In the minds of ESL exam candidates, e ssay writing is one of the most daunting tasks they are required to complete, regardless of the level of the exam, the administering body or the ease with which they themselves use the language. The same applies to students who are asked to write an essay by their teachers at school. In the previous sample essays posted on the blog, the main point I stress is the need to become acquainted with this form of writing (as opposed to writing a letter, review or report, for instance), to get a feel of what authorial voice is and how to organize and progressively express the arguments you wish to make in a coherent manner. Unfortunately, the best way to prepare for exam writing or learn how to write good essays for school is to read as many essays from as many sources as possible, then write as
Arturo Vivante's "Can-Can" could have foundered in one of these genres, but being a short story, it gets to the point quickly enough and leaves so much to the reader's acumen that it is impossible as a reader to feel intellectually insulted by the tripe that would have naturally emerged had the story jumped ship to become a soap opera or longer romance novel.
No, this is no tripe. This goes to the heart of all human relationships and asks questions like "What
makes us want more?", "Why are those we thought we knew not what we thought they'd be?", "Whose fault is infidelity?", "Why does love go out the door once we settle into our daily routine?", "Does love fade or just passion?" Now, tell me you don't think these are questions readers at any age would like to discuss in a group.
And this is why this short story is a classic, timeless in its approach towards the topic of marriage and adultery yet vague enough to allow room for hypotheses about its outcome. The perfect tool for teachers to get discussions going in class or individual readers to put themselves and their partnerships into perspective.
After all, isn't that the point of life?
Enjoy the story here before reading the notes that follow.
Click the picture for explanations of literary terms
Arturo
Vivante - “Can-Can”
- Life
- 1923 (Rome) –2008 (US)
- Italian American writer
- family fled to Britain during WWII (father was Jewish)
- Arturo sent to internment camp in Canada while family stayed in Britain
- degree in Medicine; taught writing at university in US
- characters:
- husband: Mr. Fix-it
- wife: housewife (sewing, washing), flirtatious (“… her feet seemed to be nodding to him.”), discreetly jealous
- mistress: Sarah, married, works at an office
- series of missed encounters / lack of understanding:
- wife doesn’t know about affair
- husband doesn’t know his wife (why she’s acting in this way)
- lover doesn’t know what man is really thinking about at the end of the story
- what we say is exactly the opposite of what we know / mean / the truth
- man lies from the beginning to end of story (going for a drive; “I had almost given up hope”; was thinking of someone doing the can-can à won’t admit it was his wife)
- irony of situation: man goes to all the trouble to set up clandestine meeting, but can’t stop thinking about wife
- boredom:
- husband doesn’t care if he tells lover about what he’s thinking (he’s mocking her à “He suppressed a laugh…”)
- husband wishes lover wouldn’t arrive
- lover doesn’t arrive on time = she isn’t all that eager either
- lover postponed last week’s rendezvous to this week
- lover was often late to their meetings
- wife doesn’t care to ask where he’s going (although she didn’t really want him to leave)
- the unexpected:
- is what’s missing in everyone’s life and it’s what all the characters are looking for
- husband: has the affair to live an adventure
- wife: behaves in an unexpected way as a means of having fun with her daughter
- Sarah (mistress): (see man)
- key phrase: “This wasn’t the way a husband expected his wife…to behave at all.” (expectations trap relationships into tedium)
- typical frame of mind of males + females seen in story
- women want to be the only ones men think of (lover’s question at the end of the story; wife is “jealous in silent, subtle ways”)
- husband doesn’t know what he wants; indecisive; indulgent / self-gratifying
- husband blames wife for ruining the moment for him (“Why was she doing that of all times now?”), though he is the guilty party
- men expect housewives to be housewives; don’t see them as attractive or spontaneous anymore
- reasons for adultery:
- low self-esteem (job= painter)
- cooped up in house (never left it for more than a few minutes)
- wife’s image of him: helper around the house (fixes things, helps with children, especially the baby)
- he feels wife mocks him: “Her eyes had mockery in them, and she laughed.”
- boring life: no luggage rack on Sarah’s car gives him pleasure; takes care of children; meets Sarah at a summer cottage by a lake; Sarah might be considered a catch
- wants freedom: have a smoke, drink coffee, go for a drive, “free and easy”
- aim of story:
- to show what is missing à spontaneity; routine has killed original feelings
- to show how expectations are wrong
- big question at the end: Does the wife know? How reliable is our narrator?
- husband doesn’t expect wife to act like this, so is his knowledge of what she knows also limited?
- when he says
- a) his wife knew Sarah but didn’t suspect her
- b) his wife knows nothing about his going with Sarah to a house on a lakecan we believe him or is his wife more astute?
- wife has been described as subtly jealous. Is she smarter than her husband believes?
- title
- can-can dance: popular music hall dance in the 1840s
- characteristics:
- high kicks, cartwheels & splits
- energetic, lively
- considered physically demanding
- considered scandalous (because women’s pantalettes in those days had an open crotch); arrests were made but dance wasn’t officially banned
- originally evolved from the quadrille dance (danced by 4 couples together)
- relation to story:
- seems the 3 characters are interlocked in a dance such as the quadrille from which the can-can evolved
- through the can-can, stereotypes are shattered: a housewife engaged in this ‘bawdy’, high-energy dance becomes object of desire
- wife seems more active & erotic than her adventure-seeking husband who’s bored and stuck in a routine affair
- point of view
- third person limited: the narrator describes the story referring to characters as “she” or “he”, but we see only the husband’s thoughts, questions, feelings.
