Character Analysis
Marie is one of those characters—effervescent, attractive, optimistic—who almost never makes out of a novel alive.
No exceptions here. A tough ol' country like the Nebraskan frontier just isn't a place for a person like Marie, or so O Pioneers! leads us to believe. In this world, being a little less romantic and more down-to-earth, say, like Alexandra, will get you a lot further.
Toddlers and Tiaras: The Frontier Version
Like Emil Bergson, her fated love interest, we first encounter Marie as a child. And in fact, throughout the novel, she remains the essence of what youth and youthfulness stands for in O Pioneers! (On that note, check out what we've got to say about that in "Theme: Youth.") Let's take a quick look at one of Marie's early scenes:
The country children thereabouts wore their dresses to their shoe-tops, but this city child was dressed in what was then called the "Kate Greenaway" manner, and her red cashmere frock, gathered full from the yoke, came almost to the floor. This, with her poke bonnet, gave her the look of a quaint little woman. […] Joe Tovesky came in noisily and picked up his little niece, setting her on his shoulder for every one to see. […] His cronies formed a circle about him, admiring and teasing the little girl, who took their jokes with great good nature. They were all delighted with her, for they seldom saw so pretty and carefully nurtured a child. They told her that she must choose one of them for a sweetheart, and each began pressing his suit and offering her bribes […] (1.1.14)
That's a big hunk of text, but it definitely gives us a rich impression of what kind of life Marie Tovesky used to have, before she became Mrs. Frank Shabata. Here, like a little country beauty queen, she appears to occupy a stage, towards which all the male gazes are directed. Even when Marie is just another housewife on the prairie, she never loses this magnetic pull on all those around her.
The Young People These Days…
But, as we said above, Marie just doesn't seem suited for the Divide. Alexandra seems to understand this, even at the novel's outset. Check out what she has to say about Marie:
"She's too young and pretty for this sort of life. We're all ever so much older and slower. But she's the kind that won't be downed easily. She'll work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, and drive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning. I could stay by a job, but I never had the go in me that she has, when I was going my best. […]" (2.4.18)
Here, Alexandra plays with comparing herself to Marie. Alexandra is dedicated, focused and can "stay by a job," while Marie has a fire burning in her that Alexandra just doesn't get. Ultimately, it seems like that fire burns just a little too hot for the kind of life possible on the Divide. What the Divide demands is a woman like Alexandra, whose emotional life is slow, steady yet strong and stubborn.
Life's Not All That and a Bunch of Turquoise
But Marie isn't always as bright and cheerful as when we first get to know her. Even very early on, there's some foreshadowing to indicate that Marie is afraid of where things are going with her and Emil.
Think back to when Carl spies on Emil and Marie, while they're out hunting ducks one early morning. There's definitely more there than you think:
As she stood looking down at them, her face changed. She took up one of the birds, a rumpled ball of feathers with the blood dripping slowly from its mouth, and looked at the live color that still burned on its plumage.
As she let it fall, she cried in distress, "Oh, Emil, why did you?"
"I like that!" the boy exclaimed indignantly. "Why, Marie, you asked me to come yourself."
"Yes, yes, I know," she said tearfully, "but I didn't think. I hate to see them when they are first shot. They were having such a good time, and we've spoiled it all for them." (2.5.5-8)
Looking back, we can easily see that this moment anticipates Marie's own death. There the ducks were, having "such a good time," and before she knows it, they're dead. Maybe she sees her own future when she looks down at that duck, dying in her apron; in any case, she will later echo what she says here in another scene, when she exclaims to Emil, "all our good times are over" (2.8.39). Does she see what's to come?
Well, she might later play a fortune teller, during the Catholic fair, when she first kisses Emil and he gives her some turquoise, but we're not here to say that she can actually foresee the future. Nah, instead we think this scene lets us, the readers, go back and put together an idea of how Marie might have described herself in relation to her affair with Emil: excited at first, not at all coerced, but also scared, guilty and unsure.
Only, just as it's too late to save the duck, Marie doesn't live long enough to voice her regrets openly.
No More Lovering
So, the Big Question for Marie's character, then, is why she doesn't put a stop to things between her and Emil, before it's too late?
Again, it's not that Marie could have known that an affair would have fatal consequences. But even in the best case, it certainly would spell disaster for her home life.
Don't get us wrong. Marie does try to get Emil to back off. But how? For one, she makes it clear that she has no sympathy for his situation. Take this scene, right after the two kiss at the Catholic fair. Marie takes a shot at telling Emil outright what she thinks about his behavior:
"Are you sorry for me?" he persisted.
"No I'm not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldn't let anything make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at the fair, I wouldn't go lovering after no woman. I'd take the first train and go off and have all the fun there is." (4.2.15-16)
More than anything, though, Marie makes it clear here just how much she resents her own position. She can't understand why Emil bothers coming after her. He's "big and free," after all, and could go out and get whomever he wants.
But then again, maybe it's that freedom of his that attracts her to him, in the first place, and has made her lose interest in Frank. Compare what she says here to one of the narrator's observations, back when Emil is in Mexico and Marie spends her time daydreaming about his adventures:
When everything is done and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant to let the mind wander forth and follow a young adventurer who has his life before him. "And if it had not been for me," she thought, "Frank might still be free like that, and having a good time making people admire him. Poor Frank, getting married wasn't very good for him either." (3.1.40)
From this passage, we get the impression that Marie feels "everything is done and over" for her, since getting married and moving to the Divide. Though she admired Frank because he, like Emil, was once "big and free," their marriage has made him bitter and small-minded. To her, maybe Emil represents the good old days—but those can always turn sour.
Based on her statement after the Catholic fair, though, it seems like her admiration of Emil quickly turns into resentment. She's fallen in love with him, but at the same time, she feels trapped and helpless, with nowhere to go.
Pulling at That Chain
At the end of the scene following the Catholic fair, Emil promises to leave the Divide under one condition: Marie has to say she loves him. So, she does. Sort of:
Emil stood looking down at her, holding his shoulders stiff and stiffening the arm to which she clung. Her white dress looked gray in the darkness. She seemed like a troubled spirit, like some shadow out of the earth, clinging to him and entreating him to give her peace. Behind her the fireflies were weaving in and out over the wheat. He put his head on her bent head. "On my honor, Marie, if you will say you love me, I will go away."
She lifted her face to his. "How could I help it? Didn't you know?" (4.2.30-31)
This description of Marie as a "troubled spirit" doesn't gives us the sense that she's even of this world, let alone sure of herself. It's as if she's already departed to the other side and given up of any hope of happiness-on-earth.
And her response doesn't exactly indicate that she feels any certainty or power to resist her worldly fate: "How could I help it?" She loves Emil, but her love seems to imprison her, like a ghost condemned to wander the earth for eternity. It's not a choice. It's an inevitability.
This is the point when we realize that Marie has begun to lose her faith in life. Now, if we think back, that's not an uncommon sentiment for women living on the Divide. Even Alexandra, tough as she is, starts to lose interest in life when it seems Carl will never return (see Part 5, Chapter 1). And then there's Alexandra's anecdote about Carrie Jensen, who tried a few times to kill herself, because "life was just the same thing over and over" (2.4.26).
Well, it seems Marie is no exception. Look at what we read in the narrator's reflection on Marie's emotional state, in the days after the Catholic fair:
The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. (4.5.5)
Marie looks into the future, but all she can see is a life spent "pulling at the chain," longing for something bigger, better, freer. One day, she'd have to give up. After this, Marie walks down to the duck pond, where she and Emil went hunting. She acknowledges the possibility of suicide, "a dirty way out of life" (4.5.8). But she decides to "live a dream," to hold onto her love for Emil, to treasure it, now that he'll be gone.
Well, we know how that goes. Marie's decision to "live a dream" is, in some sense, already a decision not to live life as it is. Unfortunately for her, reality always has a way of crashing in.