Comparison Of 'A Wednesday Circle And My Heart Is Broken'

For generations, Violence against women has been a grave cause for concern but it is only recently that women are beginning to stand up against violence such as sexual assault and molestation. The short stories “A Wednesday Circle” and “My heart is broken” give us an insight into our society merely a couple of decades ago and we see a large difference in how sexual violence was represented. Instead of it being characterized as a serious crime, it is deemed as something that should be kept secret and that the victim should be ashamed of discussing it. In addition, closed-knit communities consider these incidents of assault to be non-existent and foreign to their own soil and believe in a sanitized representation of sexual relations put forth
by the media. A naive and ignorant society incapable of putting up a powerful defense for the victims in their own communities and families is clearly outlined in these stories.
In the short story “My Heart is Broken”, many incorrect assumptions related to sexual assault are articulated by characters in the community.
Mrs. Thompson immediately expresses that she holds Jeannie responsible for the incident of rape. She says, “I told you to keep away from men. I told you it would make trouble, all that being cute and dancing around”. Mrs. Thompson also blames Jeannie for Vern losing his job and says that Jeannie doesn’t appreciate Vern’s hard work and that she ruined his career by “doing a terrible thing”. This shows that Mrs. Thompson is extremely oblivious to the realities of sexual violence and that she fails to comprehend that Jeannie’s way of dressing or behaving is in no way an explanation for the trauma that she faced. Gallant emphasizes that as a woman, to be harmed does not mean that you will gain sympathy and understanding from the society around you or find support to defend
yourself.
Mr. Sherman expresses another myth, when he says “In my opinion, no man by his own self can rape a girl, so there were either two men or she invented the whole story”. This confirms the ignorance of the society that is encouraged by fabricated stories about sexual acts and violence rendered by the media. In addition to this, throughout the story we have clear evidence of how sexual relations are sanitized which leaves us with a very disturbing conclusion. For example, the orchestra playing “Little Johnie Green, little Sallie Brown, spooning in the park with grass all around” and the mention of Jean Harlow being a popular and important figure implies that the society at that time was a contradiction.. On one hand, there is sanitization of intimate relations and on the other hand, there is blatant objectification of women.
The narrative suggests, when Jeannie mentions her confusion about the birth of the twins in a Lana Turner movie, that objectifying women exists in the society but the media fails to represent it or it romanticizes such an incident, which makes Jeannie incapable of grasping the reality of her trauma.
Such a confused and ignorant society withholds Jeannie from expressing an appropriate reaction to her situation. We see this in the conclusion when Jeannie says, “He could have at least liked me. He wasn’t even friendly” and “My heart is broken”. Jeannie has thoroughly internalized the values surrounding her and she does not find the right language in her culture to express what she really feels but instead falls back on the clichéd expressions of “love” and
“like”.
At the beginning of the short story Mrs. Thompson claims to be personally affected by the death of a movie star and says, “It is the most terrible shock I have ever had”. But she shows no such personal reaction to her friend Jeannie’s assault. Here it is crucial to notice that Mrs. Thompson is not represented as a sympathetic supporting character to Jeannie but grossly ignorant with very low points of reference in her life. She also wants to keep the incident faced by Jeannie at a distance and faces difficulty in accepting that such an incident has taken place within her community. She says “Think of Berlin, and them Russians and all” which implies that she sees rape in a totally unfamiliar context that happens only amidst strangers.
Mrs. Thompson also does not allow Jeannie to unveil the name of the rapist and says, “ Don’t say who it was, we don’t any of us need to know”. This shows that Mrs. Thompson doesn’t want to accept the truth about her idealistic community and doesn’t want anything around her to shatter her belief in her old school values that have been passed on to her through the generations. In relation to this, in the conclusion of the story, Mrs. Thompson wonders if her heart had ever been broken in her twenties and there can be an assumption that she is recounting her own non-consensual sexual encounters. However she does not mention any of this out loud which strengthens the argument of such situations being kept secret.
We realize at the conclusion that irrespective of the superficial differences between Jeannie and Mrs. Thompson, there are essentially similar in their viewpoint and hold the same orthodox cultural values. (EDIT).
A similar standpoint about another form of sexual assault is presented in the short story “A Wednesday Circle”. The victim, Betty holds herself responsible for this assault. When she is confessing her sins at the summer bible camp, the thought of Mr. Joy molesting her flashes across her mind and she feels that “they have never done what she has done” which implies that she is blaming herself for the trauma that she is facing. She feels that she has been complacent in her own abuse but against her will.
In the beginning of the story, the author focuses closely on Betty’s optimism and confidence in the Wednesday circle and Betty believes that “they can reach out and protect her just by being what they are”. This over the top positive When Betty heads home with hope, she realizes that there is nothing powerful and mighty about these women. We sense the hypocrisy within the circle as at first glance this gathering promises to be all inclusive of the community and protect the people in it.