The “Husband Stitch” is an eerie and uncomfortable tale. Carmen Maria Machado’s story, overall, is about a woman who wears a green ribbon all her life, and throughout the story, the husband is attempting to untie the ribbon sneakily and without her consent. However, in the final scene, she allows him to untie the ribbon, which leads to her head falling off.
The underlying theme of this story is consent and desire. Throughout the story, we see more of a lust relationship between the narrator and her husband from a young age that continues throughout their lives.
I am not truly sure what he is going to do before he does it. He is hard and hot and smells like bread, and when he breaks me I scream and cling to him like I am lost at sea. (5)
This quote already poses the problem of consent in their relationship from early on, because she is nervous and uncertain about the new experience of having sex, which is a frightening feeling for most young women to begin with. However, there is an even more unsettling element that plays into this story: her ribbon. On page 7, we see the narrator establish two very important rules for her husband.
There are two rules: he cannot finish inside of me, and he cannot touch my green ribbon.
Throughout the story, we see the husband try multiple times to untie the ribbon, breaking the trust of his wife, and even influencing his young son to do the same.
Our son is twelve. He asks me about the ribbon, point blank. I tell him that we are all different, and sometimes you should not ask questions. I assure him that he will understand when he is grown. (27)
I completely agree with everything you say. I think the story is a commentary about the forbidden being seen as a challenge by men instead of something that doesn’t belong to them. Like you said the husband was given two rules, both of which he ended up breaking. As evidenced by her bearing his child and eventually having her head fall off
Madison,
I agree that the element of this ribbon being “forbidden” is something that makes her lover more intrigued.
What I think is more interesting than this element of fantastic is how Machado covers and twists the rape of the female protagonist as something that isn’t, or shouldn’t be, considered rape because she is in love; with the notion of rape being even less important when the two are married.
Machado does a beautiful job at painting the narrator as someone who is devoted to her husband, giving him all of her, even when she doesn’t want to. Yet, the reader can see that even when she gives him the last piece of her (the ribbon) she is still convincing herself that he is a good man. It is an interesting thing to read, because I don’t see like that (as I imagine most of us don’t). I can predict that some rape victims might feel like this, even more so with marital rape.
“He is not a bad man at all. To describe him as evil or wicked or corrupted would do a deep disservice to him.” (iBooks 56)