I’m reading this novel by Richard Yates and I’m struck by the number of allusions to Alexander Technique.
I have no reason to believe that Yates ever heard of the technique, but here’s a profound insight from his novel: "And he was gradually aware that she felt it too: there was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications. They stood that way for a long time."
The characters in Revolutionary Road seem beaten by life and they hold themselves that way, stiff and constricted and awkward. They sit hunched and slumped. Their shoulders sag or ride high. Either way, they are contorted. Consequently, their thinking is similarly constricted and they feel like they have few options. They don’t know freedom in their bodies and thus not in their minds or souls either.
