Mr. Vorguilla is probably the most despicable husband we've seen in this collection of terrible husbands. And Munro gives us another heartening vision of marriage:
"Well, of course he was wrong. Men are not normal, Chrissy. That's one thing you'll learn if you ever get married."
And again we have a wife running away, this time literally, from the marriage. What's different about Queenie? When she's talking to Chrissy, she seems resigned to her situation, so why doesn't she continue to suffer quietly like the other wives?
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I think Queenie may hurt more than the other wives we’ve seen. She may seem resigned, but there’s only so much she can take.
Oh, my sense was that her age played a big role, plus her personality and the times. I don't think her attachment to her husband was very deep to begin with, so his capacity to hurt her was very limited, except of course in a physical sense. He was more a means of escape for a young girl who felt bored and unappreciated at home, a girl who was probably flattered by his attention and by the prospect of becoming an adult and playing house and being a "Mrs." and all that. And when the novelty of the escape wore off and playing wifey to a big bastard got old and his meanness and mindgames set in as the order of the day, Andrew, or whoever, came along as another means of escape for Queenie, and she took it.
Queenie acted more like a child than a wife to Stan, living in fear of making too much noise or upsetting him in any way. She didn't really do things to please him or out of love for him, but to keep from "getting in trouble," just like a kid with a moody dad.
The other wives, whose lives were much more genteel despite a certain amount of emotional turmoil and vague yearning, could look at their lives and wonder "Am I going to be truly happier if I leave him?" And the answer to that question might reasonably be "No, not really." But with Queenie, the answer was "Hell yes!"
I think the story was set in the 1960s based on Queenie's dyed-black bouffant and the "Cleopatra" eyeliner and the above-the-knee dress. The era of the meek housewife was receding. Girls didn't want to iron men's shirts and clean house and kick out baby after baby. They wanted to have fun! And Queenie realizes that her marriage is not fun (despite the creepy makeup sex after Stan goes off the deep end) and never ever will be.
And I think she was "speaking resignedly" to Chrissy because she was sort of playing the role of "married woman" for the young unmarried woman from the country. It's like they're still two little girls playing, only Queenie has the edge because she has actual experience. She likes the image of herself as a "Mrs." She likes saying "Stan likes this" or "Stan hates that" and having wifely wisdom to share of the male world (they're "not normal"). Subsuming your identity to a man's is what makes you a grownup in her world, what makes you someone, at least in comparison to some visiting girl who hasn't found a man yet and hence who hasn't embarked on adult life.
I agree, kc. Queenie went into her marriage differently than the other women. For one thing, she had already discovered that running away was doable: She had already run away from her parents to get married. So escaping a second time probably didn't seem like the impossible dream that it did to the other women.
And I agree that Queenie was like a little girl playing wife. Like when she was asking Chrissy if she'd ever had sex yet. She said, "So you don't really know about that stuff yet?" There was sort of a tee-hee attitude about the way she was talking about it.
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