The Catherine Wheel: A Novel

by Jean Stafford

Jean Stafford’s third and final novel, The Catherine Wheel, is a mordant tour de force concerning the gradual disintegration of a woman under pressures both societal and self-imposed.

Katharine Congreve, a Boston society figure, is summering at her country house in Hawthorne, Maine, in the late 1930s, looking after the children of her cousin Maeve, as she does every year. Maeve and her husband, John Shipley, spend their summers in Europe, leaving their son and two daughters in Katharine’s care, but something is different this time: Shipley has promised to leave his wife for Katharine if his failing marriage with Maeve can’t be revived before the end of their vacation.

Alone with the frivolous Honor and Harriet, teenage twins, and the younger Andrew, who seems to be hiding a private anguish of his own, Katharine must contend with her envy, her memories, her expectations, and her guilt. Under the watchful eyes of her charges and neighbors, a hint of madness is soon revealed at the heart of a happy, lazy New England summer

Genres: Fiction, American, Classics, Novels

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Jean Stafford was an American short story writer and novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford in 1970.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Stafford's writing is absolutely gorgeous, the descriptions of a beautiful home of a wealthy woman in Maine are like fine art, and the characterizations of the family and neighbors bring them to life. This is the third novel I've read by her in a Library of America edition, and I also read her award winning Collected Stories. Just don't expect a happy ending in any of them.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idle rich of Boston summer in Maine, a marriage possibly disintegrates far away, and a young boy bitterly mourns the loss of a friendship. We get the alternating perspectives of middle-aged, never married Katharine, and her cousin Maeve's 12-year-old son Andrew, who is staying with Katharine for the summer while Maeve and husband John vacation in Europe. Katharine had thought John would be hers years ago, but he fell instantly for Maeve. Now John has promised Katharine he will leave Maeve for her if the marital problems can't be resolved. Katharine plans a big end of summer lawn party with catherine wheels and other fireworks, and on a whim, orders her tombstone.

The childish perspective, the failures of adults to properly nurture children, and the general tone of expectant unhappiness reminded me of Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart.

Stafford published this in 1952, and it's set in the 1930s, but it feels much older than that, due to the characters' antique quirks such as driving a horse and carriage, and Stafford's rococo vocabulary:

p. 38: gutta-percha overshoes (latex derived from the gutta-percha tree
p. 39: phrenetic High Church convert (oh, I see this is just an alternate spelling of frenetic).
p. 51: incarnadine house (crimson)
p. 69: a cuspidor made of milk-glass
p. 76: fontanel ("one of the spaces, covered by membrane, between the bones of the fetal or young skull")
p. 81: girandole (a rotating firework)
p. 96: "as virginal and hyaline as the June day" (glassy or transparent)
p. 102: weigela (honeysuckle)
p. 103: isinglass (translucent form of gelatin obtained from fish air bladders)
p. 109: "limp with Musterole" (Vapo-Rub)
p. 111: autochthons (persons native to a place)
p. 117: "she flipped through the tails of her tippet" (a long hanging end of cloth attached to a sleeve, cap, or hood)
p. 119: epithalamium (a song or poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom)
p. 138: "smoking cubebs stolen from his mother's cook" (dried unripe berry of a tropical shrub used as a spice)
p. 155: "stripped of the integument of middle age" (something that covers or encloses)
p. 158: accouchement (time or act of giving birth)
p. 159: dragoman (an interpreter chiefly of Arabic, Turkish, or Persian)
p. 164: "linsey-woolsey knicker bockers and huckabuck shirts"
p. 165: lornly (forlornly)
p. 176: "the purblind mind nosed like a mole" (wholly blind, partly blind, obtuse)
p. 179: gurry (fishing offal)
p. 207: furbelowed
p. 216: infrangible (incapable of being broken)
p. 224: batrachian cicerone (amphibian)
p. 228: tenebrous purgatory
p. 229: earstopples
p. 250: dimity (cotton fabric)
p. 259: freshet (rush of rain or melted snow)
p. 277: tourbillion (whirlwind)
p. 277: garnitures (adornments)
p. 278: squawled (squalled)


p. 45: One use of Dago: "How dared that Dago take such liberties?" (fumed John Shipley after the Cuban parvenu he sold his yacht to painted it green)

p. 97: Nasturtium sandwiches are eaten (cf. M.F.K. Fisher With Bold Knife and Fork who ate them in childhood)

[lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Fair, not rare, this day in June was like all the days of all the summers and as she rose, step by step, up the spiraling stem of her beautiful house, serenity ripened in her face and she parted her kips in a fond smile, cherishing everything she surveyed and smelled and heard . . ."

This was an impulse buy I made the last time I was in New York, which was almost two and a half years ago. I knew absolutely nothing about Jean Stafford or the book itself, merely purchasing it because this splendid cover caught my eye.

This book turned out to be a simple summer story, the classic staying with your cousin in her large house in the country sort of thing, which really hit the spot for me. I found the character studies of both Andrew and Katharine fascinating, and the writing was absolutely exquisite; Stafford's lush descriptions of the house turned this whole story into an atmospheric wonderland, lush and delectable to read.

With its simple plot, the length was perfect, and I never felt it dragged anywhere; the climactic ending which unfolded so quickly in the last few pages could have felt rushed, but I found it exhilarating and well thought through within the wider structure of the book.

I'm aware Jean Stafford is best known for her short stories, and after so enjoying her writing, I'm keen to pick them up as soon as I can. Stafford reminds me a bit of a northern Flannery O'Connor, perhaps with a dash of Edith Wharton, and to me, that's an ideal combination in which I'd like to continue to indulge.

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully meandering and occasionally baroque in its vocabulary, a perfect diction for slow New England summers. A novel of bourgeois good behaviour and all of the venom it secretes in knowing glances. Will have to read the other Stafford novels

[Sherri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a random book I picked up at Goodwill about 10 years ago. I had never heard of the author, but it was a little blue hardback and I can't resist old books. I finally picked it up to read it and am glad I did. It seemed to me a bit like Ravel's Bolero. Slow to begin, but gradually increasing in intensity until the end. It is not a modern story. Published in 1951, it seems to be set in the 1920s (it's never made clear). The language and description are complex, but I actually ended up enjoying that. Overall, I was impressed by the layers of the story and will seek out more books by Stafford.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Stafford spins a tale that is less a narrative than an atmosphere. A young boy suffers loneliness and fixes the cause on a sailor home on sick leave. His magnificent aunt suffers her unpaired status in private while fashioning herself as an icon in public. Tribulations and wounds that seem epic and incurable are absorbed by the timeless repetitive quality of deep summer in a dream.

Beautiful writing, mesmerizing.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written and very interior-driven novel about madness and obsession in high society 1930's New England.

[Vel Veeter]

A short novel by Jean Stafford that is less full than her first novel Boston Adventure and less impactful than The Mountain Lion, a near perfect novel, but still rich in many ways. The novel is the story of Catherine and her cousin, both raised together in the same town and are the same age by a well-meaning but overbearing family. As they grow up and grow apart a little their different attitudes and perspectives on life cause them a regular series of comings and goings while their personal lives remain intermeshed. The title comes from a kind of dual symbols — the literal Catherine wheel, the torture device used to kill St Catherine as well as the firework named for looking similar. And Catherine has decided that this dual nature is a way to look at her. She’s split between Catholic and secular orientations to the world. She’s also split between being “traditional” and forging her own path (especially in the constant comparison with her cousin — whom she really does love). So the double meaning between a literal torture device (with heavy Catholic implication) and a firework (inflamed, beautiful, celebratory, temporary) mark her own outlook.

The book is quite quirky (and not too quirky for its own good) but there’s not enough book here to fully render the life we’re watching. So while Boston Adventure is 100 pages too long, this one is 50 pages too short. The Mountain Lion is more successful because there’s a real precision happening in it, but also that balance is there.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exquisitely written story of one family's summer, both painful and joyful. An underrated book in my estimation.

[eb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 12-year-old boy, Andrew, pines for his friend, who’s ignoring him to hang out with his older brother. Meanwhile his beautiful and virginal middle-aged cousin, Katherine, struggles to resist the advances of the now-married man she used to love. Both Andrew and Katherine are convinced the other person knows their dark secret. This is mostly a novel about untreated harm OCD. These characters decide their fleeting violent thoughts mean they’re evil people, and then fixate on those thoughts, increasing the thoughts’ power by taking them so seriously. It’s also a novel about boredom and the perils of leisure: these rich people have nothing to do, so they’re free to spend their days worrying about their mental health. It’s slow, the sentences are dense, and I didn’t really enjoy it—but I admit it’s masterfully done and as a stylist Stafford is a whiz.

[Sutter Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring at first. Kid on hammock at his aunt's, obsessed with neighbor who was once his best and only friend. This scene over and over. Eventually he is caught in a mental loop, wants someone dead and can't get the thought out of his mind, and fears his aunt is telepathic and hears him.
His aunt strictly sticks to her daily schedule. A beautiful spinster, wealthy, family estate where she stays every spring, summer.
Her nephew and teen twin nieces spend their summers there. The highlight of their year, their lives. Indifferent cold unloving wealthy parents always traveling, had little to do with their children who went to boarding schools
Good look at the mores of the time, contrast of wealthy and poor, local people.
Basically a mystery.
Surprising ending.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found an original copy of this novel at a beach rental.
I've long loved Stafford's work and used to teach her short stories.
The CW is wonderfully crafted - subtle, building suspense slowly, as the characters play hide-and-seek with their Id Selves, their secret sharers.
Cousin Katharine Congreve and her nephew Andrew (scorned by his summer friend of lower social status) duel over all sorts of things - love affairs, who knows what about whom, that sort of dark thing.
And dark it is in Victorian coastal Maine where the rich folk live high, drawing those of "lesser" status to them.
Don't have time to write more now.
It's a really fine novel. Sort of Turn of the Screwish...

[Jed Mayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It pains me to give any work by Jean Stafford novel three stars, but pretty much every essential plot ingredient in this novel is firmly in place by about a quarter of the way through, leaving the tension to build towards what jacket blurbs hint will be a climactic ending. When that ending does arrive, riskily pushed to the final few pages of the novel, it is more contrived and implausible than even the most generous reader would tolerate. Stafford's perspective on childhood is always worth reading, as she captures the strangeness and brooding sensitivities and angers of that oft-idealized phase, but as a whole this novel is something of a failure.

[Joe Shoenfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very beautifully written novel very wedded to its time and place--1930s upperclass New England--that wields real emotional power despite some predictability.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing, lush. I marvel at Stafford's ability to plumb the depths of the adolescent brain.

[Aharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Killer prose.

[Ted Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stafford’s tempestuous life oozes from each page. A dip into the madness of unrequited love.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written with well drawn characters. This one was about the journey, not the destination. I found the ending to be unsatisfying.
🎧

[Lisa Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lustrous prose. I read this in the early ‘80s when my life was suffused with Henry James and the writers influenced by his pioneering burst into modernist techniques. While I would not say I read this for academic reasons, Jean Stafford was too small fry to figure in, not that I think she should be. None the less, I was reading it through that lens. I remember thinking it gorgeously wrought, and of course Jamesian, but distilled Jamesian.

I don’t know what got me thinking about it again, but I did. I found my old copy which thankfully I had not marked up. Immediately I was in the fantasy world created by Katherine who Miss Havisham-like does not evolve with the passing years. Despite it being the 20th century she clings to the modes of the Gilded Age. Unlike Miss Havisham, she is very social. Nearly every one is charmed by her. Nearly every man is in love with her. She is beguiling. The reader is beguiled.

Throw into the mix a sensitive friendless adolescent, her cousin’s child and the son of the man with whom she has begun an affair. Yes, that’s right, her cousins husband. She’s always been in love with him. I’m pretty sure this is not a spoiler. You end up with a lush, brilliantly illuminated, nerve wracking summer of introspection and suspicion dimmed by a certain knowledge that the Edwardian daydream life cannot last.

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

About 80 pages in you find out the meaning of a Catherine wheel (I spent 2 hours on the internet "chasing rabbits" after I looked it up - I think the last link I clicked on was about Cossacks or Dragoons or something), but you don't understand the meaning in this book until the end. Jean Stafford likes to take the reader leisurely along in her novels, developing characters and providing detailed information on their location, customs, traditions, histories, and how those things affected their personalities, and then, boom, the book is over with a cataclysmic occurrence. I do enjoy her writing -- she is like a Louisa May Alcott for adults.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stafford's language is amazing and her eye unflinching. The Catherine Wheel is so generous to all its characters and their losses are laughable and heartbreaking. I love the attention to the natural world and humankind's efforts to domesticate it, too. She's especially good with child characters. Now I must read some of her stories--

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Jean Staford but I could not get through this book; it was boring!

[Kim lakin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, similar to an Ian McEwan novel. Never knew anything about Stafford before. Apparently she had a pretty tumultuous life.