Miranda over the Valley Posts

Theological Response: C
The short story “Miranda Over the Valley” by Andre Dubus is full of moments of possible grace. In the beginning of the story, Miranda has sex with her boyfriend, Michaelis, and becomes pregnant. She then believes she loves him and wishes to have the baby and marry him. However, her parents and Michaelis are not very enthusiastic about this. They realize that she would immediately become an eighteen –year-old mother who is married very young and has not finished college. Also, from the story we understand Michaelis is not very rich; he is a construction worker driving a Plymouth compared to Miranda’s Corvette. A moment of grace seems to occur when Miranda’s parents and Michaelis think they are doing what is best for her and ask her to get and abortion. However, they are wrong and the abortion has a terrible effect on her. She rejects all grace: the free grace she could get from her kind roommate, Holly, the habitual grace she could get from actually going to classes and working hard, and the sanctifying grace she gets from God that is always offered to everybody. Instead, her love is tarnished by her abortion and she falls into a life of drinking and drugs and loneliness. She even rejects Holly’s friendship by having sex with Brian behind her back, which was just for pleasure and not love at all. Since Miranda was unable to marry Michaelis and have his child, she loses her love for him. The story is Thomistic because at each point in the story God’s grace is being offered through others who love Miranda (her parents, Michaelis, Holly), but she rejects the grace of God. In the end, there is a small conversion and resolution on Miranda’s part. She says “I want to do other things. I don’t know what they’ll be yet.” Miranda realizes that having sex with Brian is wrong but she has been so hurt by the abortion that she can’t go back to Michaelis. She has a bit of a Thomistic conversion because she finally sees all the grace that is being offered to her and wishes for a new start. God’s operative grace to Miranda could be met with her cooperative grace in the future, but Dubus leaves that to our imagination in the end.