Suburban Dissolution: Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road

was careful to arrange his features in a virile frown before striking and cupping the flame (he knew, from having practiced this at the mirror of a blacked-out bathroom years ago, that it made a swift, intensely dramatic portrait), and he paid scrupulous attention to endless details: keeping his voice low and resonant, keeping his hair brushed and his bitten fingernails out of sight; being always the first one athletically up and out of bed in the morning, so that she might never see his face lying swollen and helpless in sleep.

Who is the actor here, April or Frank?

Meanwhile, the realtor, Mrs. Givings, would like April and Frank to stay. Her only son, John, is being treated at the local sanitarium. She is convinced John would connect with the Wheelers, and if could just spend time with them, he might snap out of his mental difficulties. (Clearly, John Givings is not the only one suffering delusions.)

Strong writing is in the details. After discussing with her husband her plans for John, Mrs. Givings "stared in absent-minded fascination at the way the dying sun shone crimson through her husband's earlobe and made his dandruff into flakes of fire, but her thoughts were hurrying ahead to the evening." I was enjoying the novel up to this point. After reading this line, I became a die-hard Yates fan.

Like the Campbells, Mrs. Giving has worked hard to surround herself with a respectable community, but unlike the Campbells, who live not on Revolutionary Road but in the "tacky" and "pastel colored" split levels of Revolutionary Estates and who deserve "at best a tactful condescension," Mrs. Givings firmly believes she belongs. Yet despite her hard work, she is straddled with a husband who would rather turn off his hearing aid than listen and with a son who disappoints. After noting the crimson sun through her husband's earlobe, she moves upstairs, her enthusiasm for get-togethers with John and the Wheelers checked by the Wheelers' disclosure that in a few month's time they plan to move to Europe. Mrs. Giving takes stock:

Passing the shadowed mirror on the landing, she noticed with pride that her own image, at least when seen fleetingly from the corner of an eye, was still that of a swift, lithe girl in a well appointed house; and on the ample carpet of her bedroom, where she quickly stripped off her jacket and stepped out of

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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