‘Marriage Lines’ by Julian Barnes – Short Story Analysis

I invite you to read and discuss short stories with me on my blog. I bring you a ‘Read of the Day,’ a short story in English, so that we can indulge in the simple, unadulterated joy of reading. 

Read of the Day 

Today, we will read Marriage Lines by Julian Barnes. 

You can read the short story online on Granta.

About the Author 

Julian Barnes is an award-winning author of several short stories, essays, and novels, including the 2011 Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Sense of an Ending.

Story Analysis 

Marriage Lines by Julian Barnes is an autobiographical story of Julian Barnes, who lost his wife, Pat Kavanagh, to illness.

An elegant and modern short story, it has the right balance of all the ingredients of a great, timeless love story. It’s wise, mature, and relatable.

The story is about Barnes, who visits the island that he regularly frequented with his late wife, even before their marriage.

“The first time they had come to the island, they weren’t yet married. She had worn a wedding ring as a concession to…what? — to how they imagined the island morality to be. It made them feel both superior and hypocritical at the same time. Their room at Calum and Flora’s B&B had whitewashed walls, rain drying on the window, and a view across the machair to the sharp rise of Beinn Mhartainn. On their first night, they had discovered a bed whose joints wailed against any activity grosser than the minimum required for the sober conception of children. They found themselves comically restricted. Island sex, they had called it, giggling quietly into one another’s bodies.”

He recollects all the intimate moments with his wife on their favourite island jaunt. They found unity in their differences and similarities. Be it their smugness and hypocrisy where societal tradition was concerned, or his affinity for birds versus hers for flowers, or their shared outlook on love and marriage.

“Perhaps this had been good for them — to be silly with happiness and obliged into silence. Perhaps it had been their own way of beginning marriage in a state of humility.”

For me, there are two standouts in this story. One is the comparison of marriage lines to the zigzag pattern in the jersey. This part of the story is sheer magic, like poetry with a dash of history.

“The pattern of this jersey showed that her grandfather had come from Eriksay, while its details, its decorations, told of fishing and faith, of the sea and the sand. And this series of zigzags across one shoulder — these here, look — represented the ups and downs of marriage. They were, quite literally, marriage lines.

Zigzags. Like any newly married couple, they had exchanged a glance of sly confidence, sure that for them there would be no downs — or at least, not downs like those of their parents, or those of friends who were already making the usual stupid, predictable mistakes. They would be different, they would be different from everyone who had ever got married before..”

This part also reveals how, despite the outward differences in outlook, essentially we’re all united in our sameness. There are two starkly opposite couples in the story – Calum and Flora, who’re the orthodox religious with sacramental, practical notions of marriage. And then Barnes and Pat, who were the modern-day, adventurous couple with an opposing notion of traditional marriage per se.

“A day or two later, he had said to Calum, ‘I wish everyone was still wearing those sweaters.’ Having no sense of tradition himself, he liked other people to display one.”

Later, Barnes makes a casual, callous comment about marriage that’s offensive to Calum. While he was trying to pass a clever, cool take on the traditional notion of marriage, Barnes knew it was a stupid comment because he really didn’t feel that way about marriage, especially his own.

He loved Pat, his wife, dearly, and she was the sole reason he was visiting the island again. Perhaps, the first and last time without her.

“As he handed Calum more salt, and saw the oven glove poised in anticipation, he found himself saying, man to man, ‘Bit like marriage, isn’t it?’

Calum frowned slightly. ‘What’s your meaning?’

‘Oh, waiting for something to pop out of the sand. Then it turns out either there’s nothing there, or something that cuts your hand open if you aren’t bloody careful.’

It had been a stupid thing to say. Stupid because he hadn’t really meant it, more stupid because it was presumptuous. Silence told him that Calum found such talk offensive, to himself, to Flora, to the islanders generally.”

While the protagonist might have lost his wife to illness, Marriage Lines is quintessentially a story about love, romance, and marriage.

And where there’s love, can grief be behind? 

“The sudden tiredness, the dizzy spells, the blood tests, the scans, hospital, more hospital, the hospice. The speed of it all, the process, the merciless tramp of events. He told it without tears, in a neutral voice, as if it might have happened to someone else. It was the only way, so far, that he knew how.”

The irony is that the author talks about everything in the story but love. Yet, what a magnificent tribute it is to love and, more so, the institution that is marriage!

Barnes narrates this tender love story in a restrained way, much like its protagonist. He uses the techniques of literary minimalism and symbolism in this poignant love story.

“They, their: he knew he must start getting used to the singular pronoun instead. This was going to be the grammar of his life from now on.”

Remember, I told you I liked two standouts in this story? Saving the best for last, my most favourite highlight in the story is its conclusion. By the time you come to the finish line, you’re bound to be choked just like the protagonist himself. An ending that’s perfection – soul-stirring, philosophical, and romantic. One of my most favourite conclusions in any short story. I will not give away the last two concluding paragraphs here. You’ll have to read it till the end on Granta to dig this gem of an ending.

When I read this story for the first time a few years ago, I was smitten by the ending. But reading it now, just a month after I’ve lost my husband similarly to illness, is a heightened reading experience. There’s nothing quite like reading yourself as the protagonist of a story, for a change. We’ve even visited Glasgow together, promised our marriage would be different before we got married (‘Ha! If only we knew back, then!’ and many more such coincidences in the story)…and yet we are all connected in a strange way, like the stars in the sky.

How did you find Marriage Lines by Julian Barnes?