Published in 1961, Yates debut, Revolutionary Road is certainly a masterpiece. It centres around Frank and April Wheeler, a married couple painfully bored by the monotony of suburbia and the status quo, with tragic consequences. The pair fashion an escape plan, where they will uproot their life and emigrate to France, a short-lived plan which is met with judgement, with others calling them ‘immature’. Moreover, it features Shep and Milly Campbell and Howard and Helen Givens, it is a novel where all depictions of marriage are bleak and unfulfilling. There is something rather T.S. Eliot about the preoccupation with the banality of modernity in Revolutionary Road, as though it is eroding our sense of self.
For all couples there is a distinct lack of communication, with neither half of the couple being able to fully understand the other. Yates famously said of this novel: “If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy’. Through the narrative couples are either silent or do a lot of talking, but there is never any real listening. This comes in the literal example of Howard turning his hearing aid off so he doesn’t need to hear his wife ramble. But more broadly they don’t communicate and they can’t understand one another. While we see the adults in the novel unable to communicate and reacting violently, it is little wonder when we see the children, Jennifer and Michael, floundering and unsure how they must behave and what reaction their behaviour is going to incite.
Alarmingly in many ways Frank is a gas-lighter, while he seems to have a degree of disdain for April, he also appears to need her reassurance. He needs to know that he is still on the pedestal she’s put him on. In many instances, April will allude to something he has said in the past and Frank will conclude he must have said it but it wasn’t true, when she suggests he knows French. There are constant references made about her mental health and insanity, with his determination to make her believe she is crazy. By persuading her to believe that she is crazy, and not just reacting to his behaviour, he successfully writes off her objections. Furthermore, the tragic death of April comes at her own hands when she attempts to abort a child she has clearly explained to Frank she does not want, he loses his temper (as we so often see) and tells us that wanting to abort 2 out of 3 of her pregnancies is not a good track record. In shaming her, he manipulates her into keeping the child and she passes the threshold of a safe abortion.
Moreover, the character of Frank appears in many ways, as somewhat ‘out-of-body’, it is as though he is not always in control and is unaware as he gets from one scene of his life to another. The reader sees him drink himself to oblivion in almost every social setting, with him unaware how many of himself he has regaled in an episode. Furthermore, he fashions what he is going to say aloud and the words always alter slightly as they leave his body. His affair with Maureen appears unplanned and unpredicted, as though he is stumbling through life and muddling through decisions. He appears to be persuading the reader that he has little to no autonomy, anger erupts in outbursts.
April on the other hand, appears as a means of elevating masculinity. Her voice in Frank’s internal monologue is always reassuring him that he is ‘interesting’ and ‘sexy’. Shep on the other hand is fixated with the way she looks and in her despair, sex with him is easy. It is interesting as while I was reading, I thought I didn’t really know April, I felt that she existed purely in relation to Frank, a character who rarely left the domestic sphere and when she did it was to plan the next stage of her and Frank’s life. The women in the narrative don’t appear to have much personality at all, as though motherhood and being a wife is meant to consume them. What is interesting then, when April poignantly reaches this conclusion, ‘and then you were face to face, in total darkness with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were’. By assuming the role Frank has placed her in, she has entirely lost her identity.
Revolutionary Road has been sat on my ‘to-read’ shelf for about 10 years and I regret not devouring this sooner. It is in many ways Russo-esque, alike to Empire Falls, it is a narrative concerned with the fear of stagnating, of endless identical neighbourhoods. When being ‘just like everyone else’ is a cause for disdain, and being happy this way is treated with scepticism and mocked.
Sunsets and Fireworks 