The Catherine Wheel

Contents

I On the First Day of Summer

II My True Love Took from Me

III The Sea's Souvenirs

IV The Late Wedding Ring

V The Dream of a Dove

VI The Child in the House

VII The Leaves of the Fig Trees

VIII On the Final Night of Summer

Reception

Writing in The Kenyon Review, novelist and literary critic Irving Howe registered dissatisfaction with The Catherine Wheel.

Howe's complaint centers on Stafford's bravura performance as a literary stylist, but which her "dazzling" prose tends to overwhelm the narrative elements.

Unfortunately the problem reappears in The Catherine Wheel: her sensibility is so voracious that it consumes the story...[F]or all her ingenuity, the main theme is only set up, seldom developed.

Retrospective appraisal

Reviewer Scott Bradfield in the Los Angeles Times praises The Catherine Wheel as "the last of her excellent novels," and "reminiscent of Henry James."

Biographer Mary Ann Wilson considers The Catherine Wheel Stafford's "most complex novel" of her three novels.

Theme

The title of the novel had a number of associations for Stafford, primarily a reference to the Christian martyr and saint Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine,[a] Catherine is said to have died during the early 4th century by order of the Roman emperor Maxentius.

The torture device used in Saint Catherine's public execution was the breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine or Katherine Wheel. According to critic Blanche H. Gelfant, Stafford's protagonist, Katherine, suffers a gruesome death similar to that of the saint:

In The Catherine Wheel, the destruction is stunningly graphic: Stafford's heroine is consumed in flames, turned to ash, on a whirling wheel of fireworks. This flaming circle, a spectacle intended for pleasure, resembles a medieval instrument of pain, a spinning rack that tortured victims by its turning."

Critic Irving Howe considers Stafford's resort to "a spectacular death [is] convenient as a way of evading Katharine's difficulty but disturbing as the climax to 250 pages of static introspection."

Biographer David Roberts shares an anecdote from Stafford that corresponds with the title of the novel, occurring five years after its publication:

In September 1957 Jean crossed the Atlantic, to be met by her suitor at Southampton. Joe Leibling's' chivalry delighted her: they drove all the way to London in chauffeured Rolls, pausing during the "supremely sunny, rose-smelling day for a picnic of caviar, cheese, and red wine. "I longed for my first taste of flattish, warmish English lager" she noted, "so we stopped at a pub called The Catherine Wheel."