Literature Annotations
 |
Wisenberg, S. (Sandi) L. |
| Genre | Short Story (5 pp.) |
| Keywords | Body Self-Image, Family Relationships, Marital Discord, Obesity, Obsession, Pain, Patient Experience, Sexuality, Suffering, Women's Health |
| Summary | Ruthie is a thirty five year old overweight mother of two married to Ruben. Ever since her marriage, she has experienced pain with intercourse. She feels like an odd contradiction, with too much flesh and too narrow a vaginal opening, able to experience childbirth but not intercourse. She has read books about pain with intercourse, has tried lubrication, like her doctor recommended, but still the pain continues. She cannot imagine painless intercourse without completely leaving her body and wonders if she would ever get it back afterward. She imagines what her life would be like if intercourse didn't hurt, how she would be fearless, attractive, sexual; how her husband would no longer turn away from her with indifference. As long as sex is painful, her life is concrete, full of duty and care. She imagines that without pain she would transcend this drudgery, even transcend her husband, and enter an ethereal world which centers around her. |
| Commentary | This story addresses the ways that a very private experience, such as pain with intercourse, can lead a woman to form a distorted, negative, and troubled view of herself. The hidden nature of this problem, with embarrassment of patient and physician alike, may prevent the sufferer from seeking or obtaining real help. |
| Source | Chicago Review |
| Publisher | Univ. of Chicago |
| Edition | 1995 |
| Place Published | Chicago |
| Alternate Source | The 1997 Pushcart Prize XXI: Best of the Small Presses |
| Alternate Publisher | Pushcart |
| Alternate Edition | 1996 |
| Alternate Editors | Bill Henderson |
| Place Published | Wainscott, N.Y. |
| Miscellaneous | Chicago Review's address: 5801 S. Kenwood Ave. Chicago, IL. |
| Annotated by | Squier, Harriet A. |
| Date of Entry | 10/07/97 |
| Last Revised | 11/23/97 |