Winesburg, Ohio 159particular, are led by society to believe that they can
find what they long for by becoming involved with
a man. However, male characters also feel misled
or “tricked” (204), as Ray Pearson terms it in “The
Untold Lie.”
“Mother” is an early story in the sequence.
“Mother” concerns Elizabeth Willard, the mother
of the male protagonist, George Willard, who is
the novice reporter to whom many of the charac-
ters relate their grotesquely obsessive ideas. In her
girlhood, Elizabeth had been restless and longed
to go on the stage, but because these longings were
thwarted, she channeled them into encounters with
men. One of these men, Tom Willard, became her
husband in an unhappy marriage; together, they are
the parents of George.
In some of the stories in Winesburg, Ohio, the
frustrated parent figure transfers his or her thwarted
hopes onto another generation. In “Mother,” Eliza-
beth Willard hopes that her son George will achieve
some of the transcendent longings she has failed to
achieve. George’s father, too, has transferred some
of his unrealized political ambitions onto George.
However, George rejects his father’s more common-
place ambitions for power and status.
The frustrated parent can transfer his or her
thwarted hopes onto his or her offspring with
such vehemence that the child is terrified by the
parent figure. In “Godliness II,” David Hardy is
the grandson of Jesse Bentley, a successful farmer
who had longed for a son instead of his daughter,
who became David’s mother. One of the ideas that
dominates Jesse’s personality is a desire to be a
biblical-style patriarch. When David was 12, his
grandfather took him to the woods and begged
God to show them a sign. David was so frightened
by his grandfather’s demeanor that he ran off and
fell, hitting his head. In “Godliness IV, Terror,”
three years have passed. This time, it is the grand-
father, Jesse Bentley, who falls. When Jesse tries to
conduct a biblical-style sacrifice of a lamb, David
becomes terrified; the situation has overtones of
the intended sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. David
hurls a stone at Jesse from his slingshot. David runs
away and is never seen in Winesburg again; his
grandfather is permanently disabled, physically and
mentally, from the incident.
In Winesburg, Ohio, parents fail to communicate
with their offspring. In “Mother,” Elizabeth Wil-
lard has a bond with her son, George, in that she
longs for the hopes that have died in her life with
her unhappy marriage to live on in her son. In spite
of the bond between her and George, however, she
fails to communicate with him, even on her death-
bed. In a story placed next to last in the sequence
(“Death, Concerning Doctor Reefy”), the death
described is that of Elizabeth herself. She is one of
the female characters who have been disappointed
in marriage and family life. During the last six days
of her life, she is unable to speak or communicate
with anyone, and she anguishes over her not being
able to tell George about the money she has hidden
away behind the plaster in the wall at the foot of
her bed. This money was a legacy from Elizabeth’s
father years earlier. Near death, he mulled over his
own regrets and urged Elizabeth not to marry the
young man she was seeing. However, Elizabeth did
marry that young man, Tom Willard, with whom
she had her son, George. Thus, failed communica-
tion, like the walled-up money, is a legacy from
generation to generation.
Natalie Tarenkoindividual and sOciety in Winesburg, Ohio
The central character in Winesburg, Ohio, is young
George Willard. George’s work in the newspaper
office in town brings him into contact with many
other people who long to achieve communication.
Like them, George talks more to himself than
with anyone else about his own dreams, ideas, and
impressions. What is true of one of them is true of
all of them: “He could master others but he could
not master himself.”
Individual characters feel walled off and long to
make contact with others; this longing to commu-
nicate leads them to attempt to find something in
romantic relationships, an attempt that largely fails.
George’s parents are one of these failed couples; both
women and men express bitterness that their loneli-
ness was not only not assuaged by society in the
institution of marriage but had actually increased.
George’s mother, Elizabeth, hopes that she can save
her son from her own unhappy fate: “Within him