Chaos and Anxiety

One of the defining features of the woman’s daily life is the sense of chaos and anxiety, and the narrative attempts to emphasize these issues as closely associated with the oppressiveness of domestic life in general. In much of William H. Gass’ work, Gass attempts to illuminate the emotional challenges of everyday American life, and in this story, Gass turns his attention specifically to the emotional challenges that exist within the ‘traditional’ gender role of a housewife. The woman narrator states, for example, that she views her daily household duties with a sense of consistent fear and anxiety: “I always see what I fear. Anything my eyes have is transformed into a threatening object: mud, or stains, or burns” (168). The woman has accepted this consistent anxiety as an unavoidable aspect of her role in life, and much of the story functions as a...