38 • Revolt of the Masses The evenings were growing cooler, September was here, autumn not far to the north, and the trees rustled uneasily. Having ordered the groceries and having spent the remainder of the morning more or less listening to the radio, and being then unable to find anything else to do, she informed Harriet - who was in the kitchen furiously smoking one cigarette after another while cutting up dates for a pudding - that she had some shopping to take care of on the Plaza and would not be home until late that afternoon. She felt somewhat guilty as she said this because in reality there was no shopping to be done, but, with the children again in school and with Harriet to do the cooking and housekeeping and with the laundress coming once a week to do the washing, Mrs Bridge found the days were very long. She was restless and unhappy and would spend hours thinking wistfully of the past, of those years just after her marriage when a day was all too brief. After luncheon in her favorite tearoom she decided she might as well look at candlesticks. She had been thinking of getting some new ones; this seemed as good a time as any. On her way to Bancroft's, which carried the nicest things on the Plaza, she stopped at a drugstore for a box of aspirin, then paused in front of a bookstore where her eye was caught by the title of a book in the window display: Theory of the Leisure Class. She experienced a surge of resentment. For a number of seconds she eyed this book with definite hostility, as though it were alive and conscious of her. She went inside and asked to see the book. With her gloves on it was difficult to turn the pages, so she handed it back to the clerk, thanked him, and with a dissatisfied expression continued to Bancroft's.
After my post I went back to read Mrs Bridge & noticed the title of this particular vignette - Revolt of the Masses. My admiration for Evan S Connell grows & grows. #MrsBridge #EvanSConnell #Veblen #BookSky 💙 📚
