The theme of “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson is that of a woman’s duties by societies standards in the role of wife during that era and the sacrifices she is forced to endure. The poem is from the perspective of a woman who is trapped in her duties as a wife. In the first stanza, Ms. Dickinson speaks of the subject letting go of the things that bring her joy to conform to her role as a wife (“She rose to his requirement, Dropped the playthings of her life to take the honorable work of woman and of wife”) The second and third stanza to me touch on the woman reflecting on missing aspects of her former self/life (“if ought she missed…”) in this perceived higher station as a wife (“in her new day of amplitude and awe..”) and dealing with those emotions by burying them deep away within herself to never address (“It lay unmentioned as the sea develop pearl and weed…”). To me the relation I get between theme of The Wife and the emotional state of Mrs. Mallard’s in “The Story of an Hour” is that they are complete mirror opposites of one another, but they can be looked at as two halves of the same whole. The wife in Ms. Dickinson’s poem can be seen as Mrs. Mallard right before she got the news her husband had died. She feels trapped, bound by the rules of social culture. interpreting the poem, we can speculate she may have been experiencing depression, feeling caged in her societal station. Continuing this train of thought, Mrs. Mallard would represent the perceived emotional response the wife in Dickinson’s’ poem upon finding herself unchained from the shackles of her marriage would exhibit. The woman while saddened by her husband’s death because it can be presumed, he held some emotional favor in her heart(“And yet she had loved him — sometimes.”), she is relived to be free of her marital binds, able to retake control of her life (“There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature..”) She sees the prospects of her new potential future and can now harvest those long sunken pearls, her joy expressed by her repeating “Free! Body and soul free!”
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One thought on “Joseph Williams Discussion 9”
I just wanted to say thank you for your feedback on my submissions on this discussion. I have to agree with a lot of what you wrote on here. One point I’ll point is that ultimately it’s hard for some men to understand what a woman goes through. We can try our best to interpret and decipher but we can never truly grasp. We’re always missing a piece that another holds to complete. What I mean by that is that you mentioned something interesting which was that “we can speculate she may have been experiencing depression, feeling caged in her societal station.” That’s all we can do is speculate. it never occurred to me the possibility of her experiencing depression.
They must’ve been very unhappy and unfulfilled. Plagued with desires of a different life. Maybe to be alone or with a different partner. Regardless your insight is spot on I’d say. Nice work!