“In the Bedroom”
Book 1, chapter 1; Book 2, chapter 18
Characters
1.1: wife and mother (unnamed); her unfaithful husband (unnamed); Janet (wife’s cousin); Ralph (whom the husband is staying with.)
2.18 wife and mother (Anna); her unfaithful husband (Jack); their “slow” child (Joey); Jack’s mistress (Jenny); their neighbors (unnamed).
General Subject/ Plot
1.1: Broken marriage. Straying husband, in letter on kitchen table, asks to be taken back, which the wife views with scorn.
2.18: Broken marriage, domestic violence. Overworked wife of straying husband snaps when he’s late for dinner again and leaves mentally ill child at home alone to go to a bar. Husband, who can’t believe this when he gets back, beats and rapes her.
Motifs
1.1 whiskey; Homburg, Fedora; Happy; white silk scarf with blue polka dots; bottle of worcsteshire sauce; Gerritsen Ave/ *.
2.18 Cold supper; whiskey; 7 and 7; Chesterfields; Jesus; green dress; Nassau country, East Flatbush, Canarsie, Chinatown; teapot
Notes
In both a discussion of the husband’s career prospects, in (1.1) going nowhere, in (2.18) may be improving (after having gone nowhere for a while.)… In the bedroom, the wife finds something of her husband’s she once liked and steps on it; in the bedroom, the husband (who hasn’t touched his wife in the bedroom for sometime) rapes her after he’s beaten her (aroused once she’s been degraded)… The first in the bedroom has a family of three with a daughter, the second with a son.
The Second installment is notable for being a continuation of the first ‘Cold Supper’ –these could easily be two parts of the same episode– which is rare for the book. Both the first “in The Bedroom” and the first “cold supper” include the bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
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