"A Country Love Story" is a short story by Jean Stafford originally appearing in The New Yorker (May 6, 1950) and first collected in Children Are Bored on Sunday (1953) by Harcourt, Brace & Co.Wilson, 1996 p. 161: Selected Bibliography

The work is ranked among Stafford's finest stories.Wilson, 1996 p. 22: "...generally regarded as one of Jean Stafford's finest stories."

Plot "A Country Love Story" is told by an omniscient third-person narrator. May is the focal character. Daniel and May are an affluent Boston couple who, on the recommendation of Dr. Tellenbach, have purchased a property in the countryside. Daniel, a university history professor, has recently been released from a sanitarium for an unspecified mental disorder under Tellenbach's care. A rural environment is expected to provide Daniel an escape from the strain of academia so as to concentrate on his writing. Daniel is about to turn fifty. May, age thirty, disputed Dr. Tellenbach assessment; she insisted Daniel needed social contact after his prolonged isolation. The doctor condescendingly dismissed her objections in the interests of his patient.

Arriving in summer, May and Daniel stay busy refurbishing the property. As fall sets in, Daniel retires upstairs to concentrate on his writing. May finds herself with nothing to do; she feels she has been exiled with her husband. May cooks for them and goes for walks alone. Daniel is increasingly remote, and reacts defensively when May shares her sense of isolation and their lack of intimacy. They only meet briefly to consume meals together.

Christmas Day arrives. In response to May's casual remark concerning the snow-covered derelict sleigh, Daniel flies into a rage, accusing her of trying to drive him back into the sanitarium; "It was wonderful, wasn't it, for you while I was gone?"Stafford, 1984 pp. 139–140 Daniel further insinuates that she had had lovers during his absence, and adds rhetorically "Are you going mad?"Stafford, 1984 p. 140 May sobs in anguish.

This brutal verbal assault leads May to believe that she may actually be guilty of having betrayed Daniel. Withdrawing into a fantasy world, she imaginatively manufactures a man; handsome, considerate, clever and with impeccable social skills. Once created, she falls in love with him and is utterly dependent on him for companionship.

In a rare expression of affection, Daniel gives May a kiss, musing out loud as to what precisely she had done to cause this domestic crisis. Despairing, May suspects both she and her spouse are mutually insane. May cannot deny that she is cheating on Daniel with her fantasy man and suspects her husband knows her secret. She suffers daily from his emotional absence. Months pass and spring approaches. Daniel commiserates with May's isolation, and tells her there is no shame if she decides to enter a sanitarium.

May observes her fantasy lover sitting on the sleigh. He appears as a tall, slim young man with fair hair wearing a red silk scarf. His pallor reminds her of an invalid. She only knows that she loves him. That night May dreams of being in a canoe with him. The lover touches her shoulder gently with the paddle:

May awakes beside Daniel, who declares his love for her and pleads "If I am ever sick again, don't leave me, May."Wilson, 1996 p. 22: Plot sketch.

Looking through the window at the abandoned sleigh, she laments that she will never see her lover again. She goes outside and sits on the seat of the sleigh and "wondering over and over again how she would live the rest of her life."Stafford, 1984 p. 145Wilson, 1996 p. 24: Quoted here by Wilson

Theme Isolation and its pernicious effects is the central thematic element in the story. Daniel's relapse into illness as winter sets in, plunges May into physical isolation on their remote property; his detachment and cruel accusations of faithlessness further drive her to despair.Wilson, 1996 pp. 22–23Nettels, 1994 p. 8: "May in 'A Country Love Story' is but one of many Stafford characters who escape 'the iron circle of consciousness' in phantasy and delusion."

Literary critic Mary Ann Wilson offers the following passage that illustrates "May's unstable world."Wilson, 1996 pp. 22–23

Author Joyce Carol Oates detects a tragic irony in the story. Whereas Daniel emerges from his madness, May descends into a state of irredeemable alienation: "[By] the stories end, she and Daniel have traded places."Oates, 1979 p. 137Hassan, 1955 p. 110: "the slow estrangement and the hopeless retrenchment of the couple..."

The antique sleigh

Stafford introduces a key symbolic device with the once stylish 19th century sleigh eroding for generations in the front yard. The antique sleigh "serves as a focal point and symbol both as leaden passing of time and for the inertia May and Daniel experience in this juncture in their married life."Wilson, 1996 p. 22 Ultimately, the antique sleigh "becomes the very vehicle of madness."Oates, 1988: "...the memorialized antique sleigh that becomes the very vehicle of madness in A Country Love Story

Literary critic Philip Stevick notes the symbolic function of the sleigh that contrasts two domains commonly featured in literature: the man-made world and the world of nature, representing the "man-nature dichotomy."Stevick, 1981 p. 141: The sleigh "is a device central to innumerable novelists in the nineteenth century, such as the Bronte's, Dickens, and Hardy."

Footnotes

Sources Hassan, Ihab. 1955. "Jean Stafford: The Expense of Style and the Scope of Sensibility," Western Review 19, Spring 1955 pp. 185–203 in Jean Stafford: A Study of the Short Fiction. 1996. Twayne Publishers, New York. pp. 109–114. Nettels, Elsa. 1994. "Thwarted Escapes: 'Ethan Frome' and Jean Stafford's 'A Country Love Story." Wharton Review, Fall 1994, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 6-8. Penn State University. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43512843 Accessed 17 February 2026. Oates, Joyce Carol. 1965. "Review: Notions Good and Bad Reviewed Work(s): Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey: Bad Characters by Jean Stafford: Cabot Wright Begins by James Purdy." The Kenyon Review, Winter, 1965, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 175–180. Published by: Kenyon College https://www.jstor.org/stable/4334526 Accessed 17 February 2026. Oates, Joyce Carol. 1988. "ADVENTURES IN ABANDONMENT" New York Times. August 18, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/28/books/adventures-in-abandonment-37388.html Accessed 3 March 2026. Stafford, Jean. 1984. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford. E. P. Dutton, New York. Stevick, Philip. 1981. "Alternative Pleasures: Postrealist Fiction and the Tradition." University of Illinois Press in Jean Stafford: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers. Simon & Schuster, New York. pp. 140–142. Wilson, Mary Ann. 1996. Jean Stafford: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers. Simon & Schuster, New York.