The Husband Stitch By: Carmen Maria Machado

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by Natalia175 views·Updated Jan 9, 2021
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  1. Hello, everybody.
  2. Today we'll be talking about the Husband Stitch by Carmen
  3. Maria Machado.
  4. I was really excited that I got this story because
  5. I had read it before in a previous class, Um,
  6. in literary and critical theory, and now I have the
  7. opportunity to take a closer look at it again, which
  8. is wonderful because I love this story.
  9. Um, so to provide a little context, this story was
  10. actually published fairly recently.
  11. It was published in 2014 and would later become part
  12. of Machado's short story collection, called Her Body and other
  13. parties. Uh, this collection of short stories and dresses, themes
  14. of feminism, sexuality, bodily autonomy and womanhood.
  15. The title of this story, the Husband Stitch, is actually
  16. reference to a postpartum procedure where a woman is given
  17. in unnecessary additional stitch after childbirth.
  18. In order, Thio tighten the vagina for the pleasure of
  19. the husband.
  20. The story itself is, uh, like the Werewolf by Angela
  21. Carter, A reinvention of the tail of the green ribbon,
  22. which I believe is part of ah, larger collection of
  23. horror stories called In a Dark Dark Room and other
  24. scary stories.
  25. I remember when first reading this story, thinking that it
  26. seemed oddly familiar.
  27. And so if you got that feeling to that might
  28. be why, in terms of content, the story follows ah,
  29. young woman as she enters married life and motherhood.
  30. The story details her intimate and passionate relationship with her
  31. husband, as well as her husband's desire to touch and
  32. remove the narrator's ribbon of what she is forbidden.
  33. The story also touches on themes of bodily autonomy or
  34. lack thereof, when the narrator becomes a victim of the
  35. husband Stitch after giving birth to her first and only
  36. son. Although the story seems to exist in an almost
  37. fable like universe, the sexual and societal political, uh, the
  38. sexual and societal politics of womanhood that the narrator must
  39. maneuver are very much riel.
  40. Machado makes an effort to interrogate those patriarchal expectations of
  41. women and motherhood through the relationship that her narrator has
  42. with her husband and the outside world.
  43. In terms of forms, something very interesting that Carmen Machado
  44. does throughout her story.
  45. She includes parenthetical tze, which are often found in scripts
  46. or in monologues or in anything that is meant to
  47. be read aloud, and they provide instructions for the reader
  48. as to how the author wants to literature to be
  49. read. Machado's parenthetical tze are not typical parenthetical xcx if
  50. you notice ah, lot of them are very unusual requests.
  51. They're very symbolic.
  52. So instead of providing just basic reading instructions, there are
  53. also a tool in order to deliver a lot of
  54. emotional insight as to how the narrator's feeling and what
  55. the narrator must endure as a woman, as a wife
  56. and as a mother.
  57. Another thing that Machado does is she separate sections of
  58. the story with white space and an Asterix symbol.
  59. Ah, lot like in, uh, the Paper Menagerie by Ken
  60. Loo, which we read last week.
  61. Much like that story, the brakes air used to symbolize
  62. the passage of time moving from one scene to the
  63. next. But every now and then, Machado will use that
  64. break to transition into the retelling of a folklore, specifically
  65. the narrator's rendition of the folklore.
  66. So what we get is a few sections of the
  67. narrative, and then the narrator will pause and take a
  68. moment to tell us her version of a fable that
  69. she has heard in the past.
  70. Now this is interesting because What we're looking at is
  71. almost like, um a fable within a fable.
  72. The introduction of the story is very much like a
  73. fairy tale.
  74. The princess meets her prince and they marry.
  75. And then we follow her through her journey of womanhood
  76. and motherhood until the very end.
  77. When the narrator reveals to her husband the reason for
  78. her green ribbon.
  79. Embedded into this grand, overarching narrative are several well known
  80. stories with a twist that the narrator provides in order
  81. to interrogate the patriarchal archetypes present within the story, as
  82. well as incorporate some of her own personal truth.
  83. As for discussion questions, Um, there is ah lot of
  84. symbolism in the story and in fables and fairytales in
  85. general. But I want to know what you guys think.
  86. The green ribbon is a metaphor for if you notice
  87. um ah, lot of other women also wear riven some
  88. in more inconvenient places than others.
  89. So you can also talk a little about that if
  90. you want and what that means.
  91. And um I would also love to hear about what
  92. you guys think about her use of parenthetical Tze.
  93. Why does she include them?
  94. And what purpose do you guys think that they serve?
  95. Okay, I think that's everything.
  96. Thank you for watching and happy writing