Anna Wickham’s speaker looks back on a marriage entered at twenty-two and finds herself trapped in a world of emotional starvation. Her husband belongs to the “Croydon class”—respectable, orderly, afraid of strong feeling—and their relationship has dwindled into mutual irritation: she vexes him, he bores her. What hurts most is not cruelty but silence. In this suburban world, saying you love your wife would be bad form, singing at dinner is tasteless, and words are treated as dangerous. Outside, the natural world is full of blossoming trees, gorse, and singing birds, but inside the house all vitality is suppressed. The speaker’s tone is bitterly funny, but the mood grows claustrophobic and desperate. She is fed, clothed, and will be given an orderly funeral, yet she feels compelled to sob or shriek just to make her husband truly live, love, or speak.
Nervous Prostration — Summary
I MARRIED a man of the Croydon class When I was twenty-two. And I vex him, and he bores me Till we don't know what to do!
It isn't good form in the Croydon class To say you love your wife, So I spend my days with the tradesmen's books And pray for the end of life.
In green fields are blossoming trees And a golden wealth of gorse. And young birds sing for joy of worms: It's perfectly clear, of course,
That it wouldn't be taste in the Croydon class To sing over dinner or tea: But I sometimes wish the gentleman Would turn and talk to me!
But every man of the Croydon class Lives in terror of joy and speech. " Words are betrayers," " Joys are brief "- The maxims their wise ones teach —
And for all my labour of love and life I shall be clothed and fed. And they'll give me an orderly funeral When I'm still enough to be dead.
I married a man of the Croydon class When I was twenty-two. And I vex him, and he bores me Till we don't know what to do!
And as I sit in his ordered house, I feel I must sob or shriek. To force a man of the Croydon class To live, or to love, or to speak!