Respectability by Sherwood Anderson, 1919
The magic trick:
Reversing a before-after picture and then filling in the gap
This is the story where perhaps, if you’re like me, you start to feel that Winesburg has hit a lull. These character miniatures are getting repetitive. “Respectability” is particularly thin as a character study and almost too dramatic to be taken seriously. It’s also the second consecutive story in the collection – and not the last – to prominently feature a naked woman. The line between sex as a theme and sex as a writer’s obsession begins to cloud here. Nevertheless, we amend our overall assessment of the collection to “Well, it’s not quite as good as Dubliners.” Sherwood is still keeping very good company, don’t worry.
Anyway, I do like the story format here. We get to know Wash Williams in the present tense first. He’s a bit of a monster. Then we’re told he wasn’t always like this. What then, we wonder, happened to cause such a transition? The bulk of the story proceeds to tell us.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
Wash Williams was a man of courage. A thing had happened to him that made him hate life, and he hated it wholeheartedly, with the abandon of a poet. First of all, he hated women. “Bitches,” he called them. His feeling toward men was somewhat different. He pitied them. “Does not every man let his life be managed for him by some bitch or another?” he asked.
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