Gloria

Summary (from the publisher): Gloria, a recent college graduate, class of '57, has everything a girl could want. Expected to make a brilliant marriage to a wealthy but conventional man, Gloria finds herself torn between society's expectations and her own search for a future that is both passionate and fulfilling. Her quest uncovers the intensity of desires, the gift of intellectual accomplishment, and the surprising power of friendship. Gloria is a vivid and intimate portrayal of a privileged yet claustrophobic world, where conflicting expectations for women foreshadow an impending revolution. Gloria Cotter, in her last summer at home before setting out for the larger world, must find her way into an unimaginable future.

 

Review: Set in the summer of 1957, this story follows Gloria Cotter, a wealthy and beautiful young college graduate who finds herself home after college graduation and floundering at finding her next step. Although beautiful, privileged, and intellectually accomplished, Gloria feels stifled and trapped in her insular world. Expected to make a good marriage to a man from a similar background, Gloria feels trapped at the thought of falling into marriage and then motherhood and instead considers pursuing a PhD and teaching English. Set on the cusp of cultural change, Gloria's dilemma beautifully and eloquently illustrates the conflicting expectations for women and is an intimate portrait of life for college educated women in the 1950s.

 

To the world, Gloria appears as a wealthy, well-heeled young woman with every advantage; "she felt like the stereotype of the utterly, utterly bored society girl in some big, sloppy, popular, pointless novel - maybe John O'Hara. [...] And then, finally, there was the subtle and quite intense pleasure in knowing that, if she appeared to be the perfect, stereotypical country club girl, she had succeeded in fooling everyone" (23). Although Gloria is skillful at playing her part socially, her diary and reflections reveal that she feels it as an act and she is simply a consummate actress. Or as her advisor tells her, "I must admit, dear Gloria, that you did fool me for a while. But the truth of the matter is that you have never been one of those girls - no matter how well you have learned to disguise yourself as one of them" (545). Gloria is a restless soul on the brink of making a momentous decision - whether or not to break away from the mold that her country club setting expects of her and following her own path. Ironically, despite the tension between her mother, Marcelaine, and Gloria, the two are more alike than they realize, something the reader learns through flashbacks that show an uncertain and lost Marcelaine as a college student herself.

 

Although I typically dislike efforts of authors to narrate from the opposite gender, Maillard did an excellent job of writing from the perspective of a young woman in the 1950s. In the notes, he reveals that he was consciously striving to emulate the style of novels of that time period and I believe he succeeded. Gloria is a product of her time and age, the expectations of which shape every character and action in the novel. For instance, Gloria's father Ted, a vice president at a steel company, is clear about his expectations for fellow executives: "Raysburg Steel was not interested in a single man over thirty (what was wrong with him?), a divorced man, a man with personal problems or screwy opinions, a man who runs around on his wife - or whose wife runs around on him" (94). It is this rigid social structure has both created and imprisoned Gloria.

 

Maillard takes on multiple themes in the over 600 pages that make up this novel: religious faith, family ties, limitations on female scholars, societal expectations, sexual purity and exploration, alcoholism, issues of class and social rank, the perils of boarding schools, fashion and materialism, homosexuality, and female friendship. At heart, this is about a young women who cannot envision her future self and is struggling to find the path to this unknown future; "What she couldn't imagine was who that person would be standing up in front of the classroom and lecturing - certainly not any version of Gloria Cotter she'd ever met" (344). This novel took me by surprise with its quiet power and the complexity of its characters, namely Gloria. A beautiful, complex, and deeply absorbing coming of age story that I felt absolutely immersed in while reading.

 

Stars: 4.5