Book Analysis of Jack Sprat's Wife by Kate Sekules
Instituto Superior Ciudad de Mercedes
Language and Written Expression IV
Profesora Giuliana Sobico Gallardo
J. Aylén Rodríguez
ESSAY N° 1
In the present essay, I will analyse Kate Sekule’s short story “Jack Sprat’s Wife”. In order to develop the analysis I will apply two pairs of binary opposites.
“Jack Sprat’s Wife” is a story about a woman who is fat and suffers very much her condition, and his husband who loves her as she is and does not conceive her as an ugly person. The narrative tells us about her daily chores at the house. Everyday she goes out to the market in order to buy meat, her husband’s favorite food. She had read many books in order to know how to improve her cooking for him. He ate all the beef and she ate the fat. Then, we learn that she exercises at the municipal pool and that she does not enjoy having sex with her husband because she is not comfortable with her body.
Later on, surprisingly we discover that she had killed, packaged him and labeled his meat inside the freezer in order to eat him over. She starts vomiting in order to get thin, as it is socially expected. Soon after, we learn she had cooked some meals with him, and ate them because “she deserved it”. In the story she thinks she is invisible, and one possible reason for her health situation could be that she eats in order to be visible. On her husband’s birthday his mother-in-law goes to visit her. She tells her that her husband had gone on a trip and later on,
The first concepts, subordination and subversion are shown in the main feminine character, through her food problem, it is, apparently due to her own vision of herself, an incomplete human being, subordinated not only to her husband, but also to food. Her only routine is preparing food for her husband and she “tames time” by eating. The feminine character attempts to change her reality, to subvert things, because she thinks her husband’s meat was the key, as he ate all the healthy part of meat, she
Language and Written Expression IV
Profesora Giuliana Sobico Gallardo
J. Aylén Rodríguez
ESSAY N° 1
In the present essay, I will analyse Kate Sekule’s short story “Jack Sprat’s Wife”. In order to develop the analysis I will apply two pairs of binary opposites.
“Jack Sprat’s Wife” is a story about a woman who is fat and suffers very much her condition, and his husband who loves her as she is and does not conceive her as an ugly person. The narrative tells us about her daily chores at the house. Everyday she goes out to the market in order to buy meat, her husband’s favorite food. She had read many books in order to know how to improve her cooking for him. He ate all the beef and she ate the fat. Then, we learn that she exercises at the municipal pool and that she does not enjoy having sex with her husband because she is not comfortable with her body.
Later on, surprisingly we discover that she had killed, packaged him and labeled his meat inside the freezer in order to eat him over. She starts vomiting in order to get thin, as it is socially expected. Soon after, we learn she had cooked some meals with him, and ate them because “she deserved it”. In the story she thinks she is invisible, and one possible reason for her health situation could be that she eats in order to be visible. On her husband’s birthday his mother-in-law goes to visit her. She tells her that her husband had gone on a trip and later on,
The first concepts, subordination and subversion are shown in the main feminine character, through her food problem, it is, apparently due to her own vision of herself, an incomplete human being, subordinated not only to her husband, but also to food. Her only routine is preparing food for her husband and she “tames time” by eating. The feminine character attempts to change her reality, to subvert things, because she thinks her husband’s meat was the key, as he ate all the healthy part of meat, she