AQA (A) Literature: ‘The struggle for identity in modern literature’; ‘Love through the ages
Love + marriage + children = eternal bliss. Or so we’re told. Yet in Revolutionary Road (1961) Richard Yates’s dissection of the complexities and confusions of marriage reveals the path to true love to be anything but easy, especially when the role of parent is layered onto that of lover and spouse. Writers have frequently used children as barometers of relationships in which the love that produced them is neither strong enough nor suitably mature to sustain the relationships. In Yates’s novel Jennifer and Michael Wheeler are at first afforded considerable narrative space, and in their interaction with their parents, Frank and April, the writer presents a complex examination of the parent/child dichotomy.
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