The Bridges of Madison County

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 9, 1998 | by Julia Duin

Wheaton College professor Alan Jacobs commented on the best-seller The Bridges of Madison County, in the July/August 1993 edition of Mars Hill Audio. The novel concerns a brief adulterous affair and later was made into a popular movie starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. The following is an edited sample of Jacobs' remarks.

The best definition of sentimentality I can come up with is this: the deliberate indulgence in emotion for its own sake. And that indulgence requires, for as long as it lasts, the suspension of reflection and judgment.

What happens when you criticize sentimentality is that people who like sentimentality will tell you that you are criticizing emotion. But in fact that's completely erroneous; saying that to criticize sentimentality is like criticizing emotion is like saying to criticize a flood is complaining about a river. It's only when the river overflows its banks that we complain.

The problem with sentimentality is that it completely eliminates reflection and cultivates emotion all by itself for the pleasure of indulging in it. The Bridges of Madison County is predicated on the assumption the reader will not think while reading it; the reader will only feel. If you start thinking about this book, you'll start asking questions like: Is it likely that a four-day affair can become the love of a lifetime?

You might ask yourself if it really makes sense that this four-day adulterous affair enables the heroine to retain her role as wife and mother. Somehow in ways that are never explained, the fact that she has committed adultery makes her a better wife, certainly a very reassuring thought for people who have committed adultery or who are contemplating it.