"Respectability"

For homework this weekend, we were assigned to read “Respectability” from Winesburg, Ohio and to read and annotate the story in preparation for an in-class assessment tomorrow in class. The story itself was very intriguing and felt like this would be a good way to informally talk about the story. In short summary, “Respectability” is about Wash Williams, a man infamously known for being a rather dirty and ugly person. As the best telegraph writer in town, everyone sets aside their thoughts about how dirty and smelly he is and can’t help to respect him. George Willard sees him while with Belle Carpenter one night and he then tells about how much he hates all women. He then tells the story of how he was once in love with a beautiful young blonde girl whom he married. After being married a few years he learns that he has been cheating on him and sends her off, but goes to her house after some time hoping to get her back. But when he goes to see her, the woman’s mother sends her in naked, to which he responds by attacking her mother and since then has hated women. There are certainly a lot of analytical points that can be taken from this story, the first of which is Anderson physically showing what it means to become a grotesque being, which Wash has become. Not only that, but he overtly shows it in describing monkey being similar to Wash, with the monkey being “a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes…a true monster” (Anderson…113). It is very clear from the start that Wash, just like most all other characters in the novel, have lost their beauty and exchanged it for a new grotesque form. But also like the others, Wash also wishes to tell others about what his life has become, and this desire plays out perfectly with his occupation: a man who uses his hands to write telegraphs. “There was something sensitive and shapely in the hand that lay on the table by the instrument in the telegraph office” (Anderson. 114). Of course, hands are a critical element of this section, in that Anderson again emphasizes the hands as being the method in which characters can convey their truths to others, in this case with Wash being able to send messages to people. Not long after this it is revealed what Wash’s truth is: his hatred for women. He abhors them as “a living-dead thing, walking in the sight of men and making the earth foul by her presence” (Anderson. 116).  In Wash’s eyes, he sees women as those who bring out the grotesque nature of life, taking that which is good and wholesome and transforming it into an abomination. Wash seems to be both a physical and internal victim to having become grotesque with his interaction with women, as it was his marriage to the woman who cheated on him that allowed him to discovery his essential truth of the nature of women, and ultimately that truth which transformed him into a grotesque. Finally, I feel it very important to note one of the lines that Wash says to George: “Already you may be having dreams in your head. I want you to destroy them” (Anderson. 117).  Hear Wash seems to echoes Tom Willard in “Mother” who said something very similar to George by telling him to wake up out of his dreams. Clearly, Anderson is using these two mirroring ideas to get a key point across, which is that people like George Willard who seem to have so many aspiring dreams and goals for how their life ought to be and how perfect others are need to wake up and get a real taste of what the world is like. Anderson gives a harsh reminder that not all women are the perfect angels that they are constantly described as and how most dream of them being, but in fact simply play an equal role with man in leaving all whom they encounter as horrible grotesque shadows of who they once were.