In This Our Life

By Ellen Glasgow

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Novels, 1942.

It is the story of a few crucial years in the life of the Timberlake family. The story starts with the week before the wedding of one of the daughters, Stanley. (One odd thing about this story, both the daughters have what are usually considered men's names, Stanley and Roy.) The first hint of trouble comes when the father, Asa, sees Stanley riding in a car with Roy's husband, Peter. Then Stanley and Peter are seen sharing an intimate glance.
Roy senses that Peter is troubled and she tries to mend it but Peter brushes her off and claims he has been called out of town on an emergency. (He's a surgeon.) He packs a few things and hurries away. Then Stanley shortly disappears. Pretty soon everyone realizes that the two have run off together. Naturally, Roy and Stanley's fiancee, Craig, are devastated.
Roy feels like she has been cut off at the knees. She feels like she has been betrayed not only by her husband but by love itself. But she puts on a brave face and immediately goes out and buys herself a new, red hat.
Asa, the dad, loves Roy best. His heart bleeds for his wounded daughter, but Roy is not the kind of person you can cuddle and comfort. She rejects all his sympathy and tries to resume her normal life. She goes to work and does her job and goes through the motions, but she often cries herself to sleep at night.
The other sister, Stanley, is the pretty, spoiled one, the favorite of her mother and of the rich uncle who plies her with gifts, including a fancy roadster. The uncle is angry at what Stanley has done, but not so angry that he refuses to have the roadster sent to where she is living with Peter.
Things begin to look up for Roy when she and Craig turn to each other for comfort and find that they are falling in love. Although it is not the grand passion Roy felt for Peter, she is perfectly happy to move on to a more mature and considered love affair.
Peter discovers that life with Stanley is not quite what he expected. Stanley wants to be supported in a style beyond his means, and she doesn't care that they are getting deep into debt. Peter can't deal with the impending financial crisis they are headed for nor can he deal with his new wife's consummate selfishness and shallowness. He ends up blowing his head off and Stanley hurries home to the comfort and indulgence of her family.
Roy accepts Stanley's homecoming with grace and forgiveness. But Stanley finds life at home after marriage boring and flat. She starts spending a lot of time out driving around in her roadster. Stanley is headed for trouble but her family is so indulgent that they seem powerless to stop her.
Sure enough, Stanley finds herself in serious trouble and Roy finds out that her new love isn't all she thought it was. The family rallies around Stanley, all except for Asa, and poor Roy is left on the outside trying to make sense of the tatters of her life.

This novel is like reading a soap opera. Maybe because soap operas are such familiar fare that it is easy to see where the story of Stanley and Roy is headed. There is a lot of talk in the novel about the differences between the old and the new generation, what used to be called the generation gap. Stanley and Roy were born about the same time as my grandmother. It is funny to think of Granny as part of a rebellious generation. Hey, I guess nothing ever changes. Every generation thinks the succeeding generation has no respect for tradition and no respect for the ways of their elders.
All in all, though it covers familiar ground, this is an enjoyable and engrossing story, and for its day, surprisingly liberal in attitude. One of the characters even has a sort of a one night stand. I found it fun to read about the naughty doings of my grandmother's generation.

This novel was made into a movie in 1942, starring Bette Davis as Stanley and Olivia de Havilland as Roy. However, the movie changed the ending and portrayed the Stanley character as much more evil than she was in the novel. In the novel, Stanley is mainly just stupid, spoiled and careless.

Review from Reading the Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction.