Bobbie Ann Mason's Shiloh

To many readers, Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” is a story that centers around the shifting culture of the 1980s, with a protagonist that recognizes this change and adapts to it. This perceived protagonist is Norma Jean Moffitt, the wife of the former truck driver Leroy Moffitt. Throughout the story, Norma Jean is depicted as a strong and independent woman, and this characterization is reflected in many critical essays; Constante González Groba remarks that “[Norma Jean] can easily defeat [Leroy] because she has more resources—she can fend for herself because she has a job and some higher education.” However, such an emphasis on Norma Jean’s power over her own life largely ignores the many conflicts in “Shiloh,” which range from Norma Jean’s conflict

with Leroy and her mother, Mabel, to her own inner conflict. All of this friction stems from the same event, which is the drastic changes to American life that took place in the 1980s. Mason recognizes this changing economic and cultural landscape and uses such an environment to highlight Norma Jean’s growing independence and her rejection of tradition, as well as the tension that her new identity causes amongst her family.
Mason’s “Shiloh” takes place in rural Kentucky during the 1980s, which was a period of great social change. With the growing prevalence of feminism, women were increasingly seeking employment, as opposed to the husband being a family’s sole breadwinner. However, in some cases, this newfound independence was not received positively. As Elizabeth St. Pierre writes, “Single women… became the objects of pity and derision in the 1980s as the popular media wrote about their loneliness and their ‘inability to have a meaningful relationship’” (31). While authors such as Mason portrayed women like Norma Jean in a more positive and sympathetic light, other media of the time referred to single women, and by extension “independent” married women, as simply unable to form a stable, traditional family. A similar instability can be found within “Shiloh,” as Norma Jean’s desire to change combined with Leroy’s inability to adapt to a new culture eventually leads to the dissolution of their marriage. Adding to this shifting culture was the economic struggle that had pervaded America in the 1980s. Men such as Leroy were being adversely affected by the recession on a nationwide scale, with Clemens Noelke and Jason Blackfield noting that “previous [research] found elevated mortality risks among middle-aged and older men affected by mass layoffs in Pennsylvania in the early 1980s recession” (132). During the same time period, the quality of men’s lives was decreasing, while the quality of women’s lives was increasing. This combination of the empowerment of women and a flailing economy was seen for the first time in the 1980s. This environment provides the perfect background for a tale of marital strife, which Mason seemingly recognized even in 1982, when American culture had just begun to shift.
Women such as Norma Jean were empowered by this changing culture, embracing more masculine activities and attitudes. While Leroy loses his job and struggles to find work, Norma Jean is both working at a drugstore and enrolled in night classes at the local community college. Previously, Norma was more lethargic, saying that she would “drag all day” if she missed just ten minutes of sleep; now, she “stays up late, writing compositions” (Mason 368). She also discovers new hobbies, most notably lifting weights. Norma Jean’s exercising is notable enough that she is introduced to readers while she is “working on her pectorals,” and Leroy notes her “progression” from three-pound dumbbells to a twenty-pound barbell, which reminds him “of Wonder Woman” (Mason 360). This progression from smaller to larger weights parallels Norma Jean’s own progression through “Shiloh.” Though Norma Jean was already fairly independent while Leroy was working, as evidenced by her job at the Rexall drugstore and her self-sufficiency while Leroy was away at work, within the story she both begins her higher education, building up her mind alongside her body, and leaves her husband completely, becoming fully independent. González Groba notes this sense of progression that Norma Jean experiences, saying that “Norma is building herself, trying to shape a new personality.” While Leroy is stuck in the past and attempting to cling to his dreams of a traditional life, Norma Jean is looking ahead, seeing how she can adapt to this new culture and then doing so.
Norma Jean’s growing independence does not come without casualty, however; her husband Leroy is relegated to typically feminine duties and behaviors. After Leroy suffers an injury during his work as a truck driver, he stays at home every day, as opposed to only seeing his wife once every few weeks. Leroy uses this time to try new “diversions,” which include “string art (sailing ships on black velvet), a macramé owl kit, a snap-together B-17 Flying Fortress, and a lamp made out of a model truck, with a light fixture screwed in the top of the cab" (Mason 360). While these crafts are used to contrast Leroy and Norma Jean’s behaviors and personalities, Greg Bentley argues that Leroy’s hobbies are also a metaphor for his emasculation and inability to think for himself outside of his traditional familial role. As Bentley points out, “Leroy's identity so completely corresponds to his social, public roles-truck driver, father, husband-when those roles disintegrate, he tries to regain his self and his marriage in one-dimensional, simplistic models that he thinks he can just ‘snap-together’” (148). Since Leroy is unable to fully accept Norma Jean’s new independence and masculinity, he turns to crafts, symbolising his hope that he “can build a life and a marriage by following a culturally or ideologically pre-ordained plan” (Bentley). Leroy’s plans are unsuccessful, however, and Norma Jean leaves him before he can begin the construction of their log cabin.
Alongside Leroy’s uncertainty and emasculation brought on by Norma Jean’s changing behavior, she herself faces uncertainty due to her own independence.

When Leroy and Norma Jean are discussing the meanings of their names, Norma Jean mentions that her own name is “Marilyn Monroe’s real name,” but also tells Leroy that the name Norma comes from the Normans, who were “invaders” (Mason 370). As Tina Bucher theorizes, these two contrasting meanings show that Norma Jean is “caught between two worlds, two roles.” Such a conflict, where a woman has to balance societal conventions and her own wishes, is familiar in the twenty-first century, as American culture showcases both traditional women and those who do not subscribe to the idea of typical femininity. Additionally, due to earlier feminist movements, women today are more easily able to work and have a family at the same time, leading to more women experiencing both worlds at once, as Norma Jean does in “Shiloh.” However, in the 1980s, such a conflict was just beginning to emerge. A similar disconnect can be seen in Marilyn Monroe herself; while Marilyn is seen as an epitome of femininity, her “real” self, Norma Jean, was a regular woman, navigating her way between reality and Hollywood. Mason’s Norma Jean, while not at such extremes, is caught between what tradition dictates and what how she wishes to behave, and must either fully commit to one extreme or learn to balance both femininity and masculinity, a practice that many

women today have become proficient in.
Norma Jean and Leroy find a common adversary in Norma Jean’s mother, Mabel, who embodies the traditional culture the two are leaving behind.

As David Bolt emphasizes, Leroy is targeted more directly by Mabel, whose “references to ‘that thing’ and ‘what a woman would do’ are obviously meant to be disparaging” (24-25). Leroy’s primary coping mechanism, crafts, is seen by Mabel as too womanly for a man to partake in. As such, she mocks his efforts, ignoring Leroy’s attempts to justify himself by arguing that “big football players” do the same (qtd. in Bolt). However, Norma Jean does not escape her mother’s disapproval. After Mabel catches her daughter smoking, she brings up a story about a dachshund killing a baby by chewing its legs off. Mabel likely mentioned this specific story because of Norma Jean and Leroy’s child, Randy, who died when he was four months old. Mabel’s harsh retaliation for catching Norma Jean smoking may be because she sees such behavior as unladylike, hence Norma Jean’s insistence that Mabel was trying to “pay [her] back” (Mason 367). While not as direct, Mabel’s insistence that Norma Jean and Leroy go to Shiloh may be seen as an attempt to fix the two’s rapidly sinking marriage in one last effort to restore normalcy to the household, though this attempt is

unsuccessful.
“Shiloh” is, ultimately, about women of the 1980s and their newfound place in society, as well as the problems that were created by this new identity. Mason simultaneously paints Norma Jean as the protagonist of her own story, successful in her goal of independence from her mother and husband, while also highlighting the discord a changing culture can cause among even atypical families. Throughout “Shiloh,” Norma Jean is constantly “building herself up,” always advancing towards her new identity (qtd. in Bucher). However, this new identity comes at the cost of her marriage to Leroy, as he cannot make himself let go of his dreams of a traditional marriage and family, represented by his insistence on building Norma Jean a log cabin. Mabel also quarrels with Norma Jean and Leroy, as Mabel’s traditional ways conflict with both Norma Jean’s masculinity and Leroy’s femininity. Mason, who recognized early in the 1980s that a drastic cultural shift was beginning to take place, understood that dissension amongst different generations, as well as different genders, was imminent. As such, “Shiloh” celebrates a new American culture while also refusing to gloss over the tension amongst men and women, including husbands and wives, that such a change caused.