Abandonment in "Jazz"
page 85
[Violet speaking] "I wasn't born with a knife."
[Alice speaking] "No, but you picked one up."
"You never did?" Violet blew ripples into the tea.
"No, I never did. Even when my husband ran off I never did that."
...
Violet said to Alice Manfred, "Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you fight for your
man?"
...
What she told Violet was true. She had never picked up a knife. What she
neglected to say -- what came flooding back to her now -- was also true:
every day and every night for seven months she, Alice Manfredm was
starving for blood. Not his. Oh, no. For him she planned sugar in his
motor, scissors to his tie, burned suits, slashed shoes, ripped socks.
Vicious, childish acts of violence to inconvenience him, remind him. But
no blood. Her craving settled on the red liquid coursing through the
other woman's veins. An ice pick stuck in and pulled up would get it.
Would a clothesline rope circling her neck and yanked with all Alice's
strength make her spit it up?
...
Alice slammed the pressing iron down. "You don't know what loss is," she
said.
Questions:
1) Would Alice have taken her man back if he hadn't died?
2) Why does Alice feel so much anger toward the other woman but she
doesn't fantasize about killing her husband, merely "inconveniencing"
him?
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