Natasha Whitton

1/15/01

A Review of Disobedience by Jane Hamilton

     For fans of Jane Hamilton’s The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World (Both chosen for Oprah’s book club), Disobedience is in many ways a rather stark departure in terms of narrative voice and content.  Hamilton’s fiction is marked by its representation of women in crisis generally by means of their own voices, although she does include a section of male narration in A Map of the World.  Disobedience, on the other hand, is told through the eyes of Henry Shaw who was seventeen years old at the time of the events that he is describing. 

     Kevin and Beth Shaw are a reasonably happy married couple who began their family in rural Vermont and moved to the outskirts of Chicago when Kevin received a teaching position in the history department of a college preparatory school.  Beth is a well-respected pianist, giving lessons and playing privately with several groups including a folk band.  They have two children, Henry and Elvira.

     Henry begins his narrative by explaining his crime against his mother.  He created an email account for her under the screen name “Liza38” and one day accidentally logged onto her account instead of his own.  His initial harmless curiosity in the mail his mother is receiving turns into a rather neurotic obsession when he discovers that “Liza38” is having an affair with “Rpoll” who he later discovers is Richard Polloco, a violin maker who lives in a small cabin just over the state border in Wisconsin.  Henry begins to track the affair by printing out the email and compiling it.  Beth, then, as the woman in crisis, is seen through the lens of her son whose sexual awakening seems tied to his mother’s experimentation.

     Henry had never imagined his parents as sexual beings until his discovery of his mother’s infidelity and indulges in a mental juxtaposition of his own love life with that of his mother’s lover.  The summer before Beth begins her affair, Henry entered his first serious relationship at music camp with a young girl named Lily.  Now he wonders if he should try the lines from Polloco’s email in his own long distance relationship.

     The novel’s periphery characters are where Hamilton seems to have the most fun.  First, the other child in the household, Elvira is a devoted Civil War reenactor who transforms herself into Elviron on weekends and vacation so that other “hardcores” won’t know that she is a girl.  She provides most of the fodder for arguments between Kevin and Beth.  As a history teacher, her father naturally encourages Elvira’s interest in her hobby; but when her daughter comes home with a shaved head, Beth believes that she has taken her part too seriously.

     Then there is Beth’s Book Club, a group of women who meet once a month to discuss a novel.  The meetings are described as if the group were a coven surrounded by candles and full of wicked laughter, usually at the expense of men.  From Henry’s point of the view, the women meet to criticize and set themselves apart from the opposite sex.  As he describes,

Professor Marcia Butler, star member of the book club, single and artificially inseminated Professor Butler, was often talking about “the inviolate self,” a term she’d gotten ahold of from Willa Cather.  It was a thing women were supposed to find for themselves, some kernel that no man or animal could penetrate or wreck or remove. (73)

Hence, while Henry observes his mother enjoying the group, he is inclined to paint their encounters as harsh in light of the descriptions attached to his own gender.

     Finally, Hamilton also manages to work in a psychic named Shirana who works out of her home and has to shoo her family out of the room before beginning her twenty-five dollar readings.  Shirana tells Beth that Henry was her lover in a previous incarnation, and when Beth shares this information via email it becomes part of her son’s file.  Henry’s relationship to his mother is thus further complicated because his feelings of rage for her betrayal of his father become confused with his own belief that he had a sexual relationship with her before this lifetime.

     But even with these interesting characters traipsing through the pages, does the story hold together?  The plot seems to mix Greek Oedipal tragedy and the foibles of Twentieth Century American family relationships; the scenery is often insufficient to sustain the agony of the suspense-filled plot line.  The reader is conditioned from the opening pages to expect a denouement when the affair is revealed, and this expectation interferes with the enjoyment of character development.  The narrative voice is a further complication.  Henry is looking back on this year of family turmoil ten years after it took place.  At times, he seems to be the more mature adult looking back on a turbulent period of his adolescence, but sometimes he seems to slip into the mindset of a seventeen year old.  The book can be an enjoyable read, but be prepared for its distinction from Hamilton’s other work. 

Jane Hamilton.  Disobedience.  New York: Doubleday, 2000.