Stone Mattress

Gavin Putnam is a poet. After Constance leaves him, he dates a series of young women he meets during his time as a professor of poetry. He marries one of these graduate students, Reynolds, although there are hints that he is still in love with Constance. He admits that his writing was better when he was with Constance:

In the ’60’s when he was living with Constance in that cramped, sultry steam bath of a room […] he could write anywhere […] and the words would flow right out of him and through the pencil or the ballpoint onto anything flat and handy. How to get back there? How to get that back? (52).

Reynolds invites Naveena, a graduate student, to come by and talk to Gavin about his work, as Naveena is supposedly writing her dissertation on Gavin’s poetry. When Naveena later admits that her thesis is on Constance, Gavin becomes angry about Constance and her success. While he thinks of Constance lovingly, he acts the opposite way when speaking about her to others. It is hard to tell whether Gavin is spiteful of Constance’s writing success or whether he is bitter that he cheated on her and couldn’t win him back. He gets especially mad when Naveena plays him an interview with Constance during her Alphinland heyday, in which Constance admits that she took parts of people she knew in real life and turned them into villains in Alphinland.

Tin and Jorrie Maeve are the protagonists of Atwood’s story “Dark Lady.” The title comes from Jorrie’s belief that she is the “Dark Lady” named in one of Gavin Putnam’s most famous poems. It is revealed that Jorrie was the woman that Gavin cheated on Constance with. As they age, Tin and Jorrie live together: “Because they’re twins they can be who they really are with each other, a thing they haven’t managed very well with anyone else” (78).

Despite being twins, Tin and Jorrie have different personalities. Jorrie is showy and extravagant; she is lively and bitter at other people’s successes. This is seen when Jorrie reads the obituaries in the newspaper every day and mocks the dead. Tin, meanwhile, is mild-mannered and well-read, with a sharp sense of humor. Tin has not lived with Jorrie all of his life as he thinks about the apartment where he previously lived. He recalls how Jorrie would come there and bring him Gavin Putnam’s published poems, convinced they were about her. Tin also “has once had a lover with an aquarium” (78), which is how he knows that he and Jorrie are transparent to each other, just like “guppies who see each other’s innards” (78).

Their shared childhoods are what Tin and Jorrie have most in common. While named Martin and Marjorie when they were born, they both chose uncommon nicknames while others would have adapted the names Marve and Marj. Their father died in the war when they were young, and their mother hosted a series of men in their home. One of these men tried to take advantage of Jorrie until Tin stepped in. This shows how protective Tin is of Jorrie.

Jorrie takes advantage of that protectiveness in some ways. She makes Tin go with her to Gavin Putnam’s funeral. She needs him there, as she knows Constance Starr will attend. As with any event in Jorrie’s life, she will not make it without Tin.

The first-person narrator of “Lusus Naturae” is unnamed. This suits the woman, as she hardly exists in the larger world. As a baby, she gets sick, which leaves her developmentally disabled and physically deformed. Her parents decide to tell the world she died, and the narrator agrees to this, as she is the type of person that wants everyone to be happy. Even as she is considered true evil and abandoned by her family, she still avoids conflict. She even tells her mother to leave when her mother is older and no longer wants to be in the house.

Despite the world’s behavior toward her, the narrator remains hopeful. Even when she is seen and shunned by the outside world and knows that she is going to be killed, she believes she will be an angel when she dies. The narrator shows throughout the story that even the hopeless can have hope and perhaps, if given a chance, can convince others of their kindness.

Jack is a poor, lazy college student who calls himself a writer but has never written or published anything. This changes when his roommates offer him an ultimatum: write a book and split the profits four ways or leave the house. Jack has nowhere desirable to go. He hasn’t paid rent so he has no choice but to sign the contract. He will write a book and forever split the profits. Years later, though, after the book is written, published, and adapted many times over, Jack is tired of and spiteful for the agreement he made in college.

Jack writes a book based on his roommates, creating a main character just like Irena, the roommate Jack has a crush on. It’s a horror novel about a dead hand, and when it’s finally published, Jack keeps it a secret from his roommates, so as not to have to honor the contract. Jack is generally lazy, and when he puts his all into the novel, he does it more to impress Irena and to make fun of friends. His friends made him sign a contract because they never thought he would actually write a novel.

Throughout “The Dead Hand Still Loves You,” Jack grapples with his self-esteem, whether it is when he first has sex with Irena or when he plays golf with Jeffrey: “Jack hates golf, but is good at losing, and has a lot of practice at it” (208). Even Jack knows that he will never live up to that first book. Yet instead of trying, he takes the time to find his roommates this many years later and plots ways to kill them so he no longer has to split the profits with them.

Verna is an older woman who decides to take a vacation to kill the man who raped her in high school. She also hopes to rid herself of what she calls the world’s clutter: “Among the clutter she includes other people, and by other people she means men” (217). Verna doesn’t trust men and her distrust is central to the story “Stone Mattress.” It is made known to the reader that all Verna wants is “to be protected by layer upon layer of kind, soft, insulating money, so that nobody and nothing could get close to harm her” (217).

Verna wants to protect herself from being hurt and believes the correct way to do this is by accumulating wealth. Her snarky tone from the beginning of the story, which starts, “At the outset, Verna had intended to kill anyone,” to her explanation that “old habits die hard” (217), makes Verna an engrossing character. She is honest; in fact, Verna’s honesty is the one respectable thing about her. Verna is hell-bent on revenge. She spent her whole life seeking vengeance on a boy who raped her in school, causing her to get pregnant and be shipped off to live with nuns. When she is sent home, she escapes to the city and spends her life tricking and marrying men for their money. Their money is what builds her armor.