“The Astronomer’s Wife”: The Freedom from Conformity

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“The Astronomer’s Wife” has a strong influence from setting. In this story the struggle is apparent. The wife’s conformity to her husband, the problems in their marriage, and the plumber’s influence to open her view to the world are shown through the setting. The story is explained through the places they wander and the things in the places they wander.
The placement of the morning in a bedroom was a daily routine, just like their marriage. It wasn’t bright or cheerful. Where most people enjoy the feeling of waking up to a new day, she just saw it as a routine. “She fetched up her gentle voice and sent it warily down the stairs for coffee, swung her feet out upon the oval mat, and hailed the morning with her bare arms’ quivering flesh drawn tight in rhythmic exercise: left, left, left, my wife and fourteen children, right, right, right in the middle of the dusty road.” The pool of motionless water was symbolic of the overflowing problems that were their marriage, it was stagnant; just like their marriage. “Then she stepped carefully around the motionless spread of water i...

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