Chafing against Anonymity
The Wife (2017) threw GH for a loop—who is the real talent in the family, and who the public face, the domestic help merely. At the beginning of our relationship, he had no doubt about who was who, but things have changed in nine years. It's hard to grow old, and harder still to feel useless, and overshadowed. He couldn't understand why the wife, played brilliantly by Glenn Close, would stay with the husband, played equally brilliantly by Jonathan Pryce. Why didn't she strike out on her own as a writer? Why didn't she strike against the gender bias of her time against women writers?
In an interview included in the DVD, Glenn Close said that she understood the character of Joan Castleman when she understood why she stayed with Joe. She did not say why.
My guess: love first, together with the willing subjugation of oneself to the beloved; then the knowledge of being the real power behind the scenes, of being the kingmaker, rather than the king, as the character admitted to the Swedish monarch at the Nobel Prize dinner; a knowledge complicated by the artist's certainty that here was potent material—your boyfriend's colorful Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn, your husband's numerous infidelities, your own restless chafing against anonymity; and then the children, and finally, the grandchild, all gained without having to give up writing, even if it meant shutting the door against your crying son, who would be attended to by his witless dad.
But Joe Castleman, the writing teacher, was wrong. A writer is not one who writes, merely. A writer is one who is read. And so there comes a point when the writer's ego demands recognition justly commensurate with what one knows is a towering achievement of a lifetime.
In an interview included in the DVD, Glenn Close said that she understood the character of Joan Castleman when she understood why she stayed with Joe. She did not say why.
My guess: love first, together with the willing subjugation of oneself to the beloved; then the knowledge of being the real power behind the scenes, of being the kingmaker, rather than the king, as the character admitted to the Swedish monarch at the Nobel Prize dinner; a knowledge complicated by the artist's certainty that here was potent material—your boyfriend's colorful Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn, your husband's numerous infidelities, your own restless chafing against anonymity; and then the children, and finally, the grandchild, all gained without having to give up writing, even if it meant shutting the door against your crying son, who would be attended to by his witless dad.
But Joe Castleman, the writing teacher, was wrong. A writer is not one who writes, merely. A writer is one who is read. And so there comes a point when the writer's ego demands recognition justly commensurate with what one knows is a towering achievement of a lifetime.
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