Small Pleasures

“It was one of those generous impulses that had begun as a favor and had now become a duty, performed with dwindling enthusiasm on one side and fading gratitude on the other.”

Jean’s sense of obligation and adherence to social decorum demands that she not only tend to her own garden and lawn, but also her neighbor’s. Though she originally offered to help with sincerity, Jean now gives up her own time to mow someone else’s lawn out of a sense of duty. This is an early glimpse into Jean’s character and her inner world as it competes with her outer obligations.

“It was all too easy to overlook the chores that related to those parts of the house her mother didn’t see.”

Jean mostly performs domestic obligations for appearance’s sake—as many women do throughout the novel. For the social expectations of the time, decorum is everything; though Jean and her mother have differing opinions because of their generational difference, Jean still performs duties as her mother would approve of them to keep the peace within the home.

“[U]nmarried women have very good reason to lie about the circumstances of a pregnancy. Society is so unforgiving.”

Suspicions that Gretchen is lying abound, though all of the women in the narrative understand implicitly why she would. Women in Small Pleasures face scorn from their mothers, society, and doctors about pregnancy. It makes sense that they would resort to desperate measures to avoid the repercussions of single motherhood: social ostracization.