Books: An Orphan Or an Abortion: The Cider House Rules

Although he appears in name only, Charles Dickens is one of the undisputed heroes of John Irving’s sixth novel. This homage seems both fitting and inevitable. The phenomenal success of The World According to Garp (1978) vindicated Irving’s belief that what Dickens knew in the 19th century still holds true: a serious novel with an irresistible plot and vivid characters will not go begging for readers. The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), though lighter and frothier than Garp in most respects, offered a gallery of Dickensian eccentrics. But the author of such novels as Oliver Twist and Hard Times had more than entertainment on his mind; he used his fiction to expose and condemn abuses of the helpless. So, this time out, does Irving, and his crusade is sure to arouse controversy. The Cider House Rules is essentially about abortions and women’s right to have them.

It is impossible to miss Irving’s message, but his method of conveying it is ingenious in the extreme. The tale begins in the 1880s, when Wilbur Larch graduates from Bowdoin College in Maine. As a present his father buys the young man a night with a Portland prostitute. Larch gains from this experience a sense of shame, a case of gonorrhea and the conviction that he can do very nicely without any more sex in the future. During his years at Harvard Medical School, Larch develops a fondness for sniffing ether and a knowledge of the appalling problems that unwanted pregnancies bring to the poor women of Boston. The doctor settles in St. Cloud’s, Maine’s most “charmless” town, where he founds an orphanage. Over the years, he puts the treatment of women in trouble above the law. As he explains, “I help them have what they want. An orphan or an abortion.”

Dr. Larch says this to Homer Wells, a young man born at the orphanage whose various sojourns with foster families have all ended in failure. Since Homer seems destined to stay in St. Cloud’s, Larch urges him to “be of use,” and the lad complies. He begins by taking over the nightly readings to the younger children; those in the boys’ wing hear David Copperfield or Great Expectations, and the girls get Jane Eyre. The idea of featuring great novels about orphans is Dr. Larch’s: “What in hell else would you read to an orphan?” Homer’s duties gradually extend to the obstetrical. He becomes the doctor’s trusted assistant, less than a physician but more than a midwife. Larch begins to see Homer as the son he never had and the one who will carry on the humane but illegal mission of St. Cloud’s.

Ultimately, Homer rebels against his teacher: “You can call it a fetus, or an embryo, or the products of conception, thought Homer Wells, but whatever you call it, it’s alive.” He announces that he wants nothing more to do with abortions.

The rest of the novel is an intricate elaboration designed to show Homer the error of this decision. Irving gives the orphan an escape from St. Cloud’s in the persons of Wally Worthington and Candy Kendall, a glittering couple who come to St. Cloud’s for a familiar reason. Wally will someday inherit Ocean View Orchards, a thriving apple farm just off the Maine seacoast, and Candy will someday marry him, once Dr. Larch terminates the symptom of their careless passion.

When they leave, Homer goes with them, an unofficial adoptee of the Worthington family. Growing apples strikes Homer as better than the business of St. Cloud’s: “What he loved about the life at Ocean View was how everything was of use and that everything was wanted.” This Edenic state does not last for long. Wally, still a bachelor, goes off to fly a B-24 in World War II and is reported missing over Burma. Homer and Candy have come to love each other, as well as Wally. The result of their mutual grief and consolation is predictable. But what will they do if Wally is not dead?

The answers to this question are many and complex, and Irving’s mastery of plot and pacing has never been more engagingly on display. Yet the restrictions imposed by these skills are also evident. In the world according to Irving, characters are the passive victims of life. They are either children or childlike, dependent on forces beyond their control. They “wait and see” (an ongoing refrain in this novel), wondering, like Homer and Dr. Larch, “What is going to happen to me?” What literally happens to them, of course, is the tricks, sometimes macabre, visited upon them by their creator.

Although Irving admires and emulates the expansive methods of Victorian fiction, he is, after all, a product of this century and all of its horrors. He cannot, like Dickens, honestly trick out a story with coincidences that will allow good people to triumph; the best Irving can offer is a tale that concludes with a few survivors who are not entirely maimed or deranged by what they have been through. Irving’s plot absolves his people; it is so punishing that they are innocent by comparison. If abortion can ease their suffering, then the abortionist must be heroic. That is one way of looking at life; The Cider House Rules errs only in suggesting that it is the only way.