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In The Bath by Janet Frame, we are introduced to a woman, facing the

qualms of aging and her impending death. The story explores the life of an
old, widowed woman who lives alone and is slowly losing her
independence due to the tyranny of old age. Mrs Harroway the narrator
and protagonist of the story is a woman alienated from society by her age,
living a life ruled by her impending death. Through the use of a bath and
the fear it exerts on the old woman, Frame allows us to see the frightening
prospect of growing old with no one there to help you, and the frustration
and sadness that must come with loss of independence. Using figurative
language such as metaphors and similes, Frame successfully allows us to
enter the mind of her character, and experience the terror the old woman
is enduring.
Sparked by drastic bodily changes, whereby she is gradually losing the
ability to perform easy tasks, such as the mundane chore of having a bath,
the protagonist in the story is in a conflict, whereby she is frightened by
the prospect of her looming death, yet ambivalent regarding death itself.
We see this dilemma within the woman through the symbol of the bath.
The bath represents two conflicting, yet tandem ideas that form the heart
of the story. On one hand, the woman wants to end her repetitious, lonely
life and be peaceful in the arms of death with her husband and loved
ones. Yet, on the other hand, she dreads the physical act of dying
especially at the mercy of an object as benign as a bathtub.
Through the symbolic bath, Frame allows us to see the limitations old age
imposes on one, but also allows us to experience her characters fears in
full focus. As a bathtub is an object that physically encapsulates someone,
it serves as a powerful tool to illustrate the womans physical
constrictions. The enclosed space of the bath is symbolic of the
helplessness that comes with aging. Her sense of being caged within the
bath mirrors how the woman feels within her own body. She is no longer
able to perform rudimentary actions like reaching for jam jars: Her world
is narrowing and growing darker, like a tunnel, constricting her like the
porcelain walls that enclose her.
The bath dually could be a metaphor for a coffin, She had a strange
feeling of being under the earth, of a throbbing in her head like the wheels
going over the earth above her. Like a coffin, a bathtub encapsulates a
person, and for the elderly woman, it physically imprisons her as she
cannot get out. This alludes to her underlying ambivalent nature towards
death: though on the surface she longs for the escape of death, we can
infer that she secretly fears that death will be just as constricting and
claustrophobic as a coffin, or the bath, or her repetitious life. We can see
this enforced with her action She panicked and began to strike the sides
of the bath, it made a hollow sound like a wild drum beat. It is evident,
therefore, that the bath represents the idea of the actuality of dying, and
the utter terror that accompanies it for her.

Frame further uses figurative language to emphasize a central idea of the


story: the helpless march towards the actuality of death. In the bath, the
woman feels the tide swirl and scape at her skin and flesh, trying to draw
her down, down into the earth. This personification eludes the force of
death sucking life out of her body, and drawing her under the earth,
hinting at a burial. Though she wants to be dead, she ironically fights a
situation where she could end up dying. This use of personification
highlights her terror of the bath, a bath that is symbolic of the actual act of
dying, not the peaceful result of death that she longs for.
The bath aside, through the descriptions of the womans movements, and
physical feebleness, we are able to see the changes old age has inflicted
on her, and thus are forced sympathise with her. She walked slowly,
feeling with each step the pain in her back, her movements slow and
arduous through these descriptions we can see that her basic bodily
functions are decaying as a result of her frail, weakened body, conveying
the idea that old age can bring a loss of competence and hope for some.
Also through diction with war connotations, Frame allows us to see how
the womans body is at war with her mind; they are two different forces
working against one another, in a way to emphasise her loss of control of
her movements. The old woman refers to her body as "the enemy and
states that it is showing "treachery" towards her. This battle is shown
when the woman struggles to get out of the bath.
The change in the womans appearance is expressed using connotative
imagery such as grass-yellow as old baths are, this description, parallels
to the characters age now and contrasts with the frost-white of new
baths, which is a metaphor for her youth. This contrast between old and
new presents to the reader how the woman is trapped in an aged body
that is impossible to step out of, and allows us to see her transformation
Age is not the only change that occurs in The Bath- the way in which the
narrator views the bath also changes. Taking a bath gradually becomes a
more and more daunting task, and frightening prospect, which she would
dread and needs to talk herself into doing. The simile slippery yellow
stained rim that now seemed more like the edge of a cliff with a deep drop
below the sea reinforces this change. The use of the word now, tells us
that it has not always seemed to be this way, that once it was an easy,
enjoyable task
Through immense loneliness, the woman has fallen into a depressed state,
where she feels trapped in a world, which has become a nightmare for her.
After the death of her husband, she has no support or security of having a
significant other there to help her and provide company for her, she is
alone and no one will hear her. She comments on how if John were
hereif we were sharing our old age, helping each other, this would never
have happened she wouldnt find life such a struggle, but instead a

district nurse will have to come to attend to her, which in her view is
considered extremely humiliating.
The fact that the woman only feels peace inside her, when at her
husbands grave, emphasises her loneliness and provides us with
supporting evidence that when in the company of someone else, her
troubles and mental state recovers. This shows that although change
happens in all aspects of our lives, it can be fought and controlled. If she
accepted she needed help, or she met new people who could provide
company for her, her condition and mental state could dramatically
increase, however because she does not act, and has fallen into this
gloomy state, she continues to let change take the better of her, in a
negative way.

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