Runaway: Stories

Runaway consistently examines how gendered expectations constrain women’s lives and how domesticity becomes both a comfort and a prison. The opening story, “Runaway,” presents Carla’s marriage as a life structured around traditional gender roles. Clark is irritable, domineering, and self-absorbed, while Carla is expected to manage the household and appease him. Sylvia, the widowed neighbor, offers Carla an alternative image of womanhood. Sylvia (freed from gendered expectation by her husband’s death) has money, education, and independence; she represents female agency outside the confines of male authority. Carla’s return to Clark demonstrates the difficulty of breaking free from domestic entrapment. The potential fate of Flora, the goat, symbolizes this entrapment. Carla suspects that Clark has killed Flora, yet she chooses not to confront the truth. Flora’s disappearance represents the threat of violence underpinning Clark’s control, a threat that keeps Carla trapped. Ironically, Carla frames this ignorance as a chance to “be free.” Her silence reveals how domestic entrapment perpetuates itself, sustained by fear and expectation.

In “Soon,” Juliet lives with Eric and has a daughter, yet they aren’t married. This arrangement challenges the expectations of her parents’ small-town world, where cohabitation without marriage is considered shameful. When Juliet visits her parents, her father tries to hide her presence from the neighbors, ashamed not only of her choices but also of his own shame.