The ‘Woman’

Both critics and readers have commented on the small part the woman plays in the novel, particularly in comparison with the 2009 film adaptation. Looking at the bald statistics of word occurrences appears to confirm the marginal role of the woman:
1. As a class, brainstorm as many ideas as possible about why this might be. The woman is mentioned in the following passages:
p.17: From daydreams on the road there was no waking .... Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
p.54: The clocks stopped at 1:17. ... What is happening?
p.56: He thought about the picture in the road ... You mean you wish that you were dead.
p.57: What in God’s name are you talking about? We’re not survivors. We’re the walking dead in a horror film ... The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself.
p.60: She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift ... wrapped his son in a towel.

Woman: 14

Mother: 2

Mom: 1

Wife: 1

Man: 184

Father: 23

Papa: 135

After Reading – The ‘Woman’
2. Look back at the extracts in the context in which they appear in the novel. Use a mindmap to develop your analysis and speculative thoughts about the presence (and absence) of the woman in the novel. Headings you might use include:

• –  The context in which the woman is mentioned
  
• –  Representation
  
• –  Thematic functions
  
• –  Symbolic functions
  
• –  Structural functions
  
• –  Possible reasons for absence.
  In his interview, Adam Roberts, talking about the handling of time, goes on to explore the possible reasons for McCarthy’s ‘sparing’ use of the woman.
  [In the film] his wife appears in dream sequences, memory and flashback much more frequently than she does in the book. In the book he uses her very sparingly. I think that’s because he doesn’t want to mess up the very carefully denuded sense of time passing that things have come to an end, are at a standstill by giving too strong a sense that there’s a before and after, too strong a sense of chronological contiguity.
  Rather than assume her absence is a mistake or failing on McCarthy’s part, Roberts develops an interpretation which sees the woman’s presence (and absence) as a fundamental aspect of the novel. The statements below suggest six further interpretations of the mother and the function she fulfils.
  

3. In pairs, take each of the statements below and test it out. Does it chime with your own view? Or does it open up a new interpretation to you? Does it stand up to scrutiny? Or can you see flaws in the reading of the novel on which it depends?
   
4. Draw on the readings to draft your own exploratory analysis of the woman.
   

1	This is a novel less about survival than about the relationship between a father and his son.
2	McCarthy needed something that is no longer present to represent life as it used to be in the time before.
3	The man and woman represent the different ways in which humanity might react to such a situation.
4	This is a novel about minute by minute survival. Showing the man resisting the temptation of his memories brings this home to the reader.
5	The woman has a powerful and ambiguous symbolic function in the novel: she represents both the giving of life and the temptation of death.
6	There is no space in this pared back narrative of survival for a third main character.
7	The vulnerability of the boy would seem far less evident if his mother were there as well.
8	For the man, the woman’s absence is a constant reminder of the alternative to struggling to survive.