Unmailed, Unwritten Letters by Joyce Carol Oates
"Unmailed, Unwritten Letters" by Joyce Carol Oates explores the intricate psychological landscape of its narrator through the metaphor of letters that remain unsent and uncomposed. The narrative structure invites readers to delve into the protagonist's innermost thoughts and emotions, revealing her struggles with guilt, infidelity, and existential despair. Each letter, ostensibly directed to different recipients, serves as a window into her psyche, juxtaposing mundane realities with profound internal conflicts. The letters cover various relationships, including her complex interactions with her parents, her husband Greg, and her lover, Marsha Katz's father.
The tension between the act of writing and the unspeakable truths that the narrator grapples with creates a compelling commentary on the human condition. The emotional weight of her unmailed letters symbolizes her paralysis and fear of confronting her life choices. As the story unfolds, the narrator's reflections oscillate between the desire for connection and a deep-seated sense of inadequacy. Through this introspective journey, Oates masterfully captures the nuances of desire, regret, and the often-unvoiced struggles individuals face in their relationships and identities.
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Unmailed, Unwritten Letters by Joyce Carol Oates
First published: 1969
Type of plot: Epistolary
Time of work: 1969
Locale: Detroit
Principal Characters:
An unnamed woman , the narratorGreg , her husband, a Detroit politicianMr. Katz , a visiting professor from Boston University who is having an affair with the narratorMrs. Katz , his wife, in BostonMarsha Katz , their precocious ten-year-old daughter, in Boston
The Story
Unmailed letters exist in the everyday world, in some sort of objective reality, yet unwritten letters exist only in the mind. The title of the story is strategic; it forces the reader into the uncomfortable role of voyeur. As the reader looks over the shoulder of the writer of these "letters," the reader is actually looking into her mind, reading her fears and desires. Because of this, the action of the story is not sequential but psychological.
In the first letter, addressed to her parents, the narrator discusses a change of doctors and dentists. The banality of this first paragraph ("everything is lovely here and I hope the same with you") acts as a foil to the remainder of the letter. That is, the first paragraph is recognizable as a letter, perhaps "unmailed," but the second paragraph is truly "unwritten" thoughts directed at the narrator's parents. The change is obvious both in the subject matter ("your courage, so late in life, to take on space") and in diction ("I think of you and I think of protoplasm being drawn off into space"). Such is the tension between writing and thought that the reader must continually bear in mind.
The second letter addresses Marsha Katz, who, it seems, has been sending odd gifts anonymously to the narrator. The narrator and Marsha's father are having an affair; the precocious daughter is trying to incite guilt feelings in the narrator. At times the narrator tries to "read" the little girl's meanings, to interpret her stories; one story deals with a dead white kitten, representing (the narrator thinks) the victimized daughter herself.
She "writes" to Greg, her husband, next. The letter is an attempt to remember their first meeting, but its more submerged meanings deal with her inability to carry children to term and with her infidelity—her feelings of inadequacy and guilt. She refers to Marsha's father, her lover, as "X." She cannot bear to write (think) his name before her faithful husband.
Next she addresses her "darling," Marsha's father. She recounts a dream of his death, "mashed into a highway." His face is so badly disfigured that it is unrecognizable. In the same way that she converts him into a nonentity in the previous letter, an "X," so here she psychologically removes his face. She also dreams of suicide; the two deaths become equivalent in her dreamworld.
As the story proceeds, the narrator reveals the details of her marriage and of her affair. Greg has been a sincere, but at times ineffectual, politician in Detroit during the racial turmoil of the late 1960's. Ridden with guilt, the narrator writes to Greg of her infidelity with Katz; falling in love a second time, she says, is "terrifying, bitter, violent." However, she does nothing to become fulfilled in this new love; her letters are unmailed, unwritten. Writing to Mrs. Katz in Boston, to Mother and Father in the Southwest, to an undefined Editor, the narrator demonstrates her paralysis, her claustrophobia, her inability to confront overtly the forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, her emotional life.
In the last long letter, these frustrations culminate. It is addressed to Greg and appears to be a straightforward confession. Although it begins "I want to tell you everything," the second paragraph reflects the same tortured mind: "I seem to want to tell you something else." Marsha Katz has just attempted suicide. Mr. Katz, who must return to Boston immediately to be with Marsha and his wife, has called the narrator, asking her to accompany him to the airport. He is shaken by his daughter's desperation; she is angry that the daughter has apparently conquered the mistress. In this emotional chaos, the two lovers sneak off to a deserted stairway in the airport to make love. He leaves. She has difficulty finding her "husband's car"; feeling literally and figuratively soiled, she checks into the airport motel to bathe and to write the preceding confession. The conclusion of the story is formed by the first words of a letter addressed to "My darling." She may be writing to Greg (if the confession means something), or she may be writing to Katz (if it does not).
Bibliography
Bender, Eileen Teper. Joyce Carol Oates: Artist in Residence. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Cologne-Brookes, Gavin. Dark Eyes on America: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
Creighton, Joanne V. Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Daly, Brenda O. Lavish Self-Divisions: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
Johnson, Greg. Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Dutton, 1998.
Johnson, Greg. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.
Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979.