One of the saddest books you'll ever read: Mrs. Bridge

Re-reading the amazing "Mrs. Bridge" for book group. I know that when I posted about Mrs. Bridge a few months ago I compared it with the other great Mrs. novel, i.e. Dalloway, and the comparison still holds, but there are nuances more apparent in 2nd go-through. Mrs. Bridge (like Mrs. D.) is, on the surface, almost a painfully conventional woman. She willingly defers to her husband's will and judgment in all things, she tries to smooth over anything and everything disagreeable, she is painfully concerned with manners and appearances. But beneath this surface she is questing and yearning for something greater, some fulfillment that seems just beyond her comprehension or just beyond her grasp. There's a moment (the whole novel is a series of moments that together encompass a whole life) in which she sits across from her husband, during a lightning storm, and he registers nothing (in the companion novel, Mr. Bridge, perhaps we learn that he, too, has a rich interior life) but she feels she has just touched the verge of comprehension. Despite her personal limitations and repressions, a number of her friends are more aggressively pushing the boundaries of what's expected of women of their class in 1930s Kansas City - a poet, an artist, a thinker, each of them miserable. We feel from Mrs. Bridge and see her life as a tragedy of lost opportunities - and yet, her wish for fulfillment is entirely personal and self-centered. She is completely obtuse to the injustices of her society and to the feelings of those not of her class (and race). Connell's Mrs. Bridge is one of the saddest books you'll ever read.