Money - Essay 5

This is about life long rage. She is the gun and she has had to be
reclusive and live unnoticed, in corners of the rooms of her life. Had she
been a man she may have had the opportunity to express herself in public,
but in her society that was not possible.

She protects her patriarchal family and society by not expressing herself,
but at the greatest cost to her - she has no agency, and this is the cause
of her rage. In public she is the dutiful daughter, and even with the
false smile - false because it is Vesuvian (after Mt. Vesuvius, which is a
volcano which erupts, and when it does - did - it killed everyone - how
much rage is that!)

Even at night she has to protect the paternal image. To have shared that
soft pillow made of goose down would smother her, so she stays guarded and
doesn't sleep on what looks so soft but is so dangerous.

She is so committed to keeping her stoical place in the paternal society
that she will defend it - she is foe to anyone who is foe to "him." The
emphatic thumb, that one can suck for comfort as a child can also have a
"Freudian" interpretation, of something that is swollen, and the Vesuvian
spew can be thought of that way as well. This doesn't mean that she had
sexual relations with her father - rather that she is so enraged that she
is stuck in the secondary role, only as guardian or protector of those who
keep her from the freedom of being her own person - and she has to do this
seemingly willingly.

And then in the last paragraph, she states that even though she could
outlive her father, her family, men in general, she had better die first
because the world is not a big enough place for both (all) of them and she
would like to kill except that she has been taught that she must not. And
she cannot even kill herself because that is also forbidden.

She is in a box from where there is no escape. This is not a love poem.
This is a poem that shows anger in its rawest form. This is pure rage.