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They're Not Your Husband

I denne study guide kan du få hjælp til at analysere novellen "They're Not Your Husband" af Raymond Carver. Udover analysehjælpen kan du finde et summary af teksten samt idéer til fortolkning og perspektivering.

Præsentation af teksten

Titel: “They’re Not Your Husband” (1973)
Forfatter: Raymond Carver
Genre: Short story

Raymond Carver (1938-1988) var en amerikansk forfatter og digter, som i dag betragtes som en af de største skikkelser inden for amerikansk litteratur. Carver var kendt for at skrive i stilen dirty realism, hvor han lagde fokus på at beskrive skyggesiderne af helt almindelige menneskers hverdagsliv. 

Novellen "They're Not Your Husband" blev første gang udgivet i 1973 og blev senere inkluderet i Carvers novellesamling Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976).

Uddrag

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Title

The title of the short story “They’re Not Your Husband” by Raymond Carver hints that the story is about a marriage and that the line might be spoken by a husband to his wife, to highlight his own importance in the woman’s life. This expectation is proven correct, as the line is repeated by Earl twice, when Doreen complains that the people at work are concerned about her weight loss:

‘They’re afraid I’m losing too much weight.’
‘What’s wrong with losing?’ he said. ‘Don’t you pay any attention to them. Tell them to mind their own business. They’re not your husband. You don’t have to live with them.’
‘I have to work with them,’ Doreen said.
‘That’s right,’ Earl said. ‘But they’re not your husband.’ (p. 25, ll. 3-10)

This suggests that Earl believes being Doreen’s husband gives him rights over Doreen and that he is entitled to tell her what to do.

The words are ironic. The readers know that Earl advises Doreen to lose weight because he witnessed two men in business suits making fun of her and, implicitly, of him (p. 20, ll. 24-25). His wife’s weight loss is therefore prompted by Earl’s personal insecurities. Throughout the story, it becomes obvious that Earl’s true concern is not Doreen's weight, which never bothered him before, but other people’s perception of Doreen and how that perception affects his own status.

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They're Not Your Husband

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