Essay About Mrs. Katherine Ames And Blond Hair

“the Astronomer’s Wife” by Kay Boyle
Essay title: “the Astronomer’s Wife” by Kay Boyle
Analysis of The Astronomers Wife
In the “Astronomers Wife” by Kay Boyle, something as simple as a
conversation with a plumber about a stopped elbow is enough to trigger an
awakening in Mrs. Katherine Ames. When Mrs. Ames realized that the plumber was
talking about something she understood (the stopped elbow), she realized that
her marital problems were not the result of a division betwwen the sexes;
instead, she realized that some men, like the plumber, are as practical as she
is, and that some other men, like her husband, scorn people like her because
they are intellectually inclined. Previous to this discovery, Katherine did not
realize that there were different kinds of men, and therefore she did not
realize that she and her husband were mismatched. Furthermore, in her awakening,
Mrs. Ames also discovers that she, like the plumber, occupies as valuable a
place in society as the astronomer, for she does the “dirty” work to free people
like her husband to have time to think and to discover.
The scene in question takes place after Mrs. Ames has already noticed that
the plumber has a few physical characteristics that match her own (such as
blond hair), and she is talking to him as he descends into the earth. The scene
begins immediately after the plumber says “I think something has stopped the
elbow”, because this phrase was one of the few things that a man has ever said
that Mrs. Ames has understood. After the plumber has descended into the ground
before the scene, Mrs. Ames is the only one left. She spends the entire
duration of this scene sitting on the grass, silently thinking and revealing her
thoughts to the audience.
During her course of thinking, Mrs. Ames makes the important discovery that
there is a whole race of practical people like herself, men and women alike.
She knew that “when her husband spoke of height, having no sense of it, she
could not picture it nor hear”, but strangely enough, when another man who
happened to be a plumber spoke of his work, “madness in a daily shape, as elbow
stopped, she saw clearly and well”. Mrs. Ames finally realized during these
thoughts that these were two men with two different ways of life, and perhaps
her way of life suited the plumbers more than the astronomers, in that she too
could identify only with daily concerns. The division between people in her
mind was no longer just between men and women; it was now the working and the
thinking, those who “had always gone up, [and] others who went down, like the
corporeal being of the dead”. She now recognized that there were both physical
and spiritual human beings, herself and the plumber being the former, and her
husband being the latter.