The Swing of the Pendulum

The Swing of the Pendulum by Adriana Spadoni

Jean Norris, newly graduated and desperate to escape teaching and the suffocating routine of her devout mother Martha’s household, takes a low-paid sorting job at the Mercantile Library in San Francisco. Though the work initially offers independence, its routine soon frightens her with the prospect of becoming as lifeless as her supervisor, Miss MacFarland. At the library she meets Franklin Herrick, a newspaper man researching an article. Herrick is intelligent, charming, restless, and bitterly frustrated because he has never begun the novel he believes he is meant to write. Herrick introduces Jean to his artistic circle, “The Bunch,” led by the painter Flop and including the volatile woman called The Kitten. Jean is fascinated by the world of art, friendship, ambition, sexuality, and urban life that seems to open before her, though she also sees the group’s noise, poses, boredom, and emotional cruelty. Herrick and Jean grow close through walks, conversations, and shared dreams of purposeful work. He tells her of his impoverished childhood and his lifelong hunger to escape limitation. Jean believes intensely in his talent and agrees to marry him, imagining that they will help one another live fully and do important work. Martha fears Herrick’s sensuality, irreligion, and Bohemian associates, but Jean rejects her mother’s belief that marriage must be a sacred burden. After their wedding, Jean continues working for a newspaper while encouraging Herrick to write his novel. Their early marriage is founded on mutual plans: Jean becomes Herrick’s supporter and audience, while he seems gentle with her innocence and reserves. Yet Herrick’s novel stalls when he can no longer make his hero live beyond experiences drawn from himself. Jean insists that abandoning the work would be cowardice, while Herrick argues that life is only a pendulum swinging between temporary heights and lows. Their philosophical disagreement turns into a violent sexual confrontation; Jean recoils from his force and tells him never to kiss her that way again. Thereafter, their silence and separation deepen. Jean finds a more genuine vocation after her friend Pat Farnsworth visits and brings her back to Dr. Mary Mac Lean, a vigorous social worker Jean had once interviewed. Dr. Mary offers Jean a position at the Hill Neighborhood House. Jean leaves the newspaper and discovers satisfaction in social work, especially in efforts to improve housing and living conditions. Herrick dismisses such work as futile meddling, while Jean feels that she has at last found a purpose. Their separate commitments become a symbol of their widening emotional distance. Jean is entrusted with the case of Amelia Gorman, a dying, impoverished woman whose son Jimmie was born after she deliberately sought a child as a way to resist the loneliness and meaninglessness of her life. Amelia asks Jean to find Jimmie’s father, James Martin, now mayor of Belgrave, and secure support for the boy. Jean confronts the frightened mayor and obtains his promise to send money for Jimmie’s care and education. She returns home exhilarated by the sense that her actions have altered many lives. While Jean is away on this case, Herrick returns to The Bunch and resumes his affair with The Kitten. He later mocks Jean’s work as the fussing of women “fiddling with the forces of Nature,” provoking Jean to withdraw from him completely. The marriage continues outwardly, but Herrick spends Sundays with The Bunch and The Kitten while Jean devotes herself to Hill House. Jean’s mother grows weaker, still clinging to duty and religious faith; she warns Jean that spouses cannot truly live separate lives, while Jean defends marriage as an arrangement in which each person may pursue individual work. For a brief evening, Jean and Herrick seem to recover an old ease as they prepare supper together and discuss publishing a housing pamphlet. The moment is destroyed when The Kitten enters unexpectedly and accuses Herrick of lying. Jean immediately understands that Herrick has been unfaithful. The Kitten reveals that she had assumed Jean knew and accepted the affair, because she believed Jean did not love Herrick. Jean sends Herrick away and remains alone with The Kitten, confronting the fact that the people around her have lived by emotional rules she never imagined.

By Adriana Spadoni · First published 2012 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction, Social Realism · 55 chapters · 158,481 words

First lines

Jean Norris came slowly down the Library steps, passed the Chemistry Building, and took the worn path across the campus to the brush-lined creek. The hot stubble burned through her white canvas shoes and fine, gray dust powdered the mortarboard and black graduating gown she carried over her arm. With one stride she crossed the trickle of water and scrambled up the opposite bank.

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literary fiction · contemporary fiction · psychological drama · human relationships · emotional conflict · introspection · memory · identity · time · change · loss · hope

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