"The Hartleys" is a work of short fiction by

John Cheever John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; ...

, first published in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' on January 22, 1949. The story was included in ''

The Enormous Radio and Other Stories ''The Enormous Radio and Other Stories'' is a collection of short fiction by John Cheever published in 1953 by Funk and Wagnalls. All fourteen stories were first published individually in ''The New Yorker''. These works are included in The Stori ...

'' (1953), and in

The Stories of John Cheever ''The Stories of John Cheever'' is a 1978 short story collection by American author John Cheever. It contains some of his most famous stories, including " The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Country Husband", " The Five-Forty-Eight" ...

(1978). The story centers on the winter ski vacation of the Hartley family of

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that ends in tragedy at a

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

resort.

Plot

The story unfolds at a well-appointed New England ski resort. Mr. and Mrs. Hartley have arrived from New York City with their only child, the seven-year-old Anne. The Hartleys had once enjoyed a vacation at the fictional Pemaquoddy Inn eight years previous. After a brief separation, the couple is on a quest to rekindle a formerly close relationship that is disintegrating, held together only by their daughter. Anne's conception was likely an effort by the Hartleys to preserve their marriage. Anne is obsessively attached to her father, and becomes alternately hysterical or depressed at his absence, who senses the parental discord. An alcohol-driven outburst by Mrs. Hartley reveals the futility of the couple's escapist efforts to sustain their marriage: "Why do we have to make these trips back to places we thought we were happy? What good is it going to do? What good has it ever done?" The trip ends in the accidental death of Anne, who is crushed in the gears of a ski slope towing wheel. The story closes with the Hartleys departing the resort, following the hearse that carries their dead child.

Theme

Among the stories first collected in ''

'' (1953), "The Hartleys" is Cheever's "earliest and clearest expression of the most important theme" characterizing the volume: the doomed search for the resurrection of an idyllic past. Literary critic Lynne Waldeland comments on Hartley's tragic quest: Biographer Patrick Meanor notes that "The Hartleys" is "one of Cheever's most brutally sad stories and the most bitterly ironic story in the collection." Writer and critic Tim Lieder praises the understated narrative and the way that the ending fulfils the sad family dynamic. He notes that many lesser writers have written stories with shock endings that feel cheap but Cheever carries it off with style. https://www.tumblr.com/marlowe1-blog/703996420666114048/the-hartleys-the-stories-of-john-cheever?source=share

Footnotes

Sources

* Bailey, Blake. 2009. Notes on Text in ''John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writing''.

The Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rangi ...

. pp.1025-1028 *Meanor, Patrick. 1995. ''John Cheever Revisited''.

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, New York. *O'Hara, James E. 1989. ''John Cheever: A Study of the Short Fiction.''

, Boston Massachusetts. Twayne Studies in Short Fiction no 9. *Waldeland, Lynne. 1979. ''John Cheever''.

, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hartleys, The 1949 short stories Short stories by John Cheever Works originally published in The New Yorker