frank's career. His confidence is bolstered by his wife's confidence in him, and for the first time at Knox Business Machines (school of hard "knox"?), Frank begins to carve a niche for himself. He writes a successful advertising campaign, and work becomes more than just a place where "you can sort of turn off your mind every morning at nine and leave it off all day, and nobody knows the difference." His confidence is doubly bolstered by his affair with a secretary. His enthusiasm for Europe soon wavers, however, and the reader suspects that Frank lacks April's courage and conviction.

When April discovers she is pregnant, she is distraught; Frank is ecstatic. Here is his scapegoat for refusing Europe. How can they give up the security of his job with a new baby on the way? April wants to abort, as she wanted to abort her first pregnancy, which also interfered with plans for Europe. As he did before, Frank sets out to dissuade her. One of Frank's defining traits is his constant manipulation and his need to retain the upper hand. No action is undertaken without considering the consequences. He embarks on a marital duel. Since April believes that it is safe to abort (on her own) only within the first trimester, Frank has three months to convince her to keep the baby. Frank piles on the charm:

These moments were not always quite spontaneous; as often as not they followed as subtle effort of vanity on his part, a form of masculine flirtation that was as skillful as any girl's. Walking toward or away from her across a restaurant floor, for example, he remembered always to do it in the old 'terrifically sexy' way, and when they walked together he fell into another old habit of holding his head unnaturally erect and carrying his inside shoulder an inch or two higher than the other, to give himself more loftiness from where she clung at his arm. When he lit a cigarette in the dark he was

The copyright of the article Suburban Dissolution: Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road in British Literature is owned by Janet Kay Blaylock. Permission to republish Suburban Dissolution: Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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