She is the Anchor

There was something in this novel Cannery Row that I couldn’t quite shake after reading it. A common essence relating certain characters to one another despite the varying tangent stories throughout it. This “thing” made sense to me only when I stepped back to appreciate the work as a whole. After some consideration, I decided it was the way women in this novel are written. I realize it may be decently argued that Steinbeck portrays a rather unbecoming image of wives and women in Cannery Row, considering the burdensome roles most of them seem to inflict on the husband characters (Gay and his wife who beats him, for example), but I would argue that in the novel Steinbeck is doing something entirely different here. Through the comedic ups and downs of relationships we find in Cannery Row, wives and the women are constant and prominent figures which are associated with virtues of patience, thoughtfulness and steadfastness that valorized male characters like Mack and the boys lack. In this way they are the backbone of the function of the town, holding it together. And this is evident in notes of reverence and respect for women characters throughout Cannery Row. 

A brief story which struck me was that of the agitated Richard Frost of Salinas, and his wife Mrs. Frost, who never re-enters the story after this chapter. Chapter 19 begins by introducing him and his obsession with the flag-pole skater. Richard is “a high-strung and brilliant young man, [who] worried about it more than anyone else. It haunted him. Wednesday night he worried and Thursday night he fidgeted. Friday night he got drunk and had a fight with his wife. She cried for a while and then pretended to be asleep. She heard him slip from bed and go into the kitchen. He was getting another drink. And then she heard him dress quietly and go out. She cried some more then. It was very late. Mrs. Frost was sure he was going down to Dora’s Bear Flag” (Steinbeck 104). It is only fitting that this passage leads us right to Dora and the women of Bear Flag. The cause of Mrs. Frost’s dismay is the dissonance between her and her husband, who she believes to be heading out to be with a woman from the brothel. This is significant because, as we know throughout the novel Dora is an anchor figure for the whole of Cannery Row. Lichen Li, in his article “Steinbeck’s Ethical Dimensions,” writes that “Dora and the girls of Bear Flag in Cannery Row, these "professionals of vice" are not without nobility when they organized themselves to take shifts in looking after sick families during an epidemic” (Li 65). Even Dora and the Bear Flag are women who (despite Mrs. Frosts’ dismay of their suspected involvement in her husbands’ life) are central to the function of this community, and the novel holds them in high esteem, Dora in particular, due to her generosity and dependability.

To return to the passage on Mr. and Mrs. Frost, the private suffering of Mrs. Frost in this passage remained with me. Why would this section be here if it didn’t matter? This chapter is oddly specific and separate from the somewhat consistent chain of events with Mack and the boys and Doc. Richard Frost is the first character brought up in this section, and Mrs. Frost is seemingly in the background, her character only existing as it relates to his. 

Yet she is the anchor he comes back to in the end. She is the one he wants to share his findings with. The thing that keeps him up at night and “fidgeting” on a Thursday night. Later in this chapter, after finding out how the “skater” stays up on the pole so long, Richard returns home. “As he undressed he knew his wife was awake. She bubbled a little when she was asleep. He got into bed and she made room for him. ‘He’s got a can up there,’ Richard said” (Steinbeck 105). The comment about how he knew his wife was awake because of his familiarity with the way she sleeps is endearing, but also significant. What we know about this couple is that they fought, she cried alone at night, and he came back to her to share what he found out about the skater. The scene offers a melancholic picture of this couple, but it is a piece in the larger meaning at work here. And it provides insight to the reason prominent male characters in the novel like Mack and the boys are lacking direction in their lives. My aim here is not necessarily to say that Mack and the boys are directionless because they don’t have women in their lives (that could be a whole different paper topic I think) but rather that the female characters in this novel possess something that the men lack, and this instance is I believe patience and steadfastness. She lies awake for the return of her husband, and in that simple gesture she displays character that certainly eager and fickle characters like Mack and the boys lack. 

Note how Mrs. Frost “made room for him,” her husband, who she suspected was out cheating on her. He left to satisfy his itching curiosity about how the flag-pole skater stays up there so long (a detail which I find brilliantly humorous) while she remained in their bed crying to herself. Yet when he returns, he can sense that she is awake, and she makes room for him. She is steadfast in her commitment to him despite not knowing where he was or why he was so fixated on this thing. Based on the sparse detail given on Richard’s fixation, I gather that he doesn’t understand this obsession either. It all seems to point to something grander: the anchor of Mrs. Frost’s loyalty.  

The next female subject I want to dive into is the Captain’s wife. Though she is never physically present, her character is a tangible essence in this novel. In the section about Mack and the boys and their unexpected friendship with the captain, the captain’s wife is mentioned multiple times. “The boys stood in the kitchen and gathered quick impressions. It was obvious that the wife was away-- the opened cans, the frying pan with lace from fried eggs still sticking to it, the crumbs on the kitchen table, the open box of shotgun shells on the bread box all shrieked the lack of a woman” (Steinbeck 82). At the surface, this passage seems to merely indicate stereotypical gender roles: the reckless man makes a mess while his wife cooks, cleans, and keeps the household neatly in order. Therefore the mess suggests that his wife is not present. But there is something more here, if you read closely. The boys knew right away that there was the “lack of a woman.” The thing which suggests the lack of a woman is the disorder, and the most specific detail of the disorder is the “open box of shotgun shells on the bread box.” The mention of shotgun shells is an implication of violence. Because inherently, guns and violence go hand-in-hand. Guns are by and large associated with males and masculinity, the “man of the house” would be the carrier of the gun, if you will. And in this case, he, the captain, is. Not only is the box of shotgun shells present, but it is open, suggesting the recent use of the gun and therefore violence (we know the captain is a hunter by this point). There is something profound in the notion that the presence of disorder and an indication of violence suggests the lack of a woman. And in Steinbeck’s words, not only suggests, but “shrieks” the lack of a woman! 

This passage continues after Mack and the boys have observed the house saying, “and they were unconsciously glad she wasn’t there. The kind of women who put papers on shelves and had little towels like that instinctively distrusted and disliked Mack and the boys. Such women knew that they were the worst threats to a home, for they offered ease and thought and companionship as opposed to neatness, order, and properness. They were very glad she was away” (Steinbeck 82). There is a duality at play here. The two kinds of people that are being juxtaposed are the kinds that value “ease and thought and companionship” as opposed to those who value “neatness, order, and properness.” Now it would not be fair to argue that either of these is superior to the other, as they both offer and lack different things. The important detail is that Mack and the boys lack the trust of women who prefer neatness and order. The captain, like Mack and the boys in this way, is aimless without the presence of this sturdy woman in his life. 

The captain frequently thinks of his wife throughout the visit of Mack and the boys, and in a drunken ramble, states, “my wife is a wonderful woman,” he said in a kind of peroration. “Most wonderful woman. Ought to of been a man. If she was a man I wouldn’ of married her” (Steinbeck 85). His wife was such a woman to him that she might’ve been a man. That in itself is a loaded statement. And it is followed by the realization that, were she a man, he wouldn’t have married her. Two statements that scream patriarchal narcissism, but also a kind of grappling to understand why men and women are compared in this way when they are inherently different. This is not a general statement of the obvious biological differences between male and female, nor a neglect of nonbinary gender identities, nor an over-general blanket statement about differences between men and women. What I mean to bring to light is the way society shapes this dualism and the expectations it puts on the two sexes are inherently different. And this quote, save the entire chapter, is a breathing example of the duality which separates the gender identities. The captain is expressing the sentiment that he views his wife as equal to a man, which bestows a special sort of honor to her because in the patriarchal marriage tradition, women are not equal to men. With the following comment, he is unconsciously recognizing the sexism within the institution of marriage, in expressing that, were his wife equal to him, he would not have married her. 

This passage is significant because the captain’s wife is shaping the environment around him and his guests without even being there. Her role as the center of gravity in the household and in the captain’s life influences him and the people around him even in her absence. He is constantly thinking about her, and one may start to wonder if she is ever coming back to him. The scene concludes with the captain deciding “his wife would like Mack and the boys if only she knew them” (Steinbeck 85). It is evident he values her opinion and longs for her approval here, knowing that Mack and the boys are not her ideal company, and would threaten the stability she has formed in their lives. We see conflict within the captain because he also “wanted to go live with them in the Palace flophouse” (Steinbeck 85). He has a pull toward the wife-less and carefree lifestyle that Mac and the boys leave, and romanticizes them much like Doc does, yet it all comes down to what his wife would like. He is unable to shake his ties to her, even in the delirious drunken state she finds himself in. His wife is the anchor keeping him from instability, and the Palace Flophouse. 

The environment of the Palace Flophouse is a topic of interest in this study of how women operate in this novel as well. In her article “Masculine Sexuality and the Objectification of Women: Steinbeck's Perspective,” Mimi R. Gladstein observes that “Mack and the boys even produce a child-substitute, the pup "Darling." Like doting parents they panic when she becomes sick and take turns sitting up with her in her” (Gladstein 112). It is evident throughout the novel, as we have observed, that Mack and the boys lack stability and direction, which is a reflection of their irresponsibility in relationships with women. Mack reflects on his wife who left him on page 119, in a rather sad scene after he fails to give Doc a party that shows his gratitude. He says that since his wife left, he doesn’t “do nothing but clown no more. Try to make the boys laugh” (Steinbeck 120). Paired with the observation Gladstein makes on Mack’s resorted to flophouse life, one may conclude that Mack uses the puppy to compensate for his failure to create a family and keep his wife around. All the men dote on her like she is their child, because they have recognized they lack a certain responsibility in their lives that a sturdy relationship calls for. 

Furthermore, Willia Mullaney in his article, “Uncle Tom's Flophouse: John Steinbeck's Cannery Row as a (Post- Feminist) Sentimental Novel,” Mullaney observes the way the idea of the “home” in Cannery Row is significant. He argues the novel “adheres to the domestic goals of sentimental fiction in its celebration of the home,” and specifies the sentimentality he refers to as a novel with the quality and power to “move readers dependent on certain assumptions about family, culture, power, human emotions, ideas about equality and most importantly, a set of religious beliefs that organizes and sustains the other assumptions” (Mullaney 45). In this way, the celebration of “the home” in Cannery Row is present in each of the story tangents Steinbeck includes. I am thinking of the home of Richard and Mrs. Frost, the captain’s disheveled home, and of course, the Palace Flophouse of Mack and the boys. The sentimentality in this novel in regards to the home relates to the women figures in the novel because their existence (or lack thereof) in the home is consistently significant in each home. The Frosts’ home is where the wife suffers for the mania of her husband, the captain’s house is where his wife restores balance of order, and the Palace Flophouse is where the lack of women ultimately leads an “anything goes” mentality only to lead to the want of female companionship.

Companionship and relationships are the driving force of this novel, as Bill Lancaster observed in his article “The Inverted Economy of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row Ecology.” Lancaster states, “the inverted economy centers on people rather than wealth, relationships rather than profit margins. In Steinbeck’s novel, individuals are parts of the whole, and social exchange theory reveals the interconnectedness of a community focused on one another rather than on the material culture found outside Cannery Row” (Lancaster 52). Lancaster’s study of the economic values throughout the community of Cannery Row suggests that the relationships within the novel are the function of the community as a whole. If this is so, and the important thing that major male characters in the novel lack is the steadfastness offered by relationship with a woman, then the female characters in this novel are vital to the function and existence of this community. Alone and as they relate to their male counterparts.

References

Gladstein, Mimi R. “Masculine Sexuality and the Objectification of Women: Steinbeck's 

Perspective.” The Steinbeck Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 2004, pp. 109–123. JSTOR, 

www.jstor.org/stable/41581952. Accessed 22 May 2021.

Lancaster, Billy Joe (Bill). “The Inverted Economy of Steinbeck's Cannery Row Ecology.” The 

Steinbeck Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 2015, pp. 52–65. JSTOR, 

www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/steinbeckreview.12.1.0052. Accessed 11 June 2021.

Li, Luchen. “Steinbeck's Ethical Dimensions.” The Steinbeck Review, vol. 6, no. 1, 2009, pp. 

63–79. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41582099. Accessed 22 May 2021.

Mullaney, William. “Uncle Tom's Flophouse: John Steinbeck's ‘Cannery Row’ as a 

(Post-Feminist) Sentimental Novel.” The Steinbeck Review, vol. 4, no. 2, 2007, pp. 

41–51. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41582053. Accessed 22 May 2021.