By Ellen Douglas
Reviewed by Dennis Bianchi
This book, written in 1988, was recommended to me by a fine author in her own right, Robb Forman Dew, with whom I had the great fortune of becoming friends. Ms. Dew, in turn, was friends of Ellen Douglas and suggested that I should read something by her. Although Ms. Dew dislikes the title she said she thought this was Ms. Douglas' best book. Ellen Douglas is the pen name of Josephine Ayres Haxton. Shortly after I tracked down the book through the internet, Ms. Douglas died at the age of 91. I felt doubly obligated to read her at that point, particularly after reading a very laudatory obituary of her in The New York Times this past November. She is considered to be the equal of Southern writers Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. She was a fine writer and a great storyteller.
To address Ms. Dew's complaint about the title and, at the same time, give the reader some insight of the title's origin, it is the title of a blues tune written by Willie Dixon in 1965. I found that listening to the tune helped me understand the book better as I'm sure Ms. Douglas had used the title with that in mind. Willie Dixon sings, "I can't quit you, baby, but I got to put you down a little while."
There are two protagonists: Cornelia O'Kelly, a well-off white woman living in a small Mississippi town and her housekeeper/maid named Tweet Carrier, a poor, black wily woman. They have known one another for approximately fifteen years, working in Cornelia's kitchen and trading stories of their lives. This isn't, however, just two women reminiscing about the "good old days." This is a story filled with folks who will use guile as a weapon to keep others in their "place" and their private demons concealed. Cornelia's mother ruled the home when Cornelia was a child with such ferocity that Cornelia married a United States Army pilot just to get away. The specter of her mother is seemingly always in the back of her mind. Tweet's father abandoned her as a child and she was raised by her grandfather. The father makes a return in hopes of having whatever property or money left from the grandfather's death bequeathed to him. Discovering his father had disowned him and left everything to Tweet, he resorts to arson and thievery and Tweet finds herself a husband, not for love, but for protection. Both women grow into their roles as wives but the psychological scars remain, and as time goes by, both women learn to rely on one another for not just solace but direction.
For the first sixty pages the reader gets the impression that the South of William Faulkner had not disappeared. The language is languid and filled with drawls and country expressions. But as the book progresses in time and the Viet Nam War becomes an issue the tempo and mood pick up dramatically, and so does the language. The Southern genteel language of the previous era gives way to more than one f-bomb and open discussion of sex.
Cornelia's husband, John, dies of a stroke while they are on an airplane. She had become sure that John had been unfaithful to her in recent times. After his death, when she realizes she was wrong, she tries to deal with the guilt through her friendship with Tweet. Tweet's married life takes a few violent turns and as the book comes to its conclusion the two women clash. Tweet has been injured and Cornelia has shown up to Tweet's home to help in her rehabilitation. The clash leads to a clearing of their minds and a restoring of their relationship.
The author has an odd twist in this story, as she will frequently direct her comments to the reader, almost as a Greek chorus in the theater. In lesser qualified hands this would be annoying, but Ms. Douglas makes it work perfectly. Toward the end of the novel she addresses the reader thus: "Do you recall that a long time ago I wrote, ' I want to remember that every act in a human life has layer upon enfolded layer not only of imagining, but of circumstances beneath it'?...I think I am the one who cannot acknowledge or express the complexity of all those layers of circumstance and imagining - in all our lives." Ms. Douglas is, no doubt, speaking honestly about her feelings of failure to express all of the complexity but she made a more than valiant effort. She wrote of human feelings and failings that we all share. And I'm very happy that I shared her thoughts by reading Can't Quit You, Baby.
