THE WIFE: No Marriage is Worth This

February 21st, 2019

Glenn Close may win her first Academy Award for her gripping performance in The Wife, which depicts a woman who regrets her failure to pursue her own great literary potential in deference to her husband’s success. She does not, however, abandon her own aspirations in the usual manner of staying home and tending to children and other domestic duties. Her surrender is an even greater act of self-denial, permitting her husband to take credit for her words and ideas.

Joan Castleman is the one in the marriage who possesses great literary talent. She also possesses the great misfortune of falling in love with her arrogant professor whose ambition far exceeds his talent. Still a young woman when she meets her future husband, Joan lacks the confidence to forge her own path of literary greatness. Instead, she becomes swept up in the romantic notion that a woman must sacrifice so her lover can succeed in the brutally competitive arena of the literary arts.

In the film, Joan and husband, Joe, travel to Stockholm where he is to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his brilliant body of work. Joan is the true author of his masterpieces, having conceived and written everything he’s ever published. On the eve of this momentous event, she’s filled with anger and regret over her unacknowledged accomplishment. The Nobel Prize belongs solely to her. Her anger mounts over her husband’s disparaging treatment of her. At one point, he remarks to his colleagues in the presence of Joan, “My wife doesn’t write, thank God. Otherwise, I’d suffer permanent writer’s block.” The cruelty of his words are apparent only to the woman who’s earned him his career and his Nobel Prize. Joan presents a stoic figure at first, but rage gradually consumes her. In a moment of fury, she exposes her deep well of emotions, declaring, “I can’t take the humiliation, of moving your coat and arranging your pills, being shoved aside with all the other wives to talk about some goddamn shopping trip, while you say to all the gathering sycophants that your wife doesn’t write.” Rightfully, she is as mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. And her words and anger will resonate with any woman who has ever sacrificed for a man only to be belittled for her efforts.

Still, she doesn’t see herself as a victim, telling a journalist, “Don’t paint me as a victim. I’m much more interesting than that.” What is unique about this character is that after years of this mistreatment, Joan finally fights back, refusing to suffer in silence anymore. While she will never have the literary career and acclaim she deserves, she may perhaps still have a life of independence from the man she’s spent her life supporting. Joan is a fascinating character who, despite her gift for writing, is typical of dutiful women of her era: selfless, nurturing, all too willing to be in a state of servitude to the man she loves. Perhaps if Joan had come of age during a later era she would have been less eager to live a life of servitude to a narcissist. The Second Wave women’s movement had not yet dawned, so Joan experienced life as a young woman without the benefit of its example and lessons. She also learned firsthand, while working as a secretary at a publishing house, the dismissive manner in which women writers are treated. Fortunately, she finds liberty by the end, and there’s a sense she will thrive. At one point a male party guest asks her what she does and she responds, “I am a Kingmaker.” Indeed, she is a Kingmaker. But she’s also a Nobel Award winning writer, and it’s a travesty the world of The Wife will never learn this, much like we will never learn of the countless real life women she represents.

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