62 pages • 2 hours read
Joyce Carol OatesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The matriarch of the Mulvaney family, Corrine is a woman of 33 when her youngest child, Judd, is born, and at the time of the events surrounding Marianne’s rape, she is 46. She is “tall, lanky, loose-jointed and freckled […] noisily girlish, with a lean horsey face often flushed, carrot-colored hair so frizzed, she laughingly complained, she could hardly draw a curry comb through it” (27-28). The family life revolves around her, and her charmingly erratic behavior serves both as a source of merriment and sometimes frustration for her husband and children. She is a self-styled antique dealer, keeping a shed full of old things she has bought at various auctions, not based on worth but on whether she likes them, which is why she rarely sells anything. She leads a secluded life at High Point Farm, surrounded by many pets, and organizing family chores.
Corinne is deeply religious, a Christian nondenominational Protestant. She believes in her family, but most of all, she believes in her husband, Michael. Knowing him to be a man of fragile ego, Corinne has taken over the many everyday arrangements, but she also believes she nurtures Michael’s soul, saving him frequently from himself and from others.
By Joyce Carol Oates
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