The Other Paris Analysis Essay

A quality business transaction is clean, neat, and efficient; if strong emotion is left at the

door, the transaction will be made far more smoothly. In Mavis Gallants short story The Other

Paris, Carol and Howards marriage is nothing more than a business deal with various benefits

for both parties. Gallant criticizes the societal expectations and gender roles that result in the

perfunctory and businesslike nature of many marriages.

Significantly, Carol and Howards relationship is characterized as a business arrangement

between two shallow people. Because a successful marriage is imperative for both of their lives,

the pair is very deliberate with their actions. For Carol and Howard, the business of falling in

love is marked by efficiency. Carol is analytical when choosing a mate, considering attributes

such as financial security and common interest; based upon her careful scrutiny, she

postulates that there is no reason for the engagement or the marriage to fail. In addition, Carol

has attended helpful college lectures on marriage-- just as one would do if they wanted to learn

how to run a profitable business. Similar to how businesses require sufficient capital to start off,

Carol and Howards businesslike marriage requires two people with enough money. Carol

finds this superfluous detail, among others, indispensable because Gallant wants to establish the

opportunism of this union.

It is clear that Gallant is critical of the insipidity and cursoriness of some marriages due to

the wryly ironic tone of the narrator. The narrator leads the audience to notice and process the

lunacy of the situation with commentary about how the discussion of religion would have

greatly embarrassed the couple, both of whom are vaguely Protestant; it is ironic that they are

engaged, yet cannot even discuss their shared belief system. The omniscient narrator also
expresses that Carol cannot fathom the emotional aspect of relationships because she believes

Howard and she will fall deeply in love if only it would stop raining. In most opinions, the

weather has no impact on the success of a marriage, but due to the circumstantial nature of this

particular marriage, Carol is convinced that the inclement weather is root of her relationship

issues. She believes that love require[s] only the right conditions, like a geranium. Typically,

the flower that symbolizes love is the rose, but Gallant picks the geranium to convey the

unconventional lack of love in the relationship. Similarly, their engagement was celebrated by

ordering an extra bottle of wine instead of the traditionally emphatic symbol of the unusual,

champagne, because both were too embarrassed to ask for it. By including these unexpected

symbols, Gallant hopes the audience will find issue with this type of union and galvanize us into

action against the societal standards that caused it.

Additionally, Gallant wrote The Other Paris in 1953, a time in which gender roles

heavily influenced personal life, and Carol and Howard are products of their society. As a

woman living in the 1950s, Carols identity will be mainly comprised of her status as wife and

homemaker. Therefore she is very concerned with her impending marriage and its success, so the

majority of the passage is dedicated to her. Howard, as a man, will have a whole life outside of

his home, so only a proportionally short amount of narration describes his motivations for

proposing. Carol knows that as a 1950s woman, she is unlikely to find a career path that will be

able to support her, and that her best chance at a comfortable life is marriage to a man who can

provide for her. Howard, on the other hand, had been forced for all of his adult life to do menial

tasks like making little casserole dishes. This work is better left to a woman, and Carol is more

than happy to fill this role. Additionally, Howard is in desperate need of a competent

housemaid and doesnt want to be a person who fills in at dinner, so it only makes sense that
he would want to get married. Gallants ironic commentary on this line of thought indicates her

objection to predestination as a result of gender roles; she believes that no one should make such

monumental life decisions on the basis of prescribed societal position.

In the 1950s, many marriages existed simply for the purpose of existing-- they were

depthless and superficial; they lacked genuine love and affection because the husband and wife

were simply filling a perceived hole in their lives. Just as in a business transaction, marriage

became a means to improve lives from a calculating standpoint, not an emotional one. In her

passage The Other Paris, Mavis Gallant condemns the society that forces people to allow their

survival instincts to dictate their love lives, rather than their emotions. Even today, sixty-four

years later, society influences choices in our romantic lives; race, wealth, education, etc. are all

factors we consider. Gallants passage raises the question: were the reasons unrelated to

character that people chose partners by in the 1950s any worse than those of today?