An observer to my marriage would think I have made no effort to be a good or better wife. Or, seeing me that night that I must have set out to be this way and achieved it after years of concentrated effort. They could not tell that for most of my adult life and all of my marriage I have been trying to become the opposite of myself.
-- Martha (N/A)

Importance: At a time when her relationship with her second husband is more than strained, Martha provides a harsh and unforgiving self-assessment of her behavior as a wife from an external viewpoint. That behavior, however, does not tell the full story: it is not only her marriage that is suffering, it is her entire sense of self that is in question. Her incapacity to assume the role of a wife as expected by most standards is part of a much greater problem: that...