Angle of Repose

Lyman's grandmother, Susan, is the embodiment of the East at a time when America was split along geographic lines: She was a magazine illustrator who had dreamed of being an artist; her friends were important members of the high society of New York City, but she marries Oliver, an engineer whose life is destined to take place on the other side of the country. Thus, Susan must give up her artistic ambitions and cocktail parties and travel West, living in a series of mining camps and milieus of frontier poverty in order to be with the man she loves. At times, she has regrets about this and might have been unfaithful to her husband. As Lyman becomes more engrossed in the reality of his grandmother’s character, these doubts, regrets, and possible infidelities come to the forefront of her character. No matter how much Susan loves Oliver, she must compare what she has with what she could have had if she stayed in New York City. When times are testing, life back in the East seems tempting, but Susan always returns West. Even after 1890, when her life and marriage seem to fall apart, she does not stay in the East.

It is easy to see why Lyman admires his grandmother. She is a strong woman and a respected artist: Her commissions are enough to keep the family afloat at times when Oliver’s business projects fail. She works hard to raise her children in the right way, and Lyman has many cherished memories of his grandmother as an old woman. However, he increasingly comes to see that she was a real woman with faults of her own. Though Lyman is never able to reach an objective truth about the nature of Susan’s relationship with Frank, he concludes that they likely had an affair. During earlier chapters, he speculates that they only might have kissed or held hands. By the time the narrative reaches 1890, when Agnes dies, Lyman can no longer deny that there was something more between Susan and Frank. Lyman's acceptance of Susan's affair not only helps him come to terms with his own relationship with Ellen, but it allows him to finally see Susan as a complicated, conflicted character, rather than an idealized figure from literary magazines or childhood memories.

Oliver is the archetypal “strong and silent” type. He appears to Susan one day at a party, finding solace in a quiet room with her. Though they barely see each other for the next five years, they keep up a correspondence that leads to their marriage. Unlike Susan, an artist who explores and expresses her emotions, Oliver is content to bottle up his emotions. As the novel notes, “he was simply one who did his worrying with his muscles” (436). This can be incredibly annoying for Susan, who hopes to navigate their marital difficulties together, and for Lyman, who is trying to write about Oliver but has little more than a few sentences scattered across decades’ worth of letters.

Though Lyman loves his grandfather, he is much less reverent about the young Oliver who dedicates a vast swathe of his time to inventing a certain type of hydraulic cement. He finally perfects the formula that could make him rich but makes no effort to patent or protect the invention. Other men get rich instead, and Oliver’s family struggles. Likewise, Oliver pursues projects far beyond the point of failure. He spends years on an irrigation project that is only briefly successful before it ends in catastrophic failure. Numerous people trick Oliver, including lawyers, fellow engineers, and businessmen. Lyman views Oliver as naïve but cannot bring himself to criticize his own grandfather.  

Like Susan, Oliver’s story reaches a climax in 1890. Coinciding with the death of Agnes, Oliver’s suspicions about Susan and Frank come to a head. He leaves the irrigation project, leaving behind Susan and the children. Again, Lyman must speculate about Oliver's motives. Though Oliver seems unable to remain around Susan, he never abandons his duty. He sends her money every month and even sends money to Susan’s sister-in-law, who lost everything by investing in the irrigation project. Eventually, Oliver and Susan reunite. They live together for decades, but their marriage is a hollow shell of what it once was. Oliver dedicates his time to mining and growing roses, perfecting a hybrid rose that is a tribute to his dead daughter. At the end, this is his only means of expressing his grief—a quiet, refined approach to expressing emotion that is both alien and essential to himself and Susan.

Shelly is Lyman’s counterpoint through his expedition into his family’s past. She is the daughter of old family friends—people who have been taking care of Lyman—and comes from a different generation. She is embroiled in the hippie movement, a counterculture revolution that Lyman deplores. The two argue back and forth during the research into the past. Though he would never admit it, Shelly’s opinions begin to slowly shine through in Lyman’s work. He begins by saying that he would never dwell on his grandmother’s sex life but, by the end of the story, he has begun to do exactly that. The positive bias he holds toward his grandmother begins to erode as he sees her as a complicated and fully-realized person. It is likely that she committed adultery and—through his conversations with Shelly and his research—Lyman begins to learn how this is not the ultimate sin that he had originally believed it to be.