The short story

[Jeff Wrangler]

I guess right from the get-go, with my first reading of the story back in 1997, I've always understood Ennis as somebody who is content without a whole lot of stuff. He steps around in worn boots, worn jeans, and a worn shirt year in and year out, and while maybe he can't afford lots of new things, I have somehow got the impression that maybe being poor and broke doesn't really bother him much on a daily basis--he doesn't really think about it very often--just accepts it--until Jack seems not to understand why he can't get away in August.

I'm tempted to add a caveat to that last statement, that on the basis of his response to Jack, maybe he is beginning to mind it more as he gets older, but then, in the prologue, we don't get any real sign of discontent with his situation, just a matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation. So maybe his response to Jack was an anomaly.

Anyway. the story has always left me with an understanding that Ennis really enjoys ranch work. He just tolerated his job on the highway crew but also worked weekends at the Rafter B in exchange for boarding his horses there. Apparently he is good with horses and was a good judge of horse flesh ("The string of spare horses included a mouse-colored grullo whose looks Ennis liked." Contrast Jack, who, for his primary mount, picked a horse with a low startle point.). I think if Ennis is left alone to work with cattle and horses, he's basically content with his life. Alma is the one who resents his preference for ranch work.

And, earlier this evening, reflecting on Alma's resentment at Ennis's preference for ranch work instead of something that was steady and paid better, I suddenly had the thought: What did Alma Beers think she was getting when she married Ennis del Mar?

I'm not talking sexuality here, I'm talking economics. If Alma was ambitious to improve her economic position, couldn't she see before she married Ennis that he was happy with ranch work? What was she thinking?

And that thought led me to another rumination: Folks have speculated that Ennis's brother and sister may have pushed him into marriage. While I've never felt that way, that's fine, but the thought has now occurred to me: What if Alma pursued Ennis until Ennis caught her?    What if she kept after him until Ennis, aware that she was marriage minded, took the path of least resistance and asked her to marry him?

Just speculating, but we really don't know anything about the details of their courtship, only that they were already engaged when he took the summer job on Brokeback Mountain.

[mlewisusc]

I wanted to say regarding stuff, that you don't own things, they own you.  That being said, I'm about as typically American in this regard as any other red-blooded capitalist treadmill mouse, and have WAY more stuff than I can ever use.  Can't never seem to get out of a Target store for less than two bills.

Anyway, I LOVED Clarissa's insight on the Economy of Ennis; but I'm now enchanted with Jeff's new ideas here about Alma and Ennis - what did she see in him?  The muscular and supple body?  He's an orphan.  Maybe she wanted to "mother" him?  Alma pursuing a passive Ennis does not fit with my image of a man who Ms. P describes as running full throttle on all roads, whether fence mending or money spending.  I'm trying to think through the rest of the story, and I almost wanted to say he's an initiative type of guy - but maybe that impression is more from the film.  Besides, Jack is the initiator of the main sexual action, right? (Although Ennis certainly showed initiative and determination in finishing it! )  Jack is the one who makes the proposal to have "some sweet life." 

Can we make any hay out of the fact that Ennis's marriage to Alma was presumed (and this presumption reinforced) from the very beginning of the story?  And here's another thought on the "enterprising Ennis" wavelength - he (like Jack) is described as saving for a small spread of his own - but unlike Jack, he has actually put two five dollar bills in a tobacco can!  Or maybe, that's ironic - he's so far behind he's never gonna get there.

Here's another couple thoughts (the're coming a little random tonight, folks).  Jack offers Ennis, in the proposal at the motel, what he was described as wanting at the very beginning of the story, namely a spread of his own.  Ennis apparently gave up this idea once he got Alma pregnant.  Did we decide on the random thoughts about the story thread that Ennis and Alma would naturally have gotten pregnant just as soon as they were married (e.g., naturally meaning this was expected culturally), OR did we decide Ennis was "proving" his heterosexuality by getting her pregnant so fast?

Perhaps, in reaction to what he experienced on the mountain, he consciously or unconsciously gave up his dreams for a place of his own in order to get Alma pregnat fast and prove to himself he wasn't queer.  Remember in the motel he says it took him nearly a year to figure out that separating from Jack made him sick - just about a month before Junior was born!

Did Alma want a kid maker for a husband?  I'm thinking maybe not - maybe, she wanted a ranch owner, but he got her pregnant too fast for their plans to be laid . . . Now a good potential objection to this is her comment about "no more lonsome ranches," but I have a plausible explaination for that comment as well.  Once Alma got pregnant and had kids, she abandoned any dreams she shared with Ennis of the Del Mars having a ranch of their own, and focuses just on what's best for the kids . . .

I'm still chewing on what Alma saw in Ennis . . . 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I don't know, Mark. Ennis does run full throttle, but he has to get started first. Look at the context of that line. Jack took the initiative, only then did Ennis put the pedal to the metal. Why couldn't Alma have played a similar role?

I guess I could say I've felt the two five-dollar bills in the tobacco can has always struck me as ironic--except that for me, "irony" usually has about it a touch of at least wry humor, if not a touch of nastiness, and in my particular case, the five dollar bills in the tobacco can have just made me sad because I think it illustrates the unreality of Ennis's hope for his own spread right from the beginning. Plus, it reminds me of my late boyfriend, who, poor kid, thought he would be able to save enough money to go the Olympics in Australia by throwing his spare change into an old pickle jar. Just as unrealistic as Ennis's fivers in the tobacco can. But that's just something I bring to the story.

[nakymaton]

I never really considered myself the marrying type (at least I didn't at Alma's age; too many other things to do in life than get saddled with a man and kids!), so maybe I'm not a good person to try to make sense of Alma.

But...

I don't think that 19- (or younger) year-old girls are that aware of what they want from their potential husbands. They want a husband, that's it, before they're too old to attract someone. And a husband is supposed to come with the whole nuclear family thing, a comfortable home, kids, etc. But I'm not sure that girls that young really are aware of the men they chase as human beings, as people who have their own dreams and talents.

Or at least, that was my impression of the girls I went to high school with. (The ones that got married young, and then got divorced young.)

So I think Alma might have seen Ennis as available, as the appropriate age, probably as attractive. (Movie certainly; harder to tell about the story.) But beyond that... I doubt that Alma really had plans for what she wanted out of life, beyond general dreams of a typical family life. I think she probably discovered that she and Ennis weren't really all that compatible (even without considering the fact that Ennis was in love with a man) until they had been married for a while, and all those romantic dreams turned out to be just dreams.

[injest]

yes, and we know nothing of her home life...her childhood. she may have wanted to be married because that was what you did...especially in that era. Before women's lib hit she had few options.

[CarlaMom2]

I agree about Alma getting marries because that's what people did.  I also think like Cassie she wished she could bring more out of Ennis and change him to the man she needed him to be.  As we know there was no changing him.  Eveb Jack only got so far.

[Jeff Wrangler]

yes, and we know nothing of her home life...her childhood. she may have wanted to be married because that was what you did...especially in that era. Before women's lib hit she had few options.

That's kind of how I've felt about Ennis, too--he got married because that's what people did.

[serious crayons]

My impression is that both Ennis and Alma got married and started having kids because that's what young people in their culture did automatically. Maybe their siblings got them together or they met at the church picnic, but I don't think it would have taken much beyond that, on either side, to set the ball in motion. Not because either was particularly enthusiastic, but because what else would they do? Once they started seeing each other, marriage would come next on the agenda, and then a home and children. Really their only alternative in them days would have been finding different people, not a different lifestyle. Not getting married at all would have been unthinkable.

As for why they picked each other specifically, well, they were both, as Alma Jr. said in the movie, "good enough."
In a town that small, they probably didn't have a very wide choice. Neither one was thinking too hard at that point about whether this person was a good match, whether their hopes and reams were compatible, whether their financial future would be secure.

As for saving for a ranch, I get the impression that was sort of automatic, too. A 19-year-old probably doesn't plan on working as a ranch hand most of his life. Especially if his parents owned a ranch of their own. So he naturally thinks in terms of saving for a ranch, however unrealistic that might be given his income and the family he soon has to support.

[southendmd]

I agree, Katherine.

A small town in a sparsely populated state:  do the math!  A little like musical chairs, hurry up and partner up before you're an "old maid", or a "confirmed bachelor".  Neither of which would have been easy to deal with.

[Front-Ranger]

Just a small interruption here: Congratulations katherine on your 2200th post! Also see my message in "Introduce Yourself."