How Women Achieve Change In The Leaving By Budge Wilson

How Women Achieve Change

The Leaving, by Budge Wilson was a short story about a mother and daughter’s literal and internal journey from two women whose lives were ruled by a male’s stereotypical perspective of a woman’s value, to individuals who decided their own worth. The mother, Elizabeth, achieved this by confronting her husband and stating with force, her self-identity, and the daughter achieved it by questioning the actions of the men around her; all which would not have happened, if the mother had not made the choice to leave. The three symbols in the story, which reinforced the character development of both Elizabeth and Sylvie, were light and warmth, a knife, and two paintings. Elizabeth's characteristics changed immensely when she

At the beginning of the story, the daughter described her mother as an individual who "smiled so rarely," was always "loosely clenching her teeth," and who "shut herself off from her surroundings." These were physical manifestations of the mother's unhappiness due to her current life. While she was in Halifax, her facial expressions became "soft and cheerful" and much later in the story, after confronting her husband, she showed humour when addressing her sons, which her daughter called a "rare show," and she became “gentler” and more "relaxed,” smiling more often. This character development was first reinforced through the description: "the weather changed; it [became] warm and comforting and the wind was gentle and caressing." By using paternalistic descriptive words like "caressing," the author linked the change in the weather to the mother's characteristic changes. While on the train, the mother had "patt[ed] [the daughter's] knee in an unfamiliar gesture," meaning that before travelling to Halifax, she didn't act motherly towards her. When a mother acts coldly towards

The author symbolized that growth in Elizabeth’s character with the striking image of a “shining steel knife with a polished cutting edge.” Before she had made the three day journey, with her daughter Sylvie, Elizabeth had been a woman with “paralytic fear” of her husband; she was unable to stand up to him when he treated her with disrespect, saying things such as, “Shut yer mouth, woman, and git my supper.” It was clear that the husband treated her with little dignity, as if she was of a lower class then him, merely because she was a woman and he was a man. Elizabeth realized, after reading the book, The Feminine Mystique, that she was not alone in questioning if that was the proper way for a husband to treat his wife. Returning from the trip, her daughter was able to sense the “new dogged strength “that Elizabeth had created in herself and saw her new “courage” first hand when her mother had asserted her worth as an individual by demanding respect from her husband, in the form of him calling her by her name. The new dignity she had, “dumbfounded” her husband and she used it to her advantage: “if he went too far – if he beat her, or if he scolded too often or too unjustly –she would leave.” The author describes the power Elizabeth has created in her relationship as a knife because she had to go to that