Thieves and Rascals by Mavis Gallant – a post for the #1956Club

A few months ago, I wrote about the first six stories in The Cost of Living, an excellent collection of early pieces by the Canadian writer Mavis Gallant. (If you missed it, you can read it by clicking on the link here.) The post covered stories from 1951 to 1955; something that brings us rather conveniently to 1956, which is the subject of Simon and Karen’s latest ‘Club’ week (more details here). So, for my contribution to the #1956Club, I’m going to focus on one story from the collection: Thieves and Rascals, which first appeared in Esquire magazine in 1956.

Gallant is particularly perceptive on the emptiness of suburban domesticity, the type of stifling, loveless marriage depicted in Mad Men and the novels of Richard Yates. It’s something that comes through in Thieves and Rascals, a story featuring Charles and Marian Kimber, a married couple who live in New York.

As the story opens, Charles – an emotionally-absent lawyer – learns that his teenage daughter, Joyce, is being sent home from her respectable boarding school for spending a weekend in a hotel with a young man. Rather than expressing anger or concern for his daughter’s welfare, Charles seems more puzzled than anything else, particularly as he considers Joyce to be rather plain and gauche.

His mind could not construct the image of stolid Joyce, in the moccasins, the tweed skirt, the innocent sweaters, registering (as she surely had) in a shabby hotel on a side street in Albany. He wondered not so much how it had happened, but that it had happened at all. Joyce, as far as he knew, didn’t know any young men, except, perhaps, the brothers of her classmates. And why, he wondered, would any young man, even the most callow and inexperienced, pick Joyce? There are so many girls her age who are graceful, pretty, knowing, and who have weekends here and there written all over them. (p. 117)

Marian, by contrast to her husband, is fragile, brittle and highly strung. Somewhat unusually for a married woman in the mid-1950s, Marian has a career; but as a successful high-end model, she is objectified by men, admired for her undoubted poise and beauty above any other qualities.

News of Joyce’s indiscretion reignites memories for Marian – reflections on an impetuous relationship from her own adolescence, something that caused a rift within the family at the time. As Marian begins to talk about the situation with Charles, a mistrust of men is revealed – both in general and more specifically with Charles himself.

They can’t own up. They can’t be trusted. They can’t face things. Not at that age. Not at any age. I think it’s getting a little far to say you can’t trust any man, at any age, said to Charles. I don’t know any, said his wife. Well, he said, there’s me for instance, when she did not reply, he said: well it’s a fine time to find out you don’t trust me. The question isn’t whether I do or not, said Marion. I have to trust you. I mean, I live with you, and keep the thing on the tracks, or I don’t. So then, of course, I have to trust you. (p.124)

This development offers a revealing picture of the couple’s relationship. Charles, with his lack of emotional investment in the marriage, isn’t terribly good at empathising or reading the nuances of the situation. (Or maybe he does understand the true meaning of what is being said but simply chooses not to acknowledge it.) There is also a mistress in the background, a secretary named Bernice, whose company Charles finds straightforward and ‘restful’. Bernice, for her part, places few demands on Charles, seemingly content with the two evenings a week she spends cooking dinner for him at her apartment.

As the story draws to a close, we sense that Marian is fully aware of the limitations of her marriage, a common situation for American women in this period. (I couldn’t help but be reminded of Mad Men’s Betty Draper at this point.) And Charles? His primary concern seems to be the avoidance of any kind of ‘scene’ with Marian, stressing her upcoming modelling commitments as a reason to stem the tears…

Along with several other stories in this collection, Thieves and Rascals leaves the reader with much to consider as they try to read between the lines and imagine what might happen next. This is another richly textured story from this marvellous collection, lovingly reissued by NYRB Classics (personal copy).