Death by Sherwood Anderson, 1919
The magic trick:
Sexual connection as a positive thing and not simply something that should be repressed
We have seen stories throughout the Winesburg, Ohio collection that have dealt with issues of sex. The book was famous – or maybe infamous – for its treatment of sex, especially back at that time as a 1919 publication. It was fairly controversial to have so much sex in these stories, especially in a small-town setting.
But “Death” is really the first story where we see sex treated as a positive thing. So many times throughout Winseburg these characters are punished for their sexual impulses or made to feel guilty, or, in the case of mnay of the women, given a bad reputation because of their sexual activity.
And finally in “Death”, we find a sexual encounter (it’s really more sensual than literally sexual) that serves as a revelation for Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard. Though the story doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending, it at least portrays the idea of human connection and physical connection and sexual connection as something positive and not simply something that must be repressed.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
Elizabeth sprang out of the chair and began to walk about in the office. She walked as Doctor Reefy thought he had never seen anyone walk before. To her whole body there was a swing, a rhythm that intoxicated him. When she came and knelt on the floor beside his chair he took her into his arms and began to kiss her passionately. “I cried all the way home,” she said, as she tried to continue the story of her wild ride, but he did not listen. “You dear! You lovely dear! Oh you lovely dear!” he muttered and thought he held in his arms not the tired-out woman of forty-one but a lovely and innocent girl who had been able by some miracle to project herself out of the husk of the body of the tired-out woman.
Doctor Reefy did not see the woman he had held in his arms again until after her death. On the summer afternoon in the office when he was on the point of becoming her lover a half grotesque little incident brought his love-making quickly to an end. As the man and woman held each other tightly heavy feet came tramping up the office stairs. The two sprang to their feet and stood listening and trembling. The noise on the stairs was made by a clerk from the Paris Dry Goods Company. With a loud bang he threw an empty box on the pile of rubbish in the hallway and then went heavily down the stairs. Elizabeth followed him almost immediately. The thing that had come to life in her as she talked to her one friend died suddenly. She was hysterical, as was also Doctor Reefy, and did not want to continue the talk. Along the street she went with the blood still singing in her body, but when she turned out of Main Street and saw ahead the lights of the New Willard House, she began to tremble and her knees shook so that for a moment she thought she would fall in the street.
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