"The Christmas Wife" (annotations)

“The Christmas Wife” deals with a man named Tanner who likes to be in control of his life.  The definition of control is “to check, verify, regulate, exert authority, dominate,” (www.etymonline.com).  The connotation of control implies a sense of dominating influence over someone/something.  Also, control is the power to direct or determine (www.thefreedictionary.com/control).  Through out the story “The Christmas Wife,” Tanner, a middle aged single man, is a person who is scared and needs to stay in control of his life.  The text does not directly say this, but there are many places in the text that prove and support this point.

            Right from the start of the text we see that Tanner is a man desiring peace, a measure of joy, and reassurance.  The word desire means that he is searching for these attributes that he does not have.  The text goes on to describe Tanner’s previous marriage (before his wife died).  The line occurs “He had been in control.”  The text is directly addressing control, but this does not imply that he had an insecurity to control his life. 

            Tanner decides to pay for a woman to spend Christmas with him.  The relationship between the woman and John Tanner is very odd from the start.  Tanner starts to dominate the relationship from the start.  As he meets the girl, he immediately starts telling her loving things like, “I’ve been looking forward to this for days.”  Because of the girl’s shyness, he made sure to make her feel comfortable.  He used a lot of words that assumed that he knew how she was, instead of asking her who she was.  “Don’t be uneasy.  I’m really a very comfortable person.  This is new to me too.  But I said to myself, why not, why not.”  He continued to talk to her like he knew her and never initiated a conversation.  Obviously this was because he was using her for company, but also this points to his character and the way he likes to be in control of a situation. 

            Cherry kept on coughing and Tanner made sure that he was going to help her.  He made her feel special by referring to many of the “special” things he was doing for her for Christmas.  “I want you well by Christmas.”  He told her.  Tanner served Cherry food and made sure the atmosphere was nice and festive.  Cherry ended up dropping one of the wine glasses and he made sure that she did not feel guilty about it.  “She fought for control” was one of the lines she said when she tried to explain to him that it was because she did not have glasses to see very well. 

            As Cherry was still sleeping, the text refers to Tanner rehearsing his script for the day.  It said that if his order prevailed, than all things are possible, even tolerable.  “The key of the course is to be in control.”  The story continues to show this kind of behavior between Tanner and Beth (he changed her name to his preferences). 

            At the end of the story, Tanner starts to feel connected to Beth and he starts to sense the relationship forming into a relationship, rather than just control.  He does not like it and gets scared.  “Nothing is simple, he said to himself.  Nothing is ever, ever simple.”  “He saw his own life as an endless struggle to make the complex simple.”  Tanner realized at the end of the text that nothing ever will be perfect and that it is impossible to make it that way.  He realized that Beth was not Florence and he began to realize that he was in deep need of a person to comfort him and this woman was only with him because she needed the money.  As she was weeping, he remembered how he had been controlling this whole time.  He wanted her to be what he wished.

            This text shows the example of a relationship where one person dominates the other.  By the way Tanner talks to Beth, it is obvious that the relationship is not mutual.  When a person talks to someone by assuming things about them, this is a type of manipulation.  Control is a way to try to make an imperfect life perfect, which is impossible, and “The Christmas Wife” shows the outcome of a person holding on to their life.

. "control." The Free Dictionary. Farlex, n.d. Web. 1 Feb 2012. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/control>.

. Online Etymology Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb 2012. <http://www.etymonline.com/>.