The Time is Noon
It's a great title to me. It represents expansion, a lack of pressure, a timelessness if you will, a feeling of breeze, of wide open spaces. And in the book--by Pearl S. Buck--the same feeling of openness, of possibilities, presents itself.
Joan Richards is just home from college. It's Middlehope, Pennsylvania in the 1920s. She has nothing on her schedule at all. She luxuriates in her bed, stretching in the early morning, eventually going downstairs to greet her family at the breakfast table: her father, the town's pastor, an "otherworldy" man entirely focused on his business, hardly noticing his family, diffident, aloof, yet not purposefully so--it's just not in his nature to commingle gaily; her mother, Mary, the rock of the family, the dutiful, gay, busy seamstress, cook, planner, family conscience; her sister, Rose, a few years younger, quiet, following more in her father's footsteps, the "religious" offspring; and Francis, her younger brother, a distant teenager whose rebellion is held in check by the overwhelmingly close bond he has with his mother.
What to do with the rest of her life? Well, Joan had nothing but time on her hands, and a lot of thinking to do.
But event would change that.
Her mother was, we soon learn, getting to be quite ill. Inoperable tumor in her stomach. But she never saw a doctor until quite late. Out there in the country, in that setting, one lived with one's problems. There was a town doctor, a straight-talking affable seen-it-all type, Dr. Crabbe, who was eventually summoned, then brought a specialist, and things soon became apparent: there wasn't much time.
The household would be sent into turmoil. Soon enough, Joan's future, as she saw it, became clear: she would step in and take over the role of Mary, of take-charge mother.
After her mother's death, things began unraveling. Not that Joan failed in her tasks, just that events kept steamrollering: her sister Rose married and went to China to become a missionary; Francis, caught up in a romantic entanglement with a local woman of color, was immediately disatched to New York to quell that mess; the father, Paul, by then a bit doddering, amidst rumors he was soon to be replaced as pastor, suddenly died of a stroke.
And all the while Joan, still young and strong, large and big-boned and full of life, carried on and bore the suffering, yet grew isolated and alone in the big house, which she eventually had to give up for the new pastor and his family.
Throughout these months of turmoil, Joan would grow quite restless. Near the end, when it was just her father and herself in the house, she would take to going out, say for a long walk in the rain, just to do something. Before all this trouble, she'd briefly steal away to meet in the woods to kiss and grope with an older man, the church organist, but that fizzled out when she realized he'd never change, he wasn't interested in any kind of real relationship.
While alone with her father, she was being visited regularly by a man she ended up marrying in her lonely desperation after all had fallen apart--a country bumpkin named Bart Pounder. He "was dumb" but decent enough. They lived at his farm with his family, an extraordinarily non-talking group who would sit around all evening, hardly saying a word, and having no values that could be considered modern or expressive in any way. It was stultifying. Joan took refuge in her expecting.
A beatiful baby was born. Joan doted on him constantly. She moved up to the attic, closed her life--physically--to her husband from that point on, and stayed constantly with baby Paul. Problem is, he "wasn't right." Turns out Dr. Crabbe--and a New York specialist--confirmed, the baby was born "witout a mind." He "did not know" his mother. He could not talk. Joan yearned for a child with whom she could communicate, but also knew her life--taking care of Paul--was quite set.
During a previous trip to New York--to visit her brother--she was introduced to the man who would help look out for him, help get him a job, etc., a Roger Bair. Joan fell for him, and when with her son she was in her deepest need, she wrote to him about what work she might do to help make ends meet. (It turned out Joan, one day upon coming home to the farm, heard a great argument in progress. Actually a fistfight was underway, between her husband his father, who'd caught her husband in the haystacks with a local whore. "If you'd done your duty by your husband, this never would have happened!" her mother-in-law exclaimed. She decided to move out then and there. She'd definitely contributed to the troubles, and just wanted to be through with them. While there was still a lot of hubbub in the kitchen, Joan went to the attic, got Paul's things, and they hit the road. She ended up at the house of a Mrs. Mack, a neighbor woman she was helping out in her own last days; upon her death, Mrs. Mack gave her house and some cash to Joan.)
Roger Bair wrote back and got Joan some work transcribing music for a New York company. They began a regular, if circumspect, communication. Her feelings for him grew, in her loneliness with Paul, she had little but time in which to have such feelings spread out.
Around this time, tragedy struck further, giving her more need of the likes of Roger. She'd received a post that her sister Rose and her husband Rob were killed in an attack on the town they were proselytizing in, somewhere in China. Their two children, David and Mary, would be brought back to Middlehope, where, Joan decided, she would be the one to take charge, to raise them. Children who would show feelings! Who would be fully alive to all possibilities! She was thrilled and overwhelmed, with mingling sorrow...
And then the shocking news that Francis, who'd finally been realizing his dreams of flying a plane, had died in a fiery crash. The circumstances? The colored whore who had tracked him down--and duly informed him that she had bore him a son--Frankie, whom by now Joan was also taking care of, because the mother, Fanny, went missing (off to find Francis)--freaked him out and he ran to the plane, threw to the side the pilot who had been intending to take it up, and flew it...onto his fiery death.
Well this was all too much to take, except that in addition to reading a little about the incident in the paper, Roger himself had appeared at her farmhouse door to break the news in person, and while she was terribly aggrieved, she couldn't help but notice his wonderful eyes, his expressive hands. "There will be time to mourn Francis. Now I will allow this indulgence..." But Roger was married, to a frail, simple woman he could not stop taking care of, and Joan--who'd dealt with frailty and understanding her whole life--could not help but understand here again. It was not to be...
The book ends, though, with Roger expressing his love to Joan...and his promise of "somehow, someway" eventually making things work out.
Joan, thrilled in her everyday parenting to such a fine brood, would live with that. The time, after all, "was noon."
Joan Richards is just home from college. It's Middlehope, Pennsylvania in the 1920s. She has nothing on her schedule at all. She luxuriates in her bed, stretching in the early morning, eventually going downstairs to greet her family at the breakfast table: her father, the town's pastor, an "otherworldy" man entirely focused on his business, hardly noticing his family, diffident, aloof, yet not purposefully so--it's just not in his nature to commingle gaily; her mother, Mary, the rock of the family, the dutiful, gay, busy seamstress, cook, planner, family conscience; her sister, Rose, a few years younger, quiet, following more in her father's footsteps, the "religious" offspring; and Francis, her younger brother, a distant teenager whose rebellion is held in check by the overwhelmingly close bond he has with his mother.
What to do with the rest of her life? Well, Joan had nothing but time on her hands, and a lot of thinking to do.
But event would change that.
Her mother was, we soon learn, getting to be quite ill. Inoperable tumor in her stomach. But she never saw a doctor until quite late. Out there in the country, in that setting, one lived with one's problems. There was a town doctor, a straight-talking affable seen-it-all type, Dr. Crabbe, who was eventually summoned, then brought a specialist, and things soon became apparent: there wasn't much time.
The household would be sent into turmoil. Soon enough, Joan's future, as she saw it, became clear: she would step in and take over the role of Mary, of take-charge mother.
After her mother's death, things began unraveling. Not that Joan failed in her tasks, just that events kept steamrollering: her sister Rose married and went to China to become a missionary; Francis, caught up in a romantic entanglement with a local woman of color, was immediately disatched to New York to quell that mess; the father, Paul, by then a bit doddering, amidst rumors he was soon to be replaced as pastor, suddenly died of a stroke.
And all the while Joan, still young and strong, large and big-boned and full of life, carried on and bore the suffering, yet grew isolated and alone in the big house, which she eventually had to give up for the new pastor and his family.
Throughout these months of turmoil, Joan would grow quite restless. Near the end, when it was just her father and herself in the house, she would take to going out, say for a long walk in the rain, just to do something. Before all this trouble, she'd briefly steal away to meet in the woods to kiss and grope with an older man, the church organist, but that fizzled out when she realized he'd never change, he wasn't interested in any kind of real relationship.
While alone with her father, she was being visited regularly by a man she ended up marrying in her lonely desperation after all had fallen apart--a country bumpkin named Bart Pounder. He "was dumb" but decent enough. They lived at his farm with his family, an extraordinarily non-talking group who would sit around all evening, hardly saying a word, and having no values that could be considered modern or expressive in any way. It was stultifying. Joan took refuge in her expecting.
A beatiful baby was born. Joan doted on him constantly. She moved up to the attic, closed her life--physically--to her husband from that point on, and stayed constantly with baby Paul. Problem is, he "wasn't right." Turns out Dr. Crabbe--and a New York specialist--confirmed, the baby was born "witout a mind." He "did not know" his mother. He could not talk. Joan yearned for a child with whom she could communicate, but also knew her life--taking care of Paul--was quite set.
During a previous trip to New York--to visit her brother--she was introduced to the man who would help look out for him, help get him a job, etc., a Roger Bair. Joan fell for him, and when with her son she was in her deepest need, she wrote to him about what work she might do to help make ends meet. (It turned out Joan, one day upon coming home to the farm, heard a great argument in progress. Actually a fistfight was underway, between her husband his father, who'd caught her husband in the haystacks with a local whore. "If you'd done your duty by your husband, this never would have happened!" her mother-in-law exclaimed. She decided to move out then and there. She'd definitely contributed to the troubles, and just wanted to be through with them. While there was still a lot of hubbub in the kitchen, Joan went to the attic, got Paul's things, and they hit the road. She ended up at the house of a Mrs. Mack, a neighbor woman she was helping out in her own last days; upon her death, Mrs. Mack gave her house and some cash to Joan.)
Roger Bair wrote back and got Joan some work transcribing music for a New York company. They began a regular, if circumspect, communication. Her feelings for him grew, in her loneliness with Paul, she had little but time in which to have such feelings spread out.
Around this time, tragedy struck further, giving her more need of the likes of Roger. She'd received a post that her sister Rose and her husband Rob were killed in an attack on the town they were proselytizing in, somewhere in China. Their two children, David and Mary, would be brought back to Middlehope, where, Joan decided, she would be the one to take charge, to raise them. Children who would show feelings! Who would be fully alive to all possibilities! She was thrilled and overwhelmed, with mingling sorrow...
And then the shocking news that Francis, who'd finally been realizing his dreams of flying a plane, had died in a fiery crash. The circumstances? The colored whore who had tracked him down--and duly informed him that she had bore him a son--Frankie, whom by now Joan was also taking care of, because the mother, Fanny, went missing (off to find Francis)--freaked him out and he ran to the plane, threw to the side the pilot who had been intending to take it up, and flew it...onto his fiery death.
Well this was all too much to take, except that in addition to reading a little about the incident in the paper, Roger himself had appeared at her farmhouse door to break the news in person, and while she was terribly aggrieved, she couldn't help but notice his wonderful eyes, his expressive hands. "There will be time to mourn Francis. Now I will allow this indulgence..." But Roger was married, to a frail, simple woman he could not stop taking care of, and Joan--who'd dealt with frailty and understanding her whole life--could not help but understand here again. It was not to be...
The book ends, though, with Roger expressing his love to Joan...and his promise of "somehow, someway" eventually making things work out.
Joan, thrilled in her everyday parenting to such a fine brood, would live with that. The time, after all, "was noon."