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Jennifer Jordan's 'The Wife'

710 Words3 Pages

Imagine sleeping next to a stranger. Closing your eyes and rolling over knowing that the person that lies beside you is not a foe. That is how some marriages are. “The Wife” by Jennifer Jordan is a heart-jerking short story that takes a look into an unhealthy marriage. “The Wife” shares a sweet glimpse into the life of a couple before marriage while later contrasting it with a present day view, twenty-five years after marriage. Full of lust and then betrayal, the short story is enough to scare one from falling in love with the ambitious, arrogant type. In The Wife, Jennifer Jordan uses a story as a call to action to the unequal condition that some marriages endure, and the need for gender equality in all aspects including behind-closed-doors …show more content…

With the use of verbal irony, the narrator sets the tone for the story as she recalls her later-in-life- husband is eyeing her up and down from behind on their first date. “In his presence she always felt she was being judged and found wanting.” (403). While being wanted in human and a legitimate desire for everyone to want, it does not amount to love. Being judged by someone constantly is not a testament of love; it proves a lack of love. Like the common misunderstanding for lust and love, one often mistakes control for caring, when once again the two do not share similar …show more content…

The narrator relays this lesson through her use of imagery as she is lying next to the man she is sadly married to, and just caught him in an affair. “She knew she wasn't going anywhere. She didn't have the energy. Some days she even thought she loved him.” (411) It is the saddest thing in the world when a woman feels inferior enough towards her man that she would rather suffer in silent sorrow than leave for a chance at a new life. If a woman find the courage to leave then she has won half the battle for it is evident that she at least sees enough worth in herself to attempt for something

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Marriage is usually perceived as a momentous event that finally unites man and wife as equals. However, in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, faces the contrary. Although her second husband, Jody, treated her as an equal during the beginning of their relationship, she eventually is treated as a lesser part of their union as he asserts his dominance over her. After the death of Jody, Janie eventually found Tea Cake, who treated her fairly throughout their relationship, as shown through his natural willingness and patience to teach her how to play checkers. With their relationship, Janie experienced a marriage where she had the right to make her own decisions and express herself.

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Her stories are also meaningful and centralized, holding lessons you will forever hold dear to your heart. “Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyways.” (pg. 295).

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This observation can create feelings of jealousy and can further any feelings of inadequacy that an individual has, which will cause tension in their relationship with the loved ones who appreciate them. Throughout the excerpt, the narrator is consistently comparing himself to his daughter. It is evident that he feels incompetent due to his father’s approval of his daughter which he did not receive as a child. He believes that it is “so easy for her to get his approval” and wonders whether it “was easier now” than in the past. This feeling of denial creates an uncertainty of why his identity was inadequate to his daughters.

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It is evident that marriage is full of ups and downs, but the way couples manage these fluctuations in their relationship determines the strength of their connection. Both partners in a committed relationship must feel the same way and work equally as hard to push through potential obstacles. Being devoted to the relationship can ensure that the marriage will be able to survive the hardships and maintain a healthy, successful marriage. The emotional hardships and positives that a married couple endures on a daily basis are presented throughout the entirety of the poem, “Marriage”, by Gregory Corso. Corso’s poem explores the pressures and factors that influence marriage and sheds light on Updike’s short story about a couple facing divorce.

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482 Words | 2 Pages

The use of characters that experience extreme isolation in the novel Open Secrets allows for Munro to explore larger themes such as gender roles throughout her stories while still keeping the characters relatable to the average reader. Many different characters in Munro’s stories experience isolation, but all are caused by the pressures of society upon the women in the stories. In the story “A Real Life”, Dorie Beck is pressured to conform to society and abandon her simple way of life. Society’s views on marriage and gender roles are represented by Millicent’s words, “a wife is a wife. It's all well and good to have friends, but a marriage is a marriage” (59).

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She falls in love with him, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Yet, he decides to marry her due to it being a “good match”—not a great one, and to his superiors thinking it “a right thing to do” (46). So, there he goes again, doing something because it’s right by the standards of

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Over the long haul she sees something other than what's expects. Choosing among her affections, she should settle on a choice of whether to spare her husband or her kids. It isn't until the finish of the story that the reader understands that he or she has been tricked into trusting that the story was about a human relationship. "The Wife's Story" prompts an audience to inspect

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The young man enjoys having a girlfriend that he can control, he consistently wants, "to see the girl's embarrassment" (2). The girl in the relationship never feels like she can be herself; "it worried her that she was not able to combine seriousness with lightheartedness" (3). When the girl begins to play the role of a flirtatious hitchhiker, she shows signs of confidence. Her boyfriend sees this role reversal as a threat and as a result, "he longed to humiliate her" (13). By the end of the story, the male aggressively takes control back by sexually assaulting and degrading his

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In Wharton's short story “The Other Two” the argument is the various expectations that are placed on marriages and what the society expects of the individuals. The different situations and expectations that are described in the story are explored though a comedic manner. To begin with, the writer discusses several expectations placed on the character’s marriage. Alice, the women in the short story is closely looked at due to her past relationships.

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How the woman thinks and treat their husband 's also varied because Marie’s life is very exciting, fun, and filled with compassion for those around her. Callie has a tougher outlook on life as she sees no wrong in teaching her children natural selection and pleasing her husband even though the relationship may

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In her childhood, the unnamed narrator has had a wild imagination which still haunts her: she admits "I do not sleep," and as a result she becomes restless.(653). Her imagination makes her live in an imagined world of her own and completely detached from reality. The

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905 Words | 4 Pages

The narrator is no longer able to determine the difference from reality from her illusions. Such as seeing the woman in the wallpaper move, which means that the narrator is the touch with reality and wishes to do what she wants. In addition, she also sees the woman not only in the wallpaper, but imagines that the room she is staying in used is meant to be something but in reality, it was a room to keep her. Moreover, the narrator cannot express herself because society will not allow it and is dominated by her role as a woman. People have beliefs that short stories that are deemed reliable.

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The Wife’s Story Ursula K. Leguin is a short story describing a wife retrospective of her husband who she thought of as a loving and caring father and husband a somewhat perfect person always gentle. Yet he had a fatal flaw that led to his death that the wife failed to recognize until it was too late. Throughout the story, the wife recounts important events that led to his deaths events that should have been clues to aid her to recognize the flaw within her husband. In the story, Leguin shows us how the wife’s perception was deceiving her. She was looking at her husband but couldn’t see him for whom he really was.

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900 Words | 4 Pages

The first one presents the complete collapse of communication and intimacy between a husband and a wife. The American wife lacks almost everything – care, attention and love. The husband seems to be unable to show something more than cold impatience with his wife’s desires. In this short story she is very lonely. The couple sits together in a hotel room but they are very distant.

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1267 Words | 6 Pages

Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” seems to explain and analyze how the relationship works in the bondage of marriage. Chopin illustrates that Mrs. Mallard’s emotion towards self assertion is very important for women who live under their husbands’ hands. Not everyone marries to separate. Some get freedom after marriage by simply taking divorce. In India, women fast for the safety and longevity of their husbands.

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