Love and Loss

In, Still Life, Winman thematically examines the connection between love and loss. When Peggy is seeing Eddie Clayton, she feels as if she is in a “California orange grove with the sound of bees, and blossom, and heat as heady as existence itself” (358). Peg was in love with Eddie but “twenty years of loving and hoping [that he would return] broke her” and her self-confidence (290). She loses her belief that her life can defy the pattern of loveless sex and uneducated labor that had informed the life of her mother and grandmother. While love brought her elation and hope, when she was young, it also made her lose faith in herself and her future. Later on, Peggy realizes that she lost the opportunity to raise her daughter because of her love for Eddie; she found it painful to be near Alys, who looked like...