So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men

Sabine is a primary character in the short story “So Late in the Day.” She is Cathal’s ex-fiancé. She doesn’t appear in scene but features in Cathal’s memories and flashbacks throughout the story. In the narrative present, Cathal is preoccupied with thoughts of Sabine because he’s still angry at her for breaking off their engagement just before their wedding day.

Sabine is a self-possessed character who ultimately frees herself from her entrapping, imbalanced relationship with Cathal. She is not only confident in herself “but alert to what [is] around her” (15). She works in Dublin’s city center and has an artistic sensibility. She enjoys going to art museums and cooking in her spare time. The care she takes with her recipes shows the care she takes in life. Cooking is also an expression of care and intimacy for her. Therefore, when Cathal fails to thank her for the meals she makes him, to financially contribute to her ingredients, or to help her clean up the dishes after she finishes cooking, Sabine feels as if Cathal is disregarding her affection. In taking her love for granted, he is also taking Sabine’s identity for granted. The same can be said of the way Cathal reacts the day that Sabine moves in with him. Her things are symbolic of her individuality. Therefore, when he complains about how much she owns, he is complaining about how much space she is occupying in his life. Because he perceives her belongings as an intrusion, he also perceives Sabine as a nuisance. This is because he doesn’t care about Sabine as an individual.

Sabine’s character represents female empowerment. Sabine enjoys the domestic arts and has a deferential personality. At the same time, Sabine proves disinterested in sacrificing her identity for the sake of appeasing Cathal. This is why she stands up to him and ultimately refuses to go through with the marriage. By asserting herself with Cathal, she is resisting the patriarchy and thus the gender role prescribed for her.

The protagonist of “The Long and Painful Death” is an unnamed woman referred to as “the woman” throughout the source text. The third-person narrator of the story inhabits her consciousness and presents the narrative world according to her perceptions of reality.

In the narrative present, the woman is 39 years old. She is a writer and has just arrived at Böll House for a writing residency. Self-possessed and even-keeled, the woman is thankful for the opportunity to spend time on Achill Island working on her writing. The way that she occupies the house and spends time on the island are reflections of her true nature. She is methodical and measured. She spends time setting up her space, tending the fire, baking cakes, exploring the landscape, swimming, bathing, reading, and writing. These pastimes show her engagement with the present. She is attuned to her surroundings and thus aware of how place impacts her psyche. These behaviors are also reflective of the woman’s writerly and artistic tendencies. She has a keen aesthetic when it comes to food, space, and her work.

The woman is on a Quest for Identity, Autonomy, and Fulfillment throughout “The Long and Painful Death.” Coming to Böll House has liberated the woman from her normal life and past relationships and offers her an opportunity for renewal and rediscovery. The German man intrudes upon her solace and undermines her dignity. She reclaims her autonomy and voice via her writing at the end of the short story. Her character illustrates how she stands up for herself and defends her autonomy amidst a subjugating patriarchal system and How Misogyny and Patriarchal Gender Roles Threaten Women’s Lives and Safety.

The German man is a primary character in “The Long and Painful Death.” A flat, static character, he also acts as the antagonist because he actively intrudes upon the woman’s space and compromises her emotional well-being. When the man first arrives at Böll House, he identifies himself as a literature professor interested in Henrich Böll and curious about Böll’s house. Although his behavior initially seems innocuous, the man is presumptuous and entitled. He appears at the house unannounced and insists that the woman let him in to tour the space. When he returns later that evening, he carelessly pushes through the house. He then takes the woman’s chair, scarfs down her food, and disparages her, implying that she isn’t worthy of the residency she was awarded. His character creates turmoil in the woman’s sphere; not unlike Cathal, he is also a representation of How Misogyny and Patriarchal Gender Roles Threaten Women’s Lives and Safety and male entitlement. While the woman does finally get the man to leave the house, she exacts her ultimate revenge on him by giving him cancer and killing him off in the new short story she is writing.

The protagonist of “Antarctica” is a middle-aged woman who goes unnamed throughout the short story. Like the protagonist of “The Long and Painful Death,” she is referred to simply as “the woman” in the source text. Her story is also written from the third-person point of view, and the narrator’s lens is limited to her distinct consciousness.

The woman is married with children and lives somewhere outside of the city. Via context clues, the woman has been in this relational and familial situation for some time. Her circumstances have become entrapping—consigning her to a stereotypically domestic role and thus limiting her autonomy and fulfillment. For these reasons, the woman decides that she wants to have an extramarital affair. Her imagined affair is a way for her to reclaim autonomy over her body and her life and rediscover who she is as an individual independent of her husband and children.

The woman is a self-possessed character who seeks out adventure and newness on a Quest for Identity, Autonomy, and Fulfillment. When she travels to the city—under the guise of buying Christmas presents for her family—she ends up getting involved with a local man. Initially, the woman regards him as “the least threatening man she’[s] ever known” (97). She finds their dynamic both easy and familiar, new and exciting—emotional reactions that show her delight and triumph in exacting her fantasy. Furthermore, she plays along with the man’s fetishes because she feels in control of her situation. Throughout her first evening with him, she behaves and speaks in an open, relaxed manner. She doesn’t over-calculate her actions or words and rather revels in her newfound autonomy.

The woman is socially punished for her attempts to exercise agency over her body and life when the man imprisons her. The story ends with the woman gagged and chained naked to the man’s bed, with no hopes of escaping. This imagery captures how women are victims of patriarchal societies, which rob them of their voices, power, and freedom.