THE GRASSHOPPERS
by Elizabeth Jolley, 1979

A lesbian relationship between an older female, the school-teacher Peg, and a younger woman named Bettina is the subject of Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley's "The Grasshoppers." Both women have young daughters and no husbands, and Peg is enamored of the free-spirited Bettina. Peg's husband Lucien, a poet, has left her, and in her loneliness she is happy to meet and fall in love with Bettina, a penniless and self-proclaimed faith healer who takes advantage of her financially. In addition to lending Bettina five hundred dollars, which she does not expect to have repaid, Peg allows the woman and her daughter to live in her flat.

The story begins with Peg's arrival at her mother's home with Bettina and their children. Kerry is Peg's daughter by Lucien, while Miranda is Bettina's daughter by an unknown father. Peg prevails upon her mother to baby-sit the two girls while she and Bettina go to India for a holiday. Peg's elderly mother cannot keep up with the energetic girls, and she hurts her leg and loses track of Kerry. In the interim Peg and Bettina arrive in India, where Bettina tries to locate a local faith healer without success. Suffering from a mysterious ailment, Bettina needs to soak in a cool tub of water, her skin itches, and she is feverish. According to Peg: "It was something in life which had spoiled her. It was an infection from living." In spite of her distress, Bettina refuses to see a doctor, with Peg, then, being cast in the role of caregiver and protector of Bettina.

Peg loves Bettina because she fills the void of loneliness in her life. Bettina brightens Peg's drab, ordered existence: "Bettina, naked in Peg's dreary flat, transformed the small rooms." Bettina's body, transfused by light, and her vitality awaken Peg's desire and emotions. Still, Peg's fixation on Bettina is destructive, and she is aware of her stupidity in squandering money on her friend. On a rational level Peg knows that her behavior is foolish, yet she cannot stop herself from mothering and caring for Bettina. During the trip to India, however, Bettina abandons Peg in a restaurant, simply walking away and out of her life. Peg then returns to her mother's home, only to find her mother suffering from an infected leg and her daughter Kerry gone and presumably dead. Miranda, however, remains as Bettina's legacy to be cared for. Although by the end of the story Peg is wiser, her life has been forever altered. She grieves for her daughter and her lost love, and she is faced with the responsibility of raising Miranda.

"The Grasshoppers" takes up a theme developed in a number of Jolley's longer works—that of a lesbian relationship between an older and a young women in which the older woman acts imprudently and out of character in indulging the younger woman. In this liaison either partner seems to lack what the other can provide so that dichotomies arise: poverty and security, vitality and age, and infidelity and faithfulness. Peg has lost two lovers—Lucien and Bettina. Like Bettina, Lucien is free spirited. He is a professional poet who writes poems for Peg, but he finally leaves her. Bettina resembles Lucien, who abandons not only Peg but also his child Kerry. Bettina also abandons Peg and her daughter Miranda and demonstrates similar irresponsibility. Both of Peg's lovers give her what her life lacks: energy, sex, and romance. Yet her lovers are unable to remain faithful to her, and they do not permanently commit themselves to her.

Although "The Grasshoppers" begins on a carefree note, it takes on a sinister air. At the conclusion "the only sound in the stillness came from grasshoppers." This is a reference to the epigraph, from Ecclesiastes 12:5, which says that "the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." The grasshopper here stands for a child, specifically for Miranda, who has become Peg's charge. According to Bettina, the children are "like grasshoppers in the long grass." Kerry has somehow disappeared like a grasshopper into the brush and is apparently dead.

Jolley makes no overt judgment in "The Grasshoppers" on the morality of Peg and Bettina's relationship or on Peg's behavior. But the reader is left to infer that the consequences of Peg's affair are the loss of her child, the imperilment of her mother's health, and the responsibility of raising an unwanted child. Peg has awakened to desire and romance, albeit briefly, but she will suffer by losing her child. Peg's mother, the female character who most engages the reader's sympathy, is an unwitting victim of her daughter's bad judgment. She is too old to cope with the antics of the undisciplined children, she incurs an injury to her leg, and she also loses her granddaughter, something that would not have happened had Peg and Bettina not been so anxious to foist their children on her.

Jolley paints a devastating picture of Peg's suspension of good sense and reason, a situation that occurs with Bettina and with Lucien. In some ways her lesbian affair mirrors her marriage, and Peg is a willing victim of both of her lovers. The alternative lifestyle of Jolley's characters calls for a response from the reader based on the flawed relationship itself rather than on the intrinsic merits of the homosexual partnership. The story comments on the responsibility of parents with respect to their children, the implied lesson being that mothers cannot divest themselves of their children without incurring devastating results. Peg and Bettina's search for romance at the expense of their children is selfish and mindless. In addition, an adult daughter must not overburden an aging parent.

The sharpness of Jolley's portrayal provokes the reader's critique, for in the final analysis the story is about taking responsibility for one's life and one's duties. As a postmodernist writer, Jolley fits no particular mold, but she expresses her unique vision in "The Grasshoppers."

—Shirley Paolini