In the book “Revolutionary Road”, how would Paris have made their life more interesting?
Apart from living on a different continent, they would still have to work and raise their children. Could Paris have saved their marriage or were Frank and April never destined to be together after all? Is there anything else that could have been done or said to save April, to change her mind about their life in the suburbs, about the abortion? Would a shrink have helped? Ideas?
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Tagged with: abortion • continent • marriage • paris • Revolutionary Road
Filed under: How To Save A Marriage
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The idea behind moving to Paris was that April would work and Frank would figure out what creative, interesting thing to do with his life. April is under the impression that he speaks French well (he gave her that impression) and that he is above the dull job he holds — that he’s destined for better things. Precisely what these are is never quite made clear, since neither April nor Frank ever really pins down the plan. But what April does know is that she doesn’t want to be a dull suburban wife and mother; she wants to work in a stimulating city like Paris and be married to Frank — but to a different Frank. She feels that they could live the unconventional life she has in mind abroad but not in the U.S.
Given the fact that April and Frank are seeing the world and their marriage rather differently, given that Frank is not as discontented as April is — or, at least, not discontented in the same way — and that he’s not the man April wants to believe he is — I’d say that their relationship was doomed from the get-go. Some years later, it would have been appropriate for April to go to work, even as a wife and mother, and she could have obtained a safe abortion, possibly with Frank’s approval, given changing attitudes towards abortion. But in the context of the book’s era, all of that was not possible. Even if it had been, these two people, as the author paints them, were simply not well-suited to one another; they were living in different places within the same marriage and the same home.