Plains Song by Wright Morris

Author:Wright Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2000-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

During the Sunday service Madge studied with interest every married couple she could set her eyes on. There they sat. A few hours earlier, there they lay. Some on their sides, some on their backs, and a few on top of each other. She saw it only dimly, but as something she had experienced she could accept it. It strained her mind, however, it strained her very soul, to accept this fact for the others. The women corseted and solemn. The men sober as judges. Between and beside them the children that had to be made.

Madge would soon have been married for sixteen months. Was there a day of fifteen of those months she had not pondered her experience? Wanting children, she had been prepared for the worst, knowing that the worst had happened to Cora. It could be endured because it need not happen too many times. Madge had chosen Ned as a man she liked and had felt he might minimize the necessary torment. This proved to be true. It had startled her to find how such an easygoing man could become, on the instant, almost a different person, but this could as soon be said of herself. It more than startled her to admit it. She was humbled and bewildered to find that such a torment gave her pleasure.

What would her husband think if he knew that she enjoyed it? Her pains to deceive him relaxed when it seemed clear that it hardly mattered. She had assumed it would end with her pregnancy and was part of a new bride’s remarkable sensations, but with the child born she had felt desire for her husband. That she concealed, of course, scarcely admitting it to herself. She had no way of knowing if Ned was aware of her reluctant-willing collaboration. She feared what might happen if she took the initiative. Now that she was pregnant again he turned on his side and was usually snoring while she brushed her hair. She liked his snoring. What would it be like to have a man who lay snoreless and awake?

Madge had hoped that Sharon had come back to say that she had met a man and planned to get married. Only when this had happened would Madge be free to hint that she found Ned different than she had expected. In what way? Sharon would ask. Madge could not touch on it until Sharon had had the experience. The two girls were open and frank with each other, but they had seldom discussed men and boys. They had never discussed boys and girls. Sharon had blurted out her opinion of marriage on hearing that Madge was engaged to Ned, but Madge felt that this was in part her anger at losing her friend. Sharon was such a pretty thing, like a beautiful doll, Madge found it hard to see her sleeping with a man. She was like a child. How did such little women mate with grown men and have babies? Madge was curious.

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