Response to images from readings for 13 July 2006

"Daystar": "So she lugged a chair behind the garage/to sit out the children's naps." I think this passage got to me more after having read the poem once. At the end, the speaker says, "she would open her eyes/and think of the place that was her/for an hour--where/she was nothing,/pure nothing, in the middle of the day." The fact that this woman's paradise is a place where she is "nothing" is fascinating and disturbing to me. In a way, it reminds me of the "Lady Lazarus" poem where she would rather be dead than deal with the monotony of life. Sometimes women see the roles of mother and wife as their life goals or as the keys to fulfillment, but this woman's desire is to get out of those roles and to have no role at all. I like the juxtaposition of the nothingness with the simple images that fill up the woman's life (her child wondering about her or the diapers she has cleaned or the doll she will have to pick up) because it isn't always the big parts of life that wear us down. It also kind of reminds me of the part in "The Hours" when the mother leaves her child with a friend (or neighbor? I don't remember...) and goes and reads Mrs. Dalloway in a hotel room all afternoon. We wouldn't think of her life as particularly difficult, but she dreams of being responsible only to herself.
"A Pair of Silk Stockings": To start off, a passage that reminds me of "Daystar" says, "She had no time--no second of time to devote to the past. The needs of the present absorbed her every faculty. A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily tomorrow never comes." Another instance of what would appear to be a woman wishing for nothingness, and on the next page, after she has started to give in to her temptations, it says, "She was not thinking at all." This kind of reminds me of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" because, in order to give in to their desires or to themselves, women have to cease thinking, because thinking results in an acknowledgment of responsibility and expectation, or, in Mrs. Sommers's case, in "a proper and judicious use of the money." The last line is Mrs. Sommers in a cable car wishing that the ride would never end, but the way that she describes her wish, "a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever," makes it seem like she has discovered herself and the car isn't necessary to her identity. The Mrs. Sommers who desires "a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude" isn't a person who emerged because of the money she had; rather, she has always been there and is trapped by responsibility and expectations.
"Why I Want a Wife": I'd like to think that this isn't an accurate description of the reasons men get married. That said, I think my favorite part is near the end: "If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my wife with another one." It reminds me of a warantee or whatever on some kind of product packaging. Or like something a salesman would say to make you want to buy something. I feel like this whole piece is such a hyperbole that anything I notice would be pointless. I think the language that the speaker uses is the most striking aspect of the work for me. The wife is always referred to as "wife" and "person" is only used once (I think), and to describe someone who isn't a wife yet. It's also funny how he objectifies not only women, but also sex by suggesting he can use it to relate to people in what would appear to be some kind of businesslike fashion. I don't know how much more I can write about this one. Maybe these unspoken (well, here they're spoken, but it's not like men would come out and say them) things are what make women want to be nothing rather than wives and mothers?