The opening three short stories in the collection feature female protagonists of various ages and backgrounds, collectively exploring the theme of Female Agency Constrained by Domesticity and Gender Roles. In “Antarctica,” “the happily married woman” (1) feels so trapped by her marital and familial circumstances that she manufactures an affair for herself while Christmas shopping one weekend in the city. In “Men and Women,” the unnamed first-person narrator is a victim of her father’s simultaneous ineptitude and dominance; trapped by her circumstances, she learns about her identity and future from watching her father emotionally abuse her mother. In “Where the Water’s Deepest,” the au pair is trapped in a vocational circumstance that strips her of her autonomy; she is beholden to the wealthy family for her job, which robs her of her ability to pursue happiness and stability on her own terms. In all three short stories, the female protagonists are victims of their domestic circumstances. When the women try to rescue themselves or challenge the parameters of their insular realities, they are punished. They lack agency over their bodies, lives, and fates because society has consigned them to a prescribed way of being based solely on their sex.

The titular short story “Antarctica” uses imagery, symbolism, and foreshadowing to convey how disrupting gender norms has life-threatening consequences. At the start of the short story, the woman decides to take a trip to the city to have a one-night stand, under the guise of a solo Christmas shopping trip. Because the woman is resolved in her decision “to sleep with another man” (1) the early pages of the story have a lighter narrative mood. The images of “the window lighted houses” (1), “the sound of bells ringing in the cathedral” (1), and the families “pushing buggies through the morning crowd” (2) effect a bustling, cheerful holiday atmosphere. The woman knows she is about to betray her husband but she too has a buoyant nonchalant energy—falling easily into “a dreamless sleep” (1) at the hotel and casually waltzing into a bar in the early afternoon to drink and play pool. In such scenes, the woman is lighthearted and hopeful because she is seizing her autonomy for the first time. Approaching the man at the bar, accepting his invitation to dinner, bathing in his tub, initiating sex, and spending the night with him are the woman’s acts of self-empowerment. However, the narrative mood darkens once the man morphs from “the least threatening man she’d ever known” (6) into the veritable devil the woman has imagined in her version of hell. The images of the empty house, the absent phone, the undying rubber plant, and the Antarctica documentary forebode the woman’s violent fate at the story’s end. The man’s sexual and physical violence against her is her metaphoric punishment for attempting to free herself of the societal constraints put upon her. She finds herself literally bound and gagged on the bed—imagery that symbolizes her entrapment within her social and domestic circumstances. Her entrapment only worsens when she tries to rebel.

In “Men and Women” the first-person narrator makes similar attempts to assert herself when she begins to realize that she, like her mother, is just a pawn or tool for her father’s comfort. The short story opens with the narrator asserting that she is handy because she “open[s] the gates” and “close[s] the gates” (19) for her father whenever he requires it. She also sits in the passenger seat of his car and heads off “to wherever my father is going on that particular day” (19), imagery that evokes notions of powerlessness. The narrator has no say over their destinations or the duration of their outings. She, like her mother, has learned to accept her assigned role without question. The images of her and her mother waking up early to cook and clean and tending to the farm while her father and brother play darts underscore the burden the women in the story carry. It is not until the dance that the narrator realizes she might challenge her father. When she interrupts his dance with Sarah, she feels that for “the first time in my life, I have some power” (29). Her assertive act narratively begets her mother’s assertive act at the end of the story—ignoring Da, refusing to do his bidding, and ultimately racing out of the driveway and leaving him in the snow. The image of Da standing in the cold alone chasing after his hat renders him pitiful, while the image of Mammy behind the wheel renders her powerful and autonomous. While the women in this story don’t face an overt or immediate punishment for “acting out,” the narrative implies that their rebellion won’t guarantee lasting freedom.

In the subsequent story “Where the Water’s Deepest,” the au pair’s identity alternates between the hired caretaker and the biological matriarch. The au pair has primary jurisdiction over the young boy’s care, as his parents remain at the margins of the narrative throughout the short story. At the same time, the recurring images of the narrator dreaming that the boy jumps off the roof to his death and of the au pair sitting alone at the edge of the muddy lake create a more ominous, bleak mood. The au pair is neither respected, appreciated, nor honored for her role as the boy’s caretaker; the scene in which the father threatens to fire her implies that the au pair lives in constant fear of losing her job. Her recurring dream is indeed a manifestation of this anxiety: She imagines inadvertently failing to keep the boy safe—jeopardizing his life, her work, and the money she seems to be sending home to her family. For the au pair, assuming the proverbial role of nurturer and caregiver means denying her own instincts and longings. She genuinely cares for the boy, but the boy is not her own. She is desperate to free herself from her circumstances and longs to leave—even momentarily considering a death by suicide—but fears that doing so will cause others even more harm. The au pair represents the societal burden of womanhood to care for and protect others at one’s own expense.