Charming Billy: Blog 2
Sarah Ganzenmuller
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
In Charming Billy, Alice McDermott successfully manages to create
several well rounded, in depth characters. She uses many different technics to
display their character through actions, their own words, and what other people
say about them, their personality seems to come to life. Most of the men in the
story have glowing, warm personalities that consume you whole. There is Billy,
a fun loving, caring man, there is Dennis, loyal and compassionate, and then there
is Dennis’ dad, ebullient, loquacious
and generous. Yet the women are shed in a rather darker light, Dennis mom being
harshly realistic and materialistic, looking to her second marriage as a sound
investment, then there is Eva, Billy’s first true love, who kept the money he
worked hard for instead of using it to travel back to the states and see him.
Whether good or bad, all of these characters are blooming with some sort of
spirit or individuality, whether they ooze warmth or something colder they have
many moving parts, can be unpredictable, and looked at from many different
points of view. And then there is Maeve.
Maeve is constantly described as plain and boring. The lack of
personality she encompasses is almost frustrating. Yet she is terribly
misunderstood, and not given enough credit by those who surround her. The one
testimony to her character is her courage, “but the courage it took to look out
onto life from a face as plain as butter: pale, downy skin and bland blue eyes,
faded brown hair cut short as a nuns and dimmed with gray. Only a touch of
powder and of lipstick, only a wedding band and a small pearl ring for
adornment.” (McDermott 5) This simplicity is evidently by choice. If she wore
more red lipstick, kept her hair long, wore bolder jewelry her supposed
dullness would quickly be adverted. Yet flashy isn’t something Maeve aspired to
be. Attention was simply not something she craved. While the author describes
her features in a rather monotonous way, pale skin is beautiful, and brown hair
and blue eyes as well. Maeve didn’t believe she deserved to be beautiful, and I
also believe she didn’t believe she deserved to be truly loved. People say that
we accept the love we think we deserve, and this is exactly Maeve’s case. She
grew up with a drunken father, one who didn’t treat her as well as he should
have. She then married another drunkard, wonderful as he was, Billy was
inevitably broken, and Maeve knew it. But she was perfectly happy to love him
even if she didn’t necessarily receive the same type of love in return, because
this wasn’t something she was used to, it wasn’t something she thought
possible. She spent her life taking care and loving others, never expecting
anything in return.
Another thing the other characters failed to marvel at was her sheer determination.
After countless nights of dragging both her incoherent father and husband into
their beds, she remained balanced, stable. Even her determination to win Billy
over was something. She admitted to tossing her fathers shoes down an
incinerator more than once just to have an excuse to go to the shoe store and
see him. She even took a trip by herself, a true indication of her bravery, so
she could see Billy. Yet through all of the tragedy in Maeve’s life with her
mother dying, her father and then husband’s alcoholism she remains, on the
outside, unaffected. She keeps her emotions bottled up, barely crying at
Billy’s funeral. After the funeral at Maeve’s house Dennis takes the dog from a
walk, and his return causes quite a stir. Maeve mistakes Dennis for Billy
returning home, and finally she lets go of all of the emotions she grasped so
tightly, yet she is still described as stark. “Maeve shook her head, her hand
now on her heart. ‘I thought it was Billy,’ she said a third time. Even the bit
of lipstick shed worn earlier in the day was gone and her simple housecoat was
colorless, white and beige. She seemed as plain as a blank page.” (168)
Following this Maeve cries, and proceeds to throw up, soon launching into
stories about Billy. It seems extremely unfair to label Maeve as this plain
dull thing, when she expressed so much emotion. It gets me frustrated and
annoyed, and I sympathize for Maeve and how misunderstood she is. This is
exactly what McDermott wants. Strategically by overemphasizing Maeve’s
plainness she illuminates what makes her so special, and interesting. She makes
you feel for her in ways you may not have had she just given you Maeve’s true
description herself. And thankfully,
after a rather depressing book, it ends on a nice note. Dennis and Maeve soon realize that it was more than just their deep, unedifying love for Billy that
bound them together. It was right under our nose the whole time, Dennis
and Maeve’s compatibility shown during the many nights Dennis would help Maeve
lift Billy off the floor. Finally Maeve found a love that
could lift her up rather than drag her down.
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