vivehodie’s Blog

As I read about the Bliss family, I realized that the Bliss children ultimately have a conflicting inner and outer self. Their parents had a painful relationship and wanted to divorce, however, the Reverend Wiley urged them not to, “for the sake of the children”. Again, societal forces are at play here, molding the outer image of the Bliss children into what looks good and acceptable for the society. By keeping the Bliss parents by not divorcing, Revrend Wiley says he “kept the children free from that disgrace, to grow up into moral men and women, happy themselves, a credit to the village”. Clearly divorce is a taboo in Spoon River and the children of divorced parents are disgraceful and immoral. However, by not divorcing, are the Bliss children really “happy themselves”? The strains of divorce has clearly damaged and pained them throughout their childhood, creating a broken and pained inner persona throughout a facade of morality and happiness. Two of the kids sided with the mother, and the other two with the father and they “grieved for the one the sided with…and all were torn with the guilt of judging, and tortured in soul because they could not admire equally him and me”. Clearly, it’s very difficult for a child to love one more parent than another, but the war that is divorce led them to opposite sides of the battlefield, themselves racked with guilt and sorrow for choosing one and not being able to love the other equally. Ironically, as Mrs. Bliss points out, plants that grow in frigid environments become yellow and sickly, the preacher “advises the raising of souls where there is no sunlight, but only twilight, no warmth but only dampness and cold…”