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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.
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.