What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
Man and Wife
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Adult Short Story, read between 2000-2002 about a world in which all women are wives. Spoilers.
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Sorry, just seen that you read this between 2000-2002. I think the short story 'Man and Wife' was orginally published in 2007 in The Missouri Review, and then in The Best American Short Stories 2008 - is that definitely too late? From what I can tell, it sounds similar.
OMG yes! This is the story! I guess I had my timelines mixed up. I must’ve read it in a Best American Stories collection and confused it in my memory with the anthology I received in 2000. THANK YOU SO MUCH 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕This was literally my Roman Empire! 😂😂😂
What's the Name of That Book???
Books mentioned in this topic
The Best American Short Stories 2008 (other topics)Man and Wife (other topics)
PLOT/SPOILERS:
The story starts with a young girl hiding and the whole family/community thinks she's run away. She is trying to run away because she's going to be betrothed to a man who is an older adult, like 30's to 40's while she is only 8-10 years old.
A neighbor woman finds the girl hiding in the basement, planning to run away, and sympathizes. The neighbor says she felt the same as a little girl and was going to run away but then realized (or maybe the girl had this thought?) that all the women she knew in life are wives. Women in their world/culture had no other function; no woman worked for wages.
The betrothed man comes into the basement where the girl has been hiding. He is sensitive or scared or something, and he tells her he was worried she didn't like him. Whatever he says to her or however he says it softens her, and she returns to normal life.
I think the girl has to stop going to school and stay home learning how to be a housewife. The mother has a line at one point where she says she was proud of her daughter because the spaghetti sauce was starting to boil and make a mess and the girl turned down the heat and stirred it, which was the right thing to do. This was said when the time came for the girl to actually be married and go live with the man.
I want to say the story starts when she is 8 getting betrothed but she doesn't go to live with him til she's 10, but that may not be accurate. It may be that the father arranges the marriage and there is a party and only a few weeks/months between the engagement party and the wedding.
The girl does marry the man, and at the end of the story she is a teenager, having been married for some years. She mentions that her husband has never made her have sex with him, although some men do that, and she talks about another girl from her class who was made pregnant at 13 by her husband.
The story ends with the main character saying she is learning about business from her successful husband. She is allowed to sit in on a meeting, taking minutes or something. It's noted that this is unusual for their culture and somewhat progressive of her husband but maybe it's just because he loves her so much?
It drives me crazy that I can't think of the name of the story or the book it appeared in, PLEASE HELP ME!