RE: Muriel

Baader, Cecilia (cbaader@casecorp.com)
Mon, 29 Nov 1999 11:39:37 -0600

I think that you're selling Muriel just the tiniest bit short, here, Tim. (I
felt this overwhelming desire to start out this email with, "I don't think
so, Tim..." but, since you probably hear that as much as I get drunk people
singing "Cecilia" to me, I'll refrain.)

Muriel is a thousand girls the world over-- in love with a man she doesn't
understand, protective of him, yet unable to give him what he needs.  And
she's elusive-- the only clear picture that we have of her comes in
Bananafish.

But, we've already heard from Buddy in S:AI that Bananafish doesn't exactly
present Seymour in an entirely truthful light. So we have to question, as we
know that APDFB is written by Buddy (someone whom we already know from RHTRC
does not appreciate Muriel), how entirely true a picture that we have in
that piece.  The one and only time that we see her, she's presented in an
unflattering light, unconcernedly painting her nails in a hotel room while
her husband experiences the greatest of traumas downstairs.

We have an unreliable and (admittedly) bitter narrator, convinced that SHE
didn't know anything about S. as well as HE does, recreating a telephone
conversation and morning beauty routine to which he was not privy.  All
Buddy really knows about Muriel is that she is a beautiful girl, perhaps
overconcerned by appearances and easily led by her mother.  Add to that the
fact that S. was everything to him, and M. didn't save him.  We're left with
a man, unable to blame his hero for taking himself away, finding himself a
villain and writing her as unappealing as possible.  The girl of privilege
depicted in all her archetypical glory.  Of course she's doing her nails,
commenting on the class of people at the resort.  That's what her kind does,
at least in Buddy's mind.

Any kind of determination that we make from the Glass stories is coloured by
Buddy's vision of Muriel. And it is that vision that I cannot believe, more
so because in a narrator that is so intuitive and delicate in his
descriptions, he is almost clumsy in his depiction of Muriel. Therefore, to
get a "true" picture of her, we can only truly examine the facts, those that
Buddy cannot slant.  

One:  Seymour loves Muriel, not because she worships him like the rest of
the world, but because she is so _normal_.  He is giddy with happiness when
they marry in RHTRC, so much so that he cannot trust himself.  She, despite
the description that Buddy has made of her as one who is over-concerned by
appearances, marries Seymour even after he publicly humiliates her.  I know
a lot of women who would have walked away, but Muriel does not.

Two:  The only other view that we have of Muriel comes from BooBoo, who
calls her a "real nothing."  To a family who hero worships its oldest
member, she is nothing special, almost a nonentity.  One has to wonder if
they would have thought anyone was worthy of Him.  That normalcy, though, is
her appeal.  Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948.  Seymour spends all of his time
flying high, watching the trees instead of the road, and she grounds him.

Three:  Muriel will not let Buddy publish Seymour's poems.  I get the
feeling that one of the reasons that Seymour so loved her is that she,
unlike his family, treated him as a normal man.  Therefore, not letting the
rest of the world canonize him when his family already does, is her last way
of protecting him.

Several people put the blame at Muriel's door for Seymour's suicide, but I
don't think that anything can possibly be that simple.  We have a
shell-shocked man in the midst of a spiritual crisis who has the added
difficulty of being a hero for everyone who knows him.  Muriel may not have
helped him, but I'm not so sure that she hurt him either.

Regards,
Cecilia.
 

> -----Original Message-----
> On Sun, 28 Nov 1999 15:59:15 -0500 Tim O'Connor <tim@roughdraft.org>
wrote:
> 
> ...Muriel, I think, bothers us because we are immersed in our consumer 
> culture, and she is something like the high-priestess of that 
> culture.  She seems to be the one for whom the phrase "I want" was 
> invented.
> 
> I've never been able to balance the books on the various Muriels that 
> have appeared in JDS's work (the one in "Bananafish"; the one who 
> refuses publication of her husband's poetry; the one who elopes; the 
> one Seymour writes about in his journal).  She's very elusive, almost 
> as elusive as was her changeling husband.
> 
> [and then later, added...]
> 
> ...I think (thought, still think, will think) that M. represents a 
> certain slice of New York life that Salinger, at least, finds 
> distasteful: the upper-crust people who turn their noses up at people 
> "below" them.  (Consider M's remark about the class of people at 
> their resort this year.)  
> 
> I know that Jim thought, in an earlier message, that I was saying 
> there was something bad or wrong about Muriel.  It's not that.  It's 
> only that I've seen more than enough daughters of privilege who 
> expect the world handed to them.  The saddest part is when they screw 
> up, being amidst the means but not knowing how to play the game. 
> Then they get ostracized from all directions.  It's not Muriel; it is 
> Muriel's archetype that irritates me so.
> 
> ...In the end, it's those damned nails, I think.  I can't stomach the 
> presence of women like Muriel, with their nails and their "the world 
> can wait for me" attitudes and their self-help articles ("Sex Can Be 
> Fun -- or Hell").  I can't help wondering whether the Seymour of 
> 1948, who smells the rich-ness (purposely hyphenated) of that hotel 
> room, wonders whether he's made a deal with the devil.  And these 
> things are not mutually exclusive: you can hate the circumstances and 
> still love the person, and although it's not until later stories that 
> we learn more about Muriel, certainly this Muriel, with her obsession 
> with clothes and nails, is one to possibly drive an unstable fellow 
> over the edge, no matter how he feels about her more tender moments.
> 
> --tim