So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men

In “The Long and Painful Death,” the Böll House where the woman is doing her residency is symbolic of peace, quiet, and opportunity. The house is located on Achill Island and thus set apart from the noise, activity, and distraction of mainland life. She is grateful for the chance to stay and work here, as the house lets her escape her normal life and focus on herself and her work. Furthermore, she “like[s] the bare, working feel of” the house (72). Indeed, many of the rooms are empty, or furnished only with a desk, a bench, a folding chair, or a few “framed letters on the walls” (72). The sparseness of the space opens up the woman’s mind. She can think more freely in this uncluttered setting.

When the German man intrudes upon the house, he disrupts the woman’s peace and sabotages her opportunities to work. As he pushes through the space during his visit, the woman notices that he does “not seem the slightest bit interested” in what he’s seeing and looks into each of the rooms “the way people look into rooms which are completely empty” (72). The careless way he occupies the space contrasts sharply with the careful way that the woman occupies it. He takes her chair near the fire without asking and gobbles down her cake and tea while actively insulting her. When the woman is alone, she takes time making the cake, collecting berries, picking flowers, tending to the fire, and arranging her things. Her actions show that she has a reverence for the space—her actions are expressions of gratitude for what the house is offering her. By way of contrast, the man’s callous way of interacting with the space shows his disrespect for the woman and his belief that she owes him her time and attention.

In “Antarctica,” the handcuffs that the man uses to imprison the woman are symbolic of entrapment—specifically the entrapment women face within patriarchal societies. Although the woman isn’t “in the mood for sex” when she returns to the man’s house the second time (111), she agrees to go to appease the man. She ends up playing a largely passive and submissive role when they have sex because she’s tired and disengaged. Therefore, she can’t “think fast enough to object” to the handcuffs when the man suddenly produces them from his drawer (113). She, in turn, becomes the man’s prisoner and victim. She can’t free herself from the handcuffs after he leaves, thus implying that she will never get free and will die at the man’s hands. This violent imagery exposes the violence of misogyny and underscores how women die at the hands of patriarchal structures.