Alexander’s Bridge – Willa Cather
Alexander’s Bridge is the story of a great engineer who has reached the crisis in his life when success and responsibility have begun to fret and weary a restless, energetic nature inherently impatient of restraint. Alexander tries to shake himself free, to go back to the time when life was at its highest, most adventurous pitch. He rebels against life, and life defeats him. The story is a love story, for it is in his relations with two women, Winifred, his wife, and Hilda, a young Irish actress, that Alexander learns to know himself. His pursuit of Hilda, begun in a spirit of adventure, grows into a destroying obsession. It yields him intoxicating moments of delight, in which he recaptures the sense of youthful freedom and power; but it torments him more and more with the consciousness of an ever-growing breach in his own inner integrity. The situation is developed with a dramatic skill that holds one’s absorbed attention throughout. It is a story of brilliant and unusual power.
Alexander’s Bridge
Alexander’s Bridge.
ISBN: 9783849672881.
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Plot summary of Alexander’s Bridge (from Wikipedia):
Professor Wilson arrives at the Alexanders’ house in Boston, Bartley Alexander having persuaded him to attend a Congress of Psychologists in the city. He is greeted by Winifred Alexander. When her husband comes home the men talk; Winifred plays the piano for them. The next day, she tells Wilson how she met her husband through her aunt.
On Christmas Eve, the Alexanders prepare for Christmas dinner. Bartley tells Wilson he is having trouble with a bridge in Canada. Later he gives his wife pearl earrings. On New Year’s Day, Alexander makes ready to leave for London. On the ship, he endures sharp gales and goes into a bar, where he gambles at bridge, the card game. In London, Bartley visits Hilda and tells her he cannot go on having two relationships; she must forget about him and leave him alone. She is distressed. The day before he is due to return to America however, he takes her out to dinner.
Later, Hugh MacConnell walks Hilda back to her house on a foggy day. She says she isn’t attracted to him; they are just close friends. In her house, she receives a letter from Bartley, saying he is going mad away from her. This prompts her to visit him in America to tell him she will marry another man; Bartley doesn’t like the idea. They spend one last evening together.
Soon afterward, Philip Horton calls Bartley to Canada to inspect the bridge. Bartley discovers that one of the lower chords is failing, compromising the structural integrity of the entire bridge. Horton, concerned not to halt construction, had attempted to contact Bartley earlier – the very day Bartley was with Hilda. As Bartley is on the bridge stopping the work crews, the bridge collapses, killing many of the workers. Bartley’s body is recovered the next day and taken to Horton’s house. Winifred comes back to make arrangements for her husband’s corpse. Finally, Wilson visits Hilda. The latter expresses her envy of Winifred. Wilson reminds her that Winifred is now bereft and will be haunted by Bartley’s death. Hilda concludes that she will be too.
(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)
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