Why does Smith include the fragments entitled “The Play”?

Smith includes the recurring fragments entitled “The Play”, in which she poses her relationship as staged performance, from the third person lens, in order to explore her own desire to dissociate. When she sees herself as a character, The Wife, the author is able to inspect her own internalization of the patriarchy, complacency, and willful ignorance, which she does not want to address when speaking from the first-person point of view. When reflecting on the birth of her first child, she tells the reader, “This is where The Wife becomes more mother than wife. There is a shift. If there were a program for this imagined play, we would change her name again on the cast page” (38). Through this moment, Smith explores how she ceded her own identity to the needs and desires of others. While she does...