Johnny Gordon–Rose Gordon: Alcoholism, Bereavement, and Remarriage

Johnny Gordon and Rose Gordon’s marriage links a life of financial strain and Johnny’s alcoholism to Rose’s later bereavement and remarriage. The contrast between their former circumstances and the Burbanks’ wealth persists after Johnny’s death, while Rose’s new place in the family brings a different form of hardship through Phil Burbank’s hostility.

Marriage and Economic Circumstances

Rose’s memory of life with Johnny gives a small sum a weight it no longer has in her new household. Thirty dollars would once have meant riches to her and Johnny; a check for the same amount, now made out to the Burbanks, seems almost insignificant beside the other uncashed checks Rose has seen in George’s office. The collection includes refunds, tax rebates, and payment for an old saddle, amounting to perhaps a hundred dollars in all. The contrast marks how sharply Rose’s financial world has changed, even as she remains conscious of the value small sums once held.

Her access to money in the Burbank household is also mediated by George. When she goes shopping, he gives her ten or twenty dollars, while charge accounts cover what she wants apart from purchases at the drugstore and a vine-covered place, for which she needs cash. Against that arrangement, her instruction to make the thirty-dollar check out to her husband shows her negotiating an ordinary transaction within a household where the money and accounts are not simply hers to manage.

Johnny’s Drinking and Death

Johnny, a town doctor unable to resist liquor, is humiliated and abused by Phil in a barroom. The account connects that humiliation to Johnny’s eventual suicide: corroded by the episode, he kills himself a year later. His drinking and the public degradation he suffers form part of the history Rose carries into widowhood, though the evidence does not describe the marriage itself in detail.

Widowhood and Remarriage

After Johnny’s death, George takes an interest in Rose, and the two marry secretly. Their marriage brings Rose from her former life with Johnny into the Burbank household; she and George move into the large master bedroom formerly used by the Old Gentleman Burbank and the Old Lady Burbank. The new marriage therefore changes Rose’s home and economic surroundings, but it does not dissolve the vulnerability that follows her bereavement.

Phil resents George’s marriage and interprets Rose as a schemer seeking Burbank money. He then makes her life difficult through repeated, small acts of mockery and secrecy, eventually driving her to drink in secret. The contrast between the two marriages is not a simple passage from hardship to comfort: Rose enters a wealthier family through her marriage to George, yet becomes isolated under Phil’s sustained hostility.