Relationships

Throughout the novel, the author uses Vic and Melinda Van Allen’s unconventional marriage in order to explore the dimensions of intimate relationships. The author establishes Vic and Melinda’s marriage as outside the bounds of typical marital relationships within the opening chapter of the novel. While at the Mellers’ house party, Vic calmly watches as his wife blatantly exposes her affair with a man named Joel Nash. His wife’s infidelity is not unfamiliar to Vic. As with all of Melinda’s boyfriends over the past three years of their marriage, Vic has refrained from intervening. Whenever his close friend, Horace, confronts Vic about controlling Melinda, Vic defends his and his wife’s arrangement. In Chapter 2, the narrator excavates the Van Allens’ untraditional dynamics, saying: “One of Vic’s firmest principles was that everybody—therefore, a wife, should be allowed to do as she pleased...