A MOTHER AND TWO DAUGHTERS by Gail Godwin; Viking; 564 pp.; $15.95
In simpler times, happy stories ended with a marriage proposal or a wedding. A Mother and Two Daughters is decidedly cheerful; but living happily ever after, in the old-fashioned sense, is the very fate its heroines struggle to escape. They find themselves in a romance turned upside down: girl meets boy, boy offers her his hand, she shakes it and marches on.
In four earlier novels and a collection of short stories, Author Gail Godwin, 44, has presented a distinctive gallery of rogues, female, troubled and courageous. They tend to have Southern backgrounds, with all the accompanying luggage of traditions and social forms, and an unsettling inclination to think and act on their own (Godwin was raised in Asheville, N.C., and has taught English and creative writing at Vassar and Columbia, among other places). The author's fifth novel repeats previous patterns on a grander scale: more main characters, broader swatches of life to dazzle and puzzle them.
The catalyst for all that follows is the fatal heart attack of Leonard Strickland, a gentle North Carolina lawyer fond of Montaigne and Cicero. After 40 years of his benign companionship, his widow Nell doubts her ability to go it alone: "He protected me from so much ... from my harshest judgments of myself as well as of others." Strickland's death also catches his two daughters at awkward points in their lives. Cate, headstrong and twice divorced, is approaching her 40th birthday and teaching English at a small college in Iowa; like her previous school in New Hampshire, this one too seems on the verge of closing for lack of funds. And Lydia, the prim younger daughter and mother of two teen-age sons, has just walked out on her banker husband after 18 years of marriage.
None of these problems is unique, of course, in fact or fiction, and Godwin never claims otherwise. She does make the three women who face them singularly interesting. They are all intelligent enough to wish, sometimes, that they were less so. Nell would like to blend comfortably into the extending circle of Southern widows in her town, but her acerbic side keeps her at a slight, disquieting remove. Cate periodically feels the urge to "lapse wearily" into a man's care and then bristles angrily at her own weakness. Lydia tries to organize herself into happiness, knowing that each new accomplishment will set the stage for another bout of worry and planning. Stubbornly, she pursues the dream: "It really did seem to her that she had a chance of getting it all in."