Marjorie Devore

Marjorie Devore is Burke Devore’s wife and the practical, increasingly independent partner he tries to keep both financially secure and unaware of the full extent of his despair. As his unemployment stretches on, she cuts household costs, takes part-time work, and presses for marriage counseling; her growing independence and candor expose the distance between the marriage Burke believes he is protecting and the one they are actually living.

Identity and Background

Marjorie first met Burke in Hartford in 1971 when, as a twenty-year-old college student, she boarded the city bus he drove. He was twenty-five, an Army veteran, and considerably taller and larger than she was; friends teased them about the contrast. She initially had no intention of becoming involved with him, but they began dating. Though she had a college degree, she was mocked by some classmates for going out with a bus driver. Burke later took a job selling industrial paper for Green Valley Paper & Pulp, a choice he associated partly with wanting to establish himself in work that could support their life together.

After college, Marjorie worked for an insurance company for about six months, earned a promotion and raise, and could have stayed. She left the job market when Burke wanted to marry and start a family. Years later, as their children were nearing the end of high school, she talked about working again. Burke bought a home computer, ostensibly for the family and especially for their son, Billy, but she understood his teasing about her learning it as a reminder that he thought her skills were out of date. In fact, she had begun learning computer billing through work at a dentist’s office and had taught herself more; she kept her progress and pleasure in learning to herself because she expected Burke would not welcome them.

Holding the Household Together

When Burke brought home notice that he would be included in a reduction in force, Marjorie began economizing immediately, before his final day at work and before his severance pay ran out. She had seen friends and neighbors lose jobs and understood that the household would have to adjust. She canceled her exercise class and gardening workshop, ended HBO and Showtime while keeping basic cable, replaced lamb and fish with chicken and pasta, stopped renewing magazines, and gave up shopping-mall outings and leisurely grocery trips to Stew Leonard’s.

As the job search continued, she added paid work. She became a receptionist two days a week at Dr. Carney’s dental office, earning one hundred dollars weekly off the books, and worked Saturday afternoons as a cashier at the New Variety, where she was paid minimum wage with taxes deducted. The second job brought home no net pay, but she valued getting out of the house and the free movie admission it gave the couple. After the family sold its Honda Civic, Burke drove her to the dental office and collected her later; on one such Monday, she spent the workday there while he drove to Massachusetts on what he described as library research, concealing his actual purpose.

Marjorie did not know the full severity of the crisis or the violence Burke was undertaking in the name of helping the family. He concealed his plans and even described a trip connected to a job interview as an appointment at a small plant in Harrisburg, with an overnight stay and flights through Albany. When he returned from the interview and told her there was no chance of getting the job, she was waiting at home, pretending to read a library novel while watching for his return. Her efforts to keep their life functioning therefore unfold alongside a danger she cannot see: Burke treats his secret actions as being for the family, while withholding from her both their nature and the truth about their finances.

Marriage, Distance, and Counseling

The strain of unemployment changes the marriage in ways Marjorie eventually names directly. She had first regarded Burke’s job loss as a brief opportunity for the two of them to struggle together and for her to prove herself as a supportive wife. She expected the household economies to be temporary. As the situation continued, however, Burke became more secretive, silent, and emotionally cold. He did not tell her how bad matters had become or discuss what they might do next, leaving her unable to know what the future held.

Marjorie asks to begin counseling, insisting that they can afford it if it matters. Her request is not simply about money: she tells Burke that they cannot talk honestly about their current situation and that he does not understand it as she does. During a later session, she describes trying to be the perfect partner while feeling shut out by a husband who seems to believe he must protect her by keeping the truth to himself. She wants her husband back, not the emotionally frozen figure she feels she is living beside. Burke recognizes that her account contains an image of himself he had not seen; he says he thought he was merely trying to hold himself together.

Marjorie also discloses that, four months earlier, a man she knew had acted tenderly toward her. The relationship is a symptom of the loneliness she describes, not a future she presents as settled: she says she is no longer seeing the man and wants to be close to Burke again. Her account makes clear that the couple’s separation is emotional as well as practical. Although Burke believes he is preserving his role as provider and protector, his silence leaves Marjorie unable to share either the family’s predicament or her own needs with him.

Work, Independence, and Narrative Significance

Marjorie’s part-time employment and computer skills complicate Burke’s assumptions about her dependence. He had wanted to remain the family’s provider and had discouraged her return to work before he was laid off. Yet she acquires practical computer experience through the dental office, learns beyond what she is shown, and contributes income and labor while the household adjusts. Her competence remains partly hidden from Burke, reproducing within the marriage the same secrecy that he has imposed on the family’s finances and his own actions.

The contrast is central to her role in the novel. Marjorie responds to economic insecurity through visible, concrete work: she reduces expenses, earns what she can, and asks for counseling when the relationship becomes unlivable. Burke, by contrast, conceals the scale of the crisis and pursues a private scheme he rationalizes as being for the family. Her efforts do not make her all-knowing or remove her vulnerability, but they reveal how much of the household’s survival depends on labor and judgment that Burke’s provider identity fails to acknowledge. By speaking openly in counseling, she gives voice to the cost of his protective silence and to her wish for a partnership in which hardship can be faced together.