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In the poem “Countess P-’s Advice for New Girls,” from Natasha Trethewey’s Berlocq’s Ophelia, the head countess of the brothel gives recommendations to girls new to the brothel on how they should act. The girls are told to empty their thoughts, let the man’s gaze animate them before they move, and “wait to be asked to speak” (11.)  Although in this context, these recommendations are for the girls in the brothel, the recommendations could also be applied to how a wife must conduct herself once she is married to a man in the 1900’s to even as late as the 1940s. The way men would like their wives to behave in that time period is quite similar. Wives were generally not allowed to have meaningful lives outside of the home, meaning, for the most part, their thoughts could be considered empty. Wives were encouraged to submit to their husbands and do things like chores for them, which could also be seen as not having any internal motivation to do things and thus being devoid of thought. Husbands in these times saw themselves as the head of the house and had the final authority, even if the wife disagreed, she was expected not to talk back. It is also expected that wives did not give their husbands orders. This can be seen in Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire when Stella tells Stanley he needs to come outside with her while her sister Blanche is getting dressed. From his response “since when do you give me orders”(Williams 35), one can infer that it was uncommon for wives to call upon their husbands and in a way, that as a wife one should not speak unless a man has given permission for one to do so.

The overarching recommendation of the poem is “Become what you must. Let him see whatever/ he needs. Train yourself to never look back” (11), which means that the girls in the brothel need to act in whatever manner the male client desired, not the way they normally would. The brothel girls do not have their own identity or personality when they are with the client, much like the way a wife must adapt herself to the way her husband wants her to behave. Not only the brothel girls should train themselves to not look back and second guess the false identity they portray when with a client, but wives should too. If a wife was to look back on herself, she might realize she was not being her true self as Edna did in the Awakening. Even though the poem is intended to advise the brothel girls on how to conduct themselves, it also can be seen as a commentary on how all women should behave in regard to a man during that time period.

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