Rich in Love by Josephine Humphreys

First published: 1987

Type of plot:Bildungsroman

Time of work: The early 1980’s

Locale: Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina

Principal Characters:

• Lucille Odom, the narrator
• Warren Odom, her father, a businessman
• Helen Odom, her mother, a woman who is bored with her life
• Rae Odom, her older sister, who is pregnant
• Billy McQueen, Rae’s new husband, a doctoral candidate
• Rhoda Poole, an African American friend of the family
• Vera Oxendine, a hair stylist

The Novel

Rich in Love is the account of a six-month period when the seemingly predictable lives of the Odom family are changed forever. The novel is divided into thirteen chapters. The first-person narrator is Lucille Odom, who was a seventeen-year-old high school senior when these events took place. Throughout the book, Lucille stresses her opposition to any alteration in the family. Her opposition to change may well be one reason that she does not bother to take her examinations so that she can graduate from high school. However, in the last two pages of the novel, which serve as an epilogue, it is evident that during the two years that have passed since that difficult time, Lucille has come to realize that change is not only inevitable but also often best for all concerned, including Lucille herself.

The book begins on May 10, when Lucille arrives home to find that her mother, Helen Odom, has left home. In a note to her husband, Warren, Helen says that she intends to start a new life. Although she promises to telephone, Helen leaves no clue as to where she has gone. Warren immediately starts to look for his missing wife, a difficult task, since she is unconventional enough to have gone almost anywhere. Lucille is as anxious as her father to find Helen; like him, Lucille is convinced that if they could just bring her back home, everything would return to normal. Nevertheless, they cannot find her. In fact, Helen remains absent throughout four-fifths of the novel. Although she finally allows first Rae and then Lucille to come and see her, Helen does not go back home until the family is threatened with tragedy, and even then it is not to stay.

As soon as their mother vanishes, Lucille contacts her older sister Rae, who is working in Washington, D.C., and demands that she return to Mt. Pleasant at once. However, Rae seems to have problems of her own, and she will not agree to come before the sixth of June. When she does arrive, what she meant becomes only too clear. She has just been married to Billy McQueen, who is finishing his doctoral dissertation in history but at present has no source of income or job prospects. The reason for their precipitous decision is also evident: Rae is pregnant. At first, Rae and Billy seem to be passionately in love with each other. However, as the months go by, Rae falls into a deep depression and becomes less and less interested both in her baby and in her husband. She begins talking about giving the baby up for adoption, and eventually she tells Billy that after the child is born, she wants him to leave. Now the house contains two men who have been rejected by their wives.

By this time, however, Warren has found someone to console him. Even though he keeps searching for Helen, he is spending time with Vera Oxendine, the woman who cuts his hair. When Lucille finds Vera in the bedroom dressed in some of Helen’s more glamorous nightwear, she realizes that if her mother does not return soon, the family may never get back to what Lucille defines as normal—in other words, to life as it used to be.

Billy, too, is unhappy. He seems to have lost his wife and baby, and he is living with strangers in a place that, as a Yankee, he finds incomprehensible. In Lucille, he finds someone who will listen to him, sympathize with him, and go with him on excursions. Although she has always found Billy attractive, Lucille has no idea that their comfortable friendship will ever develop into anything more. She would not betray Rae; moreover, she is still trying to figure out how he feels about her boyfriend, Wayne Frobiness. Wayne is a good person, intelligent and compassionate, and he is devoted to Lucille. However, she does not find their sexual encounters particularly exciting. In her erotic dreams, Billy starts to appear in Wayne’s place. After returning from trick-or-treating on Halloween, Lucille and Billy are overwhelmed by their desire for each other, and they have sex in the back yard. Billy immediately declares that he will never let Lucille go, but she makes no commitment. When they go into the house, the two discover that Rae has given birth without realizing what was happening to her. The baby is still alive, but Rae is in danger of bleeding to death.

Phoebe’s birth, which is the climax of the novel, is also the catalyst that forces all these complicated relationships to be sorted out. The near-tragedy brings Helen home, but only to help with the baby. The Odom marriage is over. After Rae is well enough to come home, Helen moves out again, taking Lillian with her, and Warren marries Vera. However, Billy and Rae re-establish their relationship. Wayne goes off to college, and Lillian, now nineteen, is last seen talking to Phoebe about whether or not she will ever get married.

The Characters

Josephine Humphreys excels at developing convincing, well-rounded characters. In Rich in Love, her narrative method enables her to reveal character in several ways. Lucille reports the past history of everyone she knows, as well as their present conduct. Sometimes, as with her mother’s desertion, the present does not seem consistent with the past, when her mother seemed devoted to her family. However, when Helen unburdens herself to Lucille, it becomes clear that she was never as happy with her life as she appeared to be. Therefore, though her leaving home indicates that she has changed enough to have made a decision about her life, her family’s earlier assessment of her was never very accurate. It is also clear that Lucille erred even in her initial description of her mother when she typed her as a woman dominated by her imagination. Helen proves to be much more than merely someone with a curious mind, belatedly searching for her own identity. She also has a heart. When she learns that Rae is having problems, Helen sends for her, and when the baby is born, Helen comes out of hiding to help. Lucille’s misreading of her mother is most evident in the fact that, having been told by Rae that she was meant to be aborted, Lucille has never felt that her mother really loved her. Seeing how overjoyed Helen is to see much of Lucille in Phoebe, Lucille realizes that her mother has always adored her.

It is true that the characters in Rich in Love do change, even during the brief period when readers see them in action. Rae is first a young woman overcome by love, then one overwhelmed by pregnancy, and finally a contented adult. However, though Lucille may be surprised by Rae’s descent into depression, her comments on Rae’s beauty and popularity suggest that such a reaction is almost inevitable, just as her statements about Rae’s strength of character make her recovery quite believable.

To a marked degree, then, seeming changes in the characters are merely new expressions of their real identities. Warren’s taking up with a new love may shock Lucille, but after all, he is a practical man who tries to forget about his wife’s defection by nailing shingles onto the roof. Billy’s vowing eternal love to Lucille after their encounter is in keeping with his getting Rae pregnant so that she will marry him; he is a decent man who cannot separate sex from respectability. Readers are not even surprised by the fact that Lucille ends up alone. At this point in her life, she is much too busy reflecting on all that is around her to surrender her detachment for some lesser state.

Critical Context

With her first novel, Dreams of Sleep (1984), Josephine Humphreys established a place for herself in contemporary southern fiction. While her focus was on private life, the backdrop of that book and of the two novels that followed it was the Charleston, South Carolina, area, which until recently seemed immune to change. Although one cannot blame changing society for all the problems Humphreys’s characters face, certainly such trends as the disintegration of the family influence their attitudes and their decisions. Neither Dreams of Sleep nor Rich in Love would have developed in the same way if divorce were not an acceptable option. However, it is not social upheaval but natural disaster that sets the stage for The Fireman’s Fair (1991). In it, the survivors of Hurricane Hugo attempt to restore order, both in their community and in their own lives.

Humphreys’s next project involved helping a black woman with an interesting story find a way to write it down and get it published. Gal: A True Life (1994), by the pseudonymous Ruthie Bolton, was both a critical and financial success.

In her work with Bolton, Humphreys demonstrated the generosity of spirit which is so evident in her novels. While she is highly praised for her craftsmanship and for her masterful evocation of the South Carolina setting, Humphreys is perhaps most respected because while admitting that contemporary life is not easy, she insists that order can come out of chaos and that apprehensions about change can be overcome by the power of love.

Bibliography

Henley, Ann. “ ‘Space for Herself’: Nadine Gordimer’s A Sport of Nature and Josephine Humphreys’ Rich in Love.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 1 (1992): 81-89. Henley argues that “for a woman, ‘being’ is made possible not by belonging to but by being freed from place.” Lucille, like Helen, must be freed from the Odom household to find her own identity.

Humphreys, Josephine. “Continuity and Separation: An Interview with Josephine Humphreys.” Interview by Rosemary M. Magee. The Southern Review 27, no. 4 (Autumn, 1991): 792-802. Focuses on the author’s sense of purpose and on her approach to her craft.

Humphreys, Josephine. “My Invisible Self.” In A World Unsuspected: Portraits of Southern Childhood, edited by Alex Harris. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. A reminiscence revealing the author’s early realization that one’s identity is always a mysterious matter.

Jackson, Shelley M. “Josephine Humphreys and the Politics of Postmodern Desire.” Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Culture 47, no. 2 (Spring, 1994): 287-300. Argues that the subject of Rich in Love is the development of relationships between women, independent of their involvement with men.

Malone, Michael. “Rich in Words.” The Nation, October 10, 1987, 388-389. Reviewing Rich in Love, Malone compares the novel at some length with Humphreys’ earlier novel, Dreams of Sleep, and praises Rich in Love for Lucille’s “wry wit, and fine comic timing.”

Millichap, Joseph. “Josephine Humphreys.” In Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Joseph M. Flora and Robert Bain. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. An excellent introduction to the author and her work. Includes sections on biography, themes, and critical reception, as well as a bibliography.

Seaquist, Carla. “Someone Who Cares.” Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women 3, no. 5 (May/June, 1988): 5. This review, written in a slangy style for a feminist audience, describes Lucille’s narration as a “feisty female voice.”

Summer, Bob. “Josephine Humphreys.” Publisher’s Weekly (September 4, 1987): 49-50. Published before Rich in Love, this article includes biographical information about Humphreys.

Vinh, Alphonse. “Talking with Josephine Humphreys.” The Southern Quarterly 32, No. 4 (Summer, 1994): 131-140. Discusses such themes in the novels as obsession with tradition and the fear of change.

Walker, Elinor Ann. “Josephine Humphreys’s Rich in Love: Redefining Southern Fiction.” The Southern Quarterly 47, no. 2 (Spring, 1994): 287-300. Insists that by stressing personal history while admitting the perceiver’s fallibility, writers such as Humphreys are creating a new kind of southern fiction.

Wickenden, Dorothy. “What Lucille Knew.” The New Republic (October 19, 1987): 45-46. This review praises Humphreys’ handling of her characters’ inner lives “with subtlety, originality and deadpan humor,” but balances that praise with criticism of the “mannered sentimentality and . . . pat psychology” of the ending of the novel.