Playing House (1973, 2008, Steerforth Press LLC, 0-03-007746-X) tells the story of a woman who had an incestuous relationship with her brother when she was a young girl and how it has affected her life. The relationship did not begin as a consensual one, but over time she sought out her brother's affections, whether with him or with substitutes.
Narrated by the unnamed woman, the novel describes her efforts to move on with her life. The problem lies in the fact that she is always searching for the closeness she experienced with her brother, and nothing else seems real to her.
The book does not have a happy ending and in fact, is deep and dark in many ways. It's graphic content may not be comfortable for all readers but Wagman uses these descriptive images to delve into the depths of despair experienced by the woman and to emphasize how truly tragic these events can be.
Analyzing Playing House
Establishing Relationships
One of the lasting effects of the abuse the woman suffered seeps through in her relationships with others, which are largely determined by the state of her mental instability at the time of her memory. At times, she describes her brother as blond and chubby and details how much fun they had together.
Other times, she describes how he would torture animals or purposefully step on her hand. The woman's father was rarely at home when she was a child. Her mother distanced herself from the children and her older sister committed suicide at an early age. Her husband, whom she has nicknamed Turtle, was chosen for security rather than out of passion.
What is reality?
For this woman, the only thing that is real is her brother. Although she has grown, married and had children since the incidents took place, it has distorted her sense of reality and she feels as if she is living in a dream, yet always trying to find her way back to what is real.
The Use of Repetition
Rarely is something mentioned once in this novel. Wagman employs a spiral effect, where she describes a memory and then comes back to it later in the story, sometimes several times, and expands upon it each time it is revisited. It is very effective as it correlates with the woman's mind-frame and gives the reader a feel of the disjointed way she is remembering her life.
The Use of Personification and Imagery
This novel is quite poetic in nature. Wagman uses personification very effectively in her descriptions. For example, she describes the woman's childhood home: "The house that blinked its eyes, the huge and proud Victorian matriarch pitched across the green velvet grass sitting on her haunches...The white curtains peeking out of the windows looked like the whites of eyes around the dark black coals that saw everything." At the same time, humans were given the opposite treatment. No person had a name. Her mother did not have eyes, but strange yellow lights that would look at her without a sense of seeing.
About Fredrica Wagman
Fredrica Wagman is the author of six novels: Playing House, His Secret Little Wife, Mrs. Hornstien, Peachy, Magic Man, Magic Man and The Lie. She has four grown children and lives with her husband in New York City.
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