Customer Reviews

Portrait of a Marriage

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Searching for inspiration & a suitable subject for his paintings, the son of a wealthy family comes across a simple country home with a lovely daughter. Struck by her beauty & simplicity, he paints his best picture ever of her working in her parents' kitchen. Returning to the wealthy world of his parents, he cannot forget the girl & returns to marry her. The book follows the subsequent ups & downs of a marriage between a poor hard-working girl and a man accustomed to wealth and leisure, how their love impacts those around them & especially each other. Set in the early 1900's and extending past World War II, it also is a novel evocative of our country's roots.

Overall the writing is good, and I was never bored with it. It doesn't have chapters, it has Part 1--the courtship Part 2--the meat of the marriage Part 3--old age. The characters are really flat and the sterotypes that she has forced them into are really annoying. Simple country girl, who can never aspire to be more and suave educated city boy fall in love. But its more of an eternal lust, they can't stay away from each other or they are completely miserable. However, they rarely talk as anything he says goes over her head and anything she says is something he knows she is going to say. Their marriage proves weirdly symbiotic.

It really is like a Lifetime movie, however. Very melodramatic and no real deep thoughts.

It's a bit romantic; a rich Philadelphia youth takes a trip to the countryside to paint, and he stops at a farmhouse in the Pennsylvania countryside to beg a lunch when he sees a pretty farm girl ring the supper bell. The farmer's daughter is indeed pretty and he paints her in the rustic 1800's farmhouse kitchen. From there, William is smitten, and despite the disappointment of his railroad tycoon father, he marries Ruth.

Ruth and William couldn't be more different; he is sophisticated and educated. She is a peasant and is uncomfortable away from the land. But their marriage is bound by a rich physical love that sustains them through their Golden anniversary. And through tragedy.

This is a simply-told tale, in the way Buck had of telling the story of people as people, almost divorced from their times. It is not as profound as "The Good Earth" but it has that elemental style that makes for great films and great stories. While this is not Buck at her best, it is a fine tale.

I loved this book when I read it forty or fifty years ago and loved it again when I read recently in 2011. The writing style struck me as old-fashioned or eccentric, but didn't keep me from turning the pages. This is the only book I've ever read by Pearl Buck, so I have no basis of comparison regarding her writing style. One way or the other, it worked for me. As unlikely as the pairing of this couple was, I never doubted their lifelong desire for each other. It made me recall a sturdy, bright-eyed farm girl I knew when I was a boy seventy years ago. She lugged milk buckets and pitched hay, and had a quiet, attractive intelligence looking confidently out at the world. For me, this story lived. Highly recommended.

I believe this book, (Portrait Of A Marriage) is loosely based on the marriage of Pearl Buck's maternal grandparents. He was an aristocratic watch maker from a wealthy family, and she was a hard working WVa. farm woman. She felt that the rugged life was too difficult for her gentleman husband, and did all the farm work. More on this couple can be found in the biography of Pearl Buck's mother, "The Exile." It is, in my opinion, one of her best books. Hard to find, but worth the effort.

This is, indeed, a portrait of a marriage between two people who could not have been more different, but between whom existed a symbiosis that could not be torn asunder. Simply written, but rife with meaning, it is the story of two people from different walks of life, and the life that they carved out for themselves as husband and wife.

The story begins toward the end of the nineteenth century and wends itself through two world wars, with the focal point always being upon the marriage whose portrait is being painted with utmost skill by the author. Moving and thoughtful, the book flows through their lives, he, a sensitive artist with a love of painting, and she, a barely literate Pennsylvania farm girl. He is from a wealthy railroad owning family used to the finer things in life. She is from a hard-working farm family that has lived on the same farm for generations. Together, this unlikely couple would build a life together, despite the skepticism of both their families and friends.

This book manages to be a wellspring of food for thought on what constitutes love, happiness, family, and marriage. Written in simple prose with a luminosity of feeling that captures the reader's heart, the reader will gratefully keep turning the pages of this wonderful and stirring, thematically complex book.

Ruth Harnsbarger and William Barton were contemporaries. William's father was the owner of a railroad. William was a painter. He was going to offer the academy his painting of a girl on a Pennsylvania farm. The subject of the painting was Ruth. His father told him the painting ws the best thing he had ever done. Now he found he couldn't paint in New York.

William wrote to Ruth. Ruth told herself she was beneath William in every way. William went to see Ruth. He told her mother he couldn't stay away. Mrs. Harnsbarger said she and her husband had intended for Ruth to marry someone who could help out on the farm. William told his parents he was going to marry Ruth, a farmer's daughter. Ruth's family had owned their farm for four generations. William quarreled with his own parents and went to stay with Ruth's parents.

It was a Lutheran service. People were sorry to see Ruth marry a stranger who would take her away. There were three children, Mary, Jill, and Hal. Hal was more trouble than the girls. William would not discipline the children because he did not want to impose his will on them.

When the couple lived in the city Ruth said she could hardly breathe. Too, she hated William's friends. She said they weren't her kind. William discovered his father went to the gallery where his work was sold. William took his father back for a brief visit with Ruth. She was tongue-tied.

They returned to the farm to help out when Ruth's mother became ill. Ruth ceased to droop. William went to see his parents. His father had hung his picture in the house. When the New York critics did not see progress in William's work he resolved to show his work in another way.

William went to see his father and brought a painting with him. His father advised him to go away alone and paint. William spoke with Ruth, but the fact that their son Hal had just run away, (and stayed away for three years or more), prevented his departure. Hal returned home to become a volunteer soldier in the war. The army was a safe place for a boy like Hal.

Ruth was gored by a bull. A neighbor told William he should have been doing the man's work around the farm. Ruth and William's daughter Jill went to stay with a friend of William's who had lost both of her sons in the war. Jill took singing lessons and became a great singer. Hal married a French girl. William had come to be praised as the best painter of the Pennsylvania countryside.

Aged, in painting William had lost the tricks of depth and luminosity. William's father had left his fortune in trust for the founding of an art museum. Hal and his wife were killed in a bombing in World War Two. Their young daughters were sent to the United States and Jill undertook to provide for them and to raise them. William died at home. His grandson Richard wanted to have his large paint box.