Wednesday 25 March 2020

HW for Mar 30: "The Husband Stitch"

This short story by Carmen Maria Machado is a good example on the interweaving of stories and on the performative aspects of storytelling. Comment on either:

a) the story (or scrap of story) that you liked more and on its function within the larger narrative

b) how performance functions in metaliterary terms in this story or as a way to engage (or upset) the audience.



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3 comments:

  1. Unknown28 March 2020 at 11:12

    a) In The Husband Stitch, narrative is interwoven with stage directions, folclore and urban myths that interact with and enhance the moments in the main narrative that otherwise wouldn't seem as unsettling as they indeed are.
    The narrator tells us a story that took place when she was a little girl, in which she was certain of having seen toes mixed among the potatoes at the grocery store. As the young narrator persists with what she believes to be the truth regarding the event, her mother doesn't seem able to deal with the situation, "something behind the liquid of her eyes shifted quick as a startled cat", waiting instead for her father, a man, to come home
    and dismiss her story. Taking advantage of the girls naiveness and unripeness, the adult man, her father, uses logic (as it is a popular saying and belief that woman are, unlike man, irrational) to make her doubt of something she knows to be truth and to yield her assuredness. Therefore, as part of the larger narrative, this story could easily connect to the narraters relationship with her husband. There is a sense of betrayal and hurt, these are both good man whom she loves, yet who, nonetheless, make her doubt herself, perpetuating that a mans word and thruth inherently holds more value than hers.

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  2. Hannalike30 March 2020 at 02:56

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    1. Hanna IJsselstein Mulder30 March 2020 at 02:57

      Almost at the end of the story the narrator goes back to telling another story that seems familiar "There's a real classic, that I haven't told you yet." (page 28) It is a story about a boyfriend and a girlfriend that are making out in a car at the lake. Just like the narrator and her boyfriend did. At page 5, "Anything could move out there in the darkness, I think. A hook-handed man. ..." And at page 28 the story referes back to that moment within the story. The narrator tells us "Some people say that means kissing in the car, but I know the story. I was there." Which is actually true, she has been there at the lake. The story is now told form another perspective with it seems a different girl and a different ending. In the whole story of The Husband Stich there is being played with perspective of narration and references to other parts in the story.

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