O’ Youth and Beauty and Characterization Questions
The two main characters in the story are Cash Bentley and his wife Louise Bentley who live in the rich neighborhood of “Shady Hill”. Cash Bentley is a retired track star who lives a mediocre life; I would consider him a round character because he is complex and a realistic person. He most certainly has good and bad characteristics to his personality, he had a drinking problem but he also was a decent person who enjoys hurdling furniture. Cash is a very self conscious person which can be considered one of his flaws, an example of this when:
“Trace Bearden would begin to chide Cash Bentley about his age and thinning hair. The chiding was preliminary to moving the living room furniture. Trace and Cash moved the tables and the chairs, the sofas and the fire screen, the wood box and the footstool; and when they had finished, you wouldn’t know the place.”(Cheever 210)
After being offended he always tries to prove his youthfulness by hurdling the furniture as he did when he was a track star. Cash is also a round character because has been fully developed and seems real enough. He is a dynamic character as well because he is constantly changing his personality and becoming a different person. This change can be shown through his injury from hurdle racing, in this scene:
“I won’t be able to hurdle race anymore, sweetheart,” he told Louise sadly. She said it didn’t matter, but while it didn’t matter to her, it seemed to matter to Cash” (214)
Cash seemed to live through the fact that he could still hurdle as way to make up for not competing as youth. Right after the accident we start to see him become a dynamic character, since his behavior and attitude changes completely.
Louise is Cash’s wife and your average house wife, she does everything form cooking and cleaning to looking after sick children. Her duties are outlined in the beginning:
“When she was still half awake in the morning, she was putting on the water for coffee and diluting frozen orange juice. Then she would be wanted by the children. She would crawl under the bureau on her hands and knees to find a sock for Toby. She would lie flat on her belly and wiggle under the bed (getting dust up her nose) to find a shoe for Rachel.
She can be considered a round character as well because she has been fully developed and is complex and realistic. However, she is not without her own share of problems her marriage is seen as perfect but is far from it. Every so often when they had a fight all their problems would be revealed:
“Then Cash would leave for the train, and, as soon as the children had been taken to nursery school, Louise would put on her coat and cross the grass to the Bearden’s house. She would cry into a cup of warm coffee and tell Lucy Bearden her troubles. What was the meaning of marriage of love? Lucy always suggested that Louise get a job. It would give her emotional and financial independence, and that, Lucy said she needed.”(212)
Since she always ran to the neighbors after their fights, almost every would have known their problems because that’s how suburbia works. Louise always found relief in doing this but since they would always make up before she could she never had her own dependence. Her flaw would have definitely been staying with her husband for so long.
The characters in the story are very much so believable and realistic characters, that could be found in a suburb anywhere in the United States and Canada. The description of the suburb they live any is a model for any modern day suburb:
“In the suburb of Shady Hill, when almost everybody who was going to play tennis in the morning had gone home hours ago and the ten or twelve people remaining seemed powerless to bring the evening to an end although the gin and whiskey were running low, and here and there a woman who was sitting out her husband would have begun to drink milk; when everybody had lost track of time, the babysitters who were waiting at home for the diehards.”(210)
The characters in this story are victims to this average life of so called “perfect”, they believe that they have it all but they are not without their faults which is typical of a suburb family. The Bentley’s were finically unable to attain the suburb life but tried to anyways, just like any suburb family you would see:
“They belonged to the country club, although they could not afford it, but in the case of the Bentleys nobody ever pointed this out, Cash was one of the best liked men in Shady Hill….They were always late with their tax payments and their mortgage payments, the drawer of the hall table was stuffed with unpaid; it was always touch and go with the Bentley’s and the bank.”(211)
They tried so hard to fit and obtain this perfect life it’s very rarely ever mentioned about their children. They most only truly care about their image and lifestyle. Their life was far from perfect and unfortunately everyone could see that but them.
We assume that Cheever did not approve of this life because names the suburb “Shady Hill” and the characters “Cash Bentley”. “Shady Hill” can depict the way he feels about suburbia in general it’s shady and full of secrets like the ones the Bentley’s had like Cash’s drinking problems and their many money problems and in like every suburb the neighborhood they all had their problems but just kept them hidden. The symbolic value of the characters was that Cash had his fair share of problems but instead of trying to fix them he lived in the past. He always was hurdling furniture to fill a void of his youth that he could never fill. Every time the Bentley’s went to a party Cash would always hurdle the furniture near the end of the night:
“Trace would fire the weapon out of an open window, and if you were new to the community and had not understood what the preparations were about, you would then realize that you were watching a hurdle race. Over the sofa went Cash, over the tables, over the fire screen and the wood box. It was not exactly a race, since Cash ran it alone, but it was extraordinary to see this man of forty surmount so many obstacles so gracefully.”(210)