What does this story tell you about marital abuse?
The meat, case of domestic abuse
“The meat” written by Janice Galloway is a very short story whose intent seems to be causing as much shock as possible to us readers. This can be noticed by the bitter feeling that stays with you after reading it, but why exactly? What’s in this story that’s so grotesque that leaves you with a weird feeling in your gut?
Although its author, Galloway, has had a trajectory of feminism and social justice, those facts aren’t really necessary to find out what’s “wrong” within the story, just by reading how the “meat” -presented as a sort of protagonist- is described the question “Is this human meat?” comes right to the perceptive reader’s mind. “The carcass hung… till the edges congested and turn brown… down the spinal column: familiar enough in its way.” (Galloway, lines 1,
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The fact is, that they aren’t. “…But no one wanted the meat… Folks seemed embarrassed even to be caught keening in its direction.” (Galloway, lines 5,8, 9) People do notice something wrong with it, they just choose not to say anything, which ought to remind everyone that domestic abuse has a history of being overlooked because “what happens inside closed doors should stay behind closed doors”.
This is in my opinion one of the reasons why we aren’t supposed to assume this is just a man murdering a anonymous person that has nothing to do with him, because if that would have been the case –especially if that anonymous person was a straight white man- people wouldn’t be ignoring it, they would be calling the police. The hard fact is that although “all men are created equal”, the lives of straight white men are valued much more than the lives of normal wives, whose “job” anyways is to “stay quiet while doing housework” and have