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74 - I, Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane · I, Mary MacLane

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seventy four of I Mary mc lain by Mary
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  Speaker 1: mc lain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
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  Speaker 1: recording by Lynne Thompson, chapter seventy four. A right shape
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  Speaker 1: and size to morrow. Sometimes I fancy me married, a
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  Speaker 1: responsible wife, a housekeeping matron, with my window sills full
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  Speaker 1: of potted plants. I have a woman quality which seems
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  Speaker 1: a xorresque. I am some way a right shape and
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  Speaker 1: size to be somebody's wife. My bodily and astral dimensions
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  Speaker 1: have outlines apparently suitable for something in the married woman way.
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  Speaker 1: The wild piquance of being myself, who but for extreme saneness,
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  Speaker 1: would be mad, rises up and smashes that concept. But
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  Speaker 1: being a right shape and size, I involuntarily imagine it fleetingly.
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  Speaker 1: I imagine a flat in the west seventies in New York,
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  Speaker 1: or a bungalow on the Jersey side, or a middle
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  Speaker 1: sized house in a middle sized town in middle West Illinois,
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  Speaker 1: whichever might happen, with me set marriedly down in the
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  Speaker 1: midst of it, like a suitable maggot in a suitable nut. Suitableness,
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  Speaker 1: diametrically opposed to romance, is its keynote. I fancy me
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  Speaker 1: walking about my married house mornings after breakfast in a
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  Speaker 1: neat linen dress and high heeled satin slippers, snipping dead
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  Speaker 1: leaves off my window, sill plants, dusting bits of porcelain,
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  Speaker 1: giving my maid some tame household directions. My body looks
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  Speaker 1: slender and supple and newly married. And in the drawing
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  Speaker 1: in the linen house dress, the geometric gods regard me
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  Speaker 1: with immense satisfaction as being an exact proven theorem. I
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  Speaker 1: go to the telephone to order some little neck clowns
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  Speaker 1: and some smooth cocktails for dinner, and a roast, and
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  Speaker 1: some Brussels sprouts and the assemblings of a salad, And
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  Speaker 1: in it I am ingrainedly domestic, dreadfully useful, a strong
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  Speaker 1: pillar of the vast good, nice world. Afternoons I go
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  Speaker 1: out to a modiice to fit a gown, or to
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  Speaker 1: a mild bridge party along with other suitable women, or
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  Speaker 1: to a matinee with a suitable neighbor. Everything is perfectly
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  Speaker 1: right in my insides and in my thoughts. My thoughts
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  Speaker 1: run in little troughs in which there is no leakage
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  Speaker 1: or deviation, thoughts of a dreadful niceness. Thoughts, which ever,
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  Speaker 1: presuppose potted plants on my window sills. Evenings I go
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  Speaker 1: out with my husband, or sit around with my husband,
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  Speaker 1: or take leave of him for a few hours at
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  Speaker 1: the hall door. My husband would be the sort of
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  Speaker 1: man that is called a good scout, and he would
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  Speaker 1: have married me, not for my wistfulness or wickedness or weirdness,
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  Speaker 1: but for that I am a proper shape and size,
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  Speaker 1: with a smooth, proper covering of flesh to make a suitable,
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  Speaker 1: sizeable wife, And he will be a heavy grappling anchor
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  Speaker 1: to hold me fast in an ocean of domesticness. Men
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  Speaker 1: of the genus good scout are all fiercely alike, or women,
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  Speaker 1: no matter what their genus, are exceptions to the rule.
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  Speaker 1: But men, rich men, poor men, beggar men, thieves, so
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  Speaker 1: only they are good scouts are of marvelous sameness. It
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  Speaker 1: comes from the want of minute, lifelong pinpricking care of
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  Speaker 1: petticoats and potted plants, a detailed, intensely personal sort of pain,
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  Speaker 1: which touches dull, solid tones of individuality with vivid, various
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  Speaker 1: spots of color. When are made in job lots like
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  Speaker 1: their own cravats, their cravats will differ in texture and color,
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  Speaker 1: and quality and price, but each one is innately necktie.
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  Speaker 1: Use it as a garter or a torniquet, or a
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  Speaker 1: strangler's noose, it still is a man's deadly necktie. Its
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  Speaker 1: use may be ruined, but its necktique is deathless. Except
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  Speaker 1: poets and perhaps scientists, men are themselves like that. They
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  Speaker 1: cannot get away from the Adam, nor can women get
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  Speaker 1: away from the Eve. But Eve was not a type,
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  Speaker 1: but a somewhat pleasant human ensemble, while Adam was a type,
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  Speaker 1: and a sufficiently nasty one, a rotter and a welsher,
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  Speaker 1: doubtless the good scalped type of his day. The good
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  Speaker 1: scout is a sort of man who, if a woman
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  Speaker 1: trusts him with one one hundredth of her heart, will
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  Speaker 1: take the whole heart and twist and batter it, and
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  Speaker 1: read the paper, and smoke his pipe, and pay the
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  Speaker 1: bills serenely unaware. Which is beside the point in this
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  Speaker 1: For in this image all my marriedness is a thing
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  Speaker 1: of outer shape and size and suitableness. The odd but
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  Speaker 1: natural sequence is that I make an excellent wife. Excellent
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  Speaker 1: is the word. I keep a neat house with no
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  Speaker 1: dust left in the corners, and no dead leaves on
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  Speaker 1: the pottied plants. My husband is well looked after as
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  Speaker 1: to breakfasts and dinners and bodily comfort, and I am
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  Speaker 1: rigidly square with him and chastely true to him. If
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  Speaker 1: some dinner time, as I sit opposite him in a soft,
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  Speaker 1: pretty chiffon gown, my secret thoughts overflow their troughs, and
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  Speaker 1: I passionately forget the potted plants and the window sills,
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  Speaker 1: and want horribly to rise up and bloodily murder my
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  Speaker 1: husband for being such a good scout. That would be
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  Speaker 1: a genuinely powerless matter, a cobweb trifle, compared with my
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  Speaker 1: actual potent shape and size, which are so suitable for
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  Speaker 1: a wife I make, truly and simply an excellent wife
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  Speaker 1: by God and my solemn bones. It would be honester, finer, sweeter,
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  Speaker 1: more comfortable to be the dirty beggar woman in the wet,
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  Speaker 1: slippery streets. But it's facilely fancied because I am of
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  Speaker 1: right dimensions to be some good scout's wife, a curious,
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  Speaker 1: subtly pitfalled world. In it, my shape and size and
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  Speaker 1: my weight, which is also right, could betray me into
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  Speaker 1: being an excellent wife, and by that a lying chattel,
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  Speaker 1: an inexpressibly damaged woman. End of Chapter seventy four,