I must admit that one of the qualities I really appreciate
about the short fiction of Katherine Mansfield is the way that her stories often linger
on in our minds and can haunt us. Out of the many short stories of hers I have read,
this has easily been the most disturbing as it presents us with a marriage which marked
by complete patriarchal superiority and the suggestion of domestic abuse. This is one of
the biggest themes of this short story, in my opinion. Note how at the beginning of the
story, Frau Brechenmacher submits herself to the every whim of her arrogant and
dismissive husband: she gets dressed in the dark because he wants to have "the light" to
get himself ready, she has to fasten his buckle, he refuses to slow down because he is
afraid of getting his feet damp, forcing her to hurry in the
darkness.
As Frau Brechenmacher sits with her friends at
the wedding and they talk about the new bride and her husband, they talk about the lot
of a wife, saying that each wife has her own "cross" to bear. When this is said to Frau
Brechenmacher, she looks at her husband:
Frau Brechenmacher saw her husband among his
colleagues at the next table. He was drinking far too much, she knew--gesticulating
wildly, the saliva spluttering out of his mouth as he
talked.
"Yes," she assented, "that's true. Girls have a lot
to learn."
Thus we are
presented with a time when women were completely secondary to their husbands and had to
bow to their every whim. Most disturbing however comes when the Brechenmacher's return
home after the wedding and Herr Brechenmacher is talking fondly of their first night
together. After throwing his boots into the corner, which she of course has to go and
pick up, he describes her as being "an innocent one" on their first night together.
Although domestic abuse is never referred to openly, it is clear that there is the
suggestion of violence from such lines as:
"Such a clout on the ear as you gave me... But I
soon taught you."
The
reference to Herr Brechenmacher "teaching" his wife has sadistic overtones, as does the
final paragraph of the story, when Frau Brechenmacher goes to bed and prepares for her
husband to come to her:
She lay down on the bed and put her arm across
her face like a child who expected to be hurt as Herr Brechenmacher lurched
in.
Thus themes of abuse in
marriage and the patriarchal supremacy of males are uppermost as we read this moving and
poignant story of one woman's marriage and the struggles she
faces.
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