On Mystic Lake

When Annie pulls into her driveway in California, she does it as a different woman than the one who left a couple of months earlier. Annie does not even feel like she is Annie Colwater anymore. She feels like that person is gone. This all happened because of what she learned while in Mystic. In her previous life in California, she felt like she ceased to exist because she gave everything to those around her. Through her time in Mystic, she learned not only who she is and what she wants but how to give of herself in a family while still maintaining a part of herself. She also learned what it is like to be loved and cared for. Now that she has arrived back in California and plans to make some kind of life with Blake because of their new baby, she has to figure out how to combine the two people, the one she was and the one she is, if the two people can even be combined. Blake’s reaction when they first come back together demonstrates that while he wants his wife back, he might not be as willing to have the new Annie in his life. She has changed, but he wants her to shift her behavior back to the version he knows: the self-sacrificing, people-pleasing version. This situation therefore reflects a new perspective on The Futility of Trying to Change People, for once someone has progressed, those who benefited from their previous way of being will wish to change them back. It is a mark of Annie’s progress that she refuses to comply with such pressures.

While in Mystic, Annie starts to take responsibility for the part she played in the dynamics that dominate her marriage and family life. Whenever Natalie and Blake interact, Blake demonstrates the very real role he played in their problems, because his actions reveal that he has failed his daughter just as much as he has failed his wife. Thus, The Importance of Communication becomes apparent even when both communicators ultimately fail to connect, for as Blake refuses to take responsibility for his own shortcomings, his issues become glaringly obvious to Annie, who is ultimately able to take a step back from him and find a better path in life. The previous dynamics of their family also become clear. Blake allowed Annie to take care of him while he largely ignored her needs, and he never really formed much of a relationship with Natalie at all. The only contact he has with his daughter while she is in Europe comes in the form of weekly flowers sent by his secretary, as though feigning connection to his daughter is just one of a myriad of clerical tasks to be designated to his staff. He understands that he has trouble communicating with his daughter, but then he goes on to blame both his wife and his daughter for making him feel guilty. Instead of owning his guilt, he blames the two women in his life for making him feel that way. This pattern shows that he still has not learned to take responsibility for the ways he makes people feel. Throughout the entire separation, his character remains static, and he does not grow in the least, making him a fairly flat character in the novel. All the separation makes him understand is that his life is easier when Annie takes care of him.

Annie’s unspoken understanding that Blake would be displeased by her pursuit of a business or a career shows that her needs are fundamentally at odds with his. He takes pride in the money he makes, and he wants his wife to look like the wife of a successful man. If Annie worked, she would have her own source of both income and self-esteem, and this would make Blake feel irrelevant. In reality, he cannot give her everything she needs because no person’s needs can be met completely by another. In order for Blake to be happy, Annie would have to give up her dream of running a bookstore, just like she gave up every other dream she had. She knows this, but she still allows him back in her bed in order to make him happy. Even though she has not fully come back to him, she has also not fully decided to leave him yet either, demonstrating the sometimes limiting effects of The Bonds Between Friends and Family.

Annie wants to disappear after her conversation with Natalie about Blake. Once she has established a new life for herself in Mystic, she starts to realize just how invisible she felt in her old life in California. When she returns to the state, she fears returning to that void. Here, after she is faced with the reality of her life as seen through her daughter’s eyes, the resulting shame for her part in allowing her marriage to become the travesty it is makes her want to disappear. Annie cares deeply about Natalie, and she is appalled to think that Natalie could be ashamed of her. Natalie is not ashamed of her, but she also does not want a marriage like her mother has. This heart-to-heart conversation allows Annie to realize that she has not modeled what a healthy marriage should look like, and this pivotal moment sets the stage for what will come in the rest of the novel.

With these crucial realizations, the characters progress to trying to find solutions. Annie tries to reconcile her marriage with Blake, and Nick goes to the cemetery and tells Kathy that he forgives them both for the failures in their marriage. Through these two acts, Hannah presents the idea that both forgiveness and growth are necessary for a relationship to thrive. With Nick’s marriage, no change can happen because Kathy is dead. He is able to move on from it and maintain those happy memories of Kathy only because he forgives both her and himself for their past mistakes. Similarly, Annie and Blake attempt to forgive each other, and there is no indication that they do not succeed at this. The problem with their marriage is that Blake is not willing to change in order to make things better. Annie makes some attempts, but she still finds herself succumbing to frustration at his pointed absences from the most important events in life. For his part, Blake simply becomes frustrated when things do not revert to his preferred status quo. Their marriage demonstrates that forgiveness is a key ingredient in moving forward, but a marriage cannot thrive after people have made mistakes unless both parties are willing to change what they did wrong. And because both characters eventually realize the futility of trying to change people, they finally agree to go their separate ways.

Annie’s decision to leave Blake at the end of the novel is as much for Katie as it is for her. She knows Blake can never make her happy, and he has come to learn this too. In the past she would have stayed for her daughter’s sake, but Natalie has allowed her to see that Annie’s relationship with Blake never did any good for Natalie. Therefore, Annie is able to reconcile both of her needs: to provide for both her daughter and herself. She still believes sacrifice for loved ones is noble, but she has learned that some sacrifices do not come with appropriate dividends. When she decides to go to Mystic right away, she demonstrates that she is no longer willing to wait for her future. She wants to start it right away.