Stoner

she has a mental disability. Probably bipolar

>>7723463

It's all her revenge for not getting to go to Paris when she was younger

>>7723463
She was raised that way.

>>7723463
She's an entitled cunt who thought she was a princess.

She was an accurate depiction of women.

Edith was always terrible. The question is, why did Stoner go for and stay with her regardless?

>>7723502
He couldn't imagine a different life, just like his parents before him.

Sexual repression

>>7723497
The feels

Edith made me realize that my previous (failed) love life was not a one off and that this is standard female behavior. I might as well kill myself now that I think about it

I had to put the book down when she came back from St. Louis. I have never had a book make me so angry before.

File: 1453585315355.jpg (150KB, 1140x773px) Image search: [Google]

150KB, 1140x773px

>>7723463
Contrary to popular interpretation by redpilltards on 4chan, Edith was as much a victim as Stoner -- she felt compelled by arbitrary societal demands that never actually existed to behave in a certain way. Why didn't she just hold off on marrying Stoner? Why didn't she just take that trip to Europe when she had the chance? Why did she pointlessly retaliate against Stoner instead of meaningfully escaping a life she obviously hated? Why the hell didn't either of them ever directly confront the issue?

The novel is filled with people who force themselves to suffer under assumed archetypes in lieu of genuine self-expression. Its a subversion of the usual study of Americana where you have the oppressed suburbans being crushed by society and their constrictive cultures: in actuality these people were never forced into anything, and no one ever told them to act a certain way. Stoner, Edith, their daughter, and Katherine allow themselves to suffer for no reason than their own petty preconceived notions of existence.

>>7723607
I always believed you could write the novel from the POV of a character who's usually perceived as "mean" (Edith, Lomax) and make it as equally depressing.

>>7723607
Good post. Above where I said something silly along the lines of "the feels" and "all women..." I admit I had written it without giving it all that much thought. Societal expectations have taken their toll on me and I should be more against those perceived expectations than on the woman herself. Ty anon kun

>>7723607
I finished it two nights ago, and I would also add that a lot of the characters seem to be almost congenitally incapable of escaping what makes them unhappy. I don't think that it's "petty preconceived notions" so much as an inability to act when they recognize those problems. Stoner knows his marriage is a failure very early on, and I think he's totally disabused of any conventional view of love very early on. He's just too nice to walk away, as opposed to wedded to his worldview.

For me, the most poignant parts are when Stoner looks at Lomax and realizes that he's totally serious when he freaks out over his pet student nearly getting failed, and when he realizes that Edith genuinely believes that she's making her daughter happier by making her "popular". The heart-breaking part of this book isn't just that the characters are trapped by expectations, it's that they more-or-less realize this to different extents and are still incapable of moving beyond their various psychological hangups.

I kind of disagree about Edith not being constricted, though. There's a passage about how she's educated, which includes a focus on sexual prohibition that ends up suffusing her entire education, and unsurprisingly that affects her worldview. The honeymoon is a really painful episode to read, but I honestly don't believe that Edith is trying to be "proper" so much as she's internalized that sort of sexual repression.

Also, I think Masters is pretty much on the money (at least in the context of the book) when he says that the university attracts people who would've been failures in real life. Edith is not part of the university world, and Stoner should have known better, but his burden is that he's not enough of an asshole to ever rise beyond his station in life. In retrospect, I'm surprised how much of an influence Masters is despite dying so early in the book.

>>7723642
Right. It's about internal obstruction, mental constriction forcing people into bad situations.

The problem is that these people are incapable of confrontation: with others, with themselves.

>>7723607
>>7723615
>>7723623
>>7723642
>>7723684
So they are cowards who hate themselves because of their cowardice and take out that anger indirectly on others or remain where they are doing nothing?
what is the average 4chan user

>>7723684
Yeah, I mean Stoner's great victories over Lomax come without any real confrontation at all. He just sort of avoids the whole process.

He teaches Renaissance lit to his freshmen and just waits for Lomax to adjust.

Even his climactic retirement battle just ends with him saying Lomax is an ignorant son-of-a-bitch and he just totally sidesteps the game that they're playing (paraphrasing here). He can't confront him properly even when he has to.

>>7723699
Well, I'm not comfortable with calling them cowards because that sort of implies that they're afraid of something. I don't really get the vibe of fear so much as just being stuck in a rut. They're too wedded to routine. I honestly think that Stoner would have eloped with Katherine if it hadn't been for the fact that he was married, rumours and mockery be damned. But when his history with Edith came to bear on him, he was totally powerless. He's not afraid to leave Edith, but he's powerless to do so nevertheless.

I'll have to give it some more thought, though. As I mentioned, I only finished it recently.