She could not stand the sound of her own voice is the concluding statement in this short-story. But as I used the lens of a New Critic to analyze this story, I will argue that her voice is representative of her past and her inability to never look back on many aspects of her life. Whether it be the act of not washing away the blood stain from the knife she used on a potential "killer", an apology due to a woman whom she slapped across the face, or tapes recorded by a young man detailing many intimate details of her entire life - these are the things she could not handle.
Marie, is an elderly woman who's understanding of life is to expect chaos even in the most innocent of moments. Throughout the short story, Edward P. Jones gives clues into the ideology, background, ethnicity and age of the main character, Marie. In the beginning of the story, there is a line that reads, Marie thought it bad luck to have telephoned a dead man and hung up. This non-sense can help the reader to define the woman as an elderly woman. This same characteristic is supported when Marie makes this comment in regards to the dress standards of her attempted "killer", dressed the way they were all dressed nowadays, as if a blind man had matched up all their colors. It is not till the end of the story that the author gives us more information about her race, revealing that the "white family" that her mother worked for had a son that needed a maid, and she was the response to their want. Jones continues to speak of Marie's theories and makes the comparison with life and the weather in Washington. I find it interesting that the weather is described to continually go up and down - too like life. As a weather person announces on the radio that it would be warm enough to just wear a sweater - Marie wears a coat. I dissected this specific section of literature, and believe that this to be a dramatic metaphor for Marie. She protects herself from the ups and downs in life and weather, she never takes any chances to "dance in the rain."
Vernelle Wise is questioned my Marie whether or not she was actually "wise," when the text reads, There was a nameplate at the front of the woman's desk and it said Vernelle Wise. The name was surrounded by little hearts, the kind a child might have drawn. Another in-text assumption comes from when Vernelle is communicating with the other receptionist about the guy she is dating, Vernelle said this, "It kind of put me off when he said he was a car mechanic. I kind like kept tryin to take a peek at his fingernails and everything the whole evenin. See if they were dirty or what." We can evaluate that Vernelle likes men that are clean cut, thinking too that a mechanic is a low job.
As Marie is locked in chains, one can see that Marie is truly a victim of her own choices. She has locked herself inside her own walls and can't get out. She is ashamed of what she has done - but will NOT allow herself to go back, make changes, or set herself free. The only sense of freedom that we feel from Marie is when she talks to Calhoun on his dying bed. As he relates to her his life story of love and happiness in Nicodemus, I had the feeling that he was telling her to go be with people of her own - black people. As the man goes home to his God, Marie realizes that the last thing Calhoun knew of this earthly existence was a stranger. Is she a stranger to herself? Will she (a stranger), be the last thing that she encounters in this life? These questions seem to arise in that moment as she contemplates life.
Life has passed her by and she still - won't face the past. Marie.
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I really liked your interpretation that Marie has locked herself inside her own walls. There is definitely a noticeable disconnect between her and the rest of the world. However, I had a different interpretation of what might be causing this disconnect. By no means do I think this is the only or the best interpretation of Edward P. Jones’ Marie (yes, I know, I don’t make a very good New Critic), but I do believe this short story says something about the desire we have to maintain a certain amount of control over our lives.
ReplyDeleteMarie fights to have control and to keep her independence throughout the story. She doesn’t want help from other people: “Marie sought help from no one, lest she come to depend on a person too much”. She works so hard to be prepared for whatever life throws at her because she “had learned that life was all chaos and painful uncertainty and that the only way to get through it was to expect chaos even in the most innocent of moments…Nothing fit Marie’s theory about life like the weather in Washington. Two days before, the temperature had been in the forties, and yesterday it had dropped to the low twenties then warmed up a bit, with the afternoon bringing snow flurries” (296). Life’s so unpredictable that she wants to have some sort of control.
She makes sure to catch the bus that comes “a half hour earlier, lest there be trouble with the ten thirty bus” (294). She wears a coat even when the radio said to just wear a sweater. She brings food to her appointment and saves half of it to eat later because she doesn’t know how much longer she’s going to be there. Last, but not least, she takes a knife with her wherever she goes because “even in the most innocent of moments”, when she was “several yards” from Emerson’s Market, with traffic driving by, she was attacked. She takes pride in the fact that she was able to defend herself and she wishes to tell everyone. She even lets the man’s blood dry on the knife as if it were a trophy. I think her action towards the tapes also shows her desire for control. She can choose which to play or when to play them or even whether she will listen to them at all- which in the end, she chooses to hide them in a drawer.
Ironically, despite her thirst for independence, she depends upon Social Security more than anything else in her life. She allows the “Social Security people” to treat her badly repeatedly, making her wait hours and hours only to be told to come back the next week. “She always obeyed the letters…for she knew people who had been temporarily cut off from SSI for not showing up or even for being late. And once cut off, you had to move heaven and earth to get back on…She did not want to say too much, appear too upset, for the Social Security people could be unforgiving” (293, 296) She has this terrible fear that the “Social security man [would] come to tear up her card and papers and tell her that they would send her no more checks” (298). Perhaps, when she slaps Vernelle, this could show how much she resents her dependence on them. She has no control over her relationship with the Social Security people.
I too thought that Marie was trying to keep some control over her own life. I think she was afraid of getting old, an example of this fear is found on page 299 where it says, " It scared her to be able to talk so freely with him, and at first she thought that at long last, as she had always feared, senility had taken hold of her." I think she was afraid of losing control over her own life and was taking the actions she felt were necessary to maintain some of that control, such as doing everything possible to maintain social security (even if it meant arriving very early) and carrying a knife to protect herself in threatening situations.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I noticed throughout the story was that Marie realizes that she doesn't really know herself. Her actions begin to surprise her. As she listens to her voice on the tapes, it is both "familiar and yet unfamiliar". So I go the impression that she was still learning about herself, even in her old age. The idea of not completely knowing oneself stood out to me again as she sat with Calhoun as he was dying. Marie notices that in dying people "a kindness and gentleness came over them that was often embarrassing for those around them." This suggested to me that even as they die, people are still developing and becoming different people.