36 pages • 1 hour read
Mary HoodHow Far She Went
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Story 8: “Hindsight”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 8 Summary
The eighth story of the collection opens on the south side of the US border with Mexico. An unnamed female protagonist looks back over the events leading to her ending up here—a displacement necessary to end the torture and alienation of a failed marriage. She recalls meeting her husband and the initial passion—then the pregnancy, the wedding, the death of the child, and the increasing frequency of his nights out with rowdy friends.
She thinks back to the multiple times her hometown church leaders and family encouraged her to understand that “this too [...] was her fault. She had driven him away with her coldness” and needed to “try harder [...] to ‘win him back’” (94). She remembers confessing what she believed to be her sins: that she had caused him to abuse her by provoking him with the very attempts to win him back that she had been instructed to make.
She recalls the moment her husband released her from her self-made prison of everyone else’s opinion—the moment he “boasted that he had married to avoid the draft” (95), invoking the others to help him to “be rid of her” (96)—and her family takes a collection to pay a lawyer to handle annulment proceedings.
Halfway through the story, the story moves back to the present. Fearful of everyone at the hotel where she is staying, she waits for the night to end to fulfill the residency requirements for the attorney to file the papers and free her. Everything goes through, and in the final scene, she notices—after he has already passed—her husband on his motorcycle in her rearview mirror.
Story 8 Analysis
In the eighth story of the collection, the theme of alienation and suffering continues. The scene repeats itself through the collection—token symbols of a happy life acting as façade for an empty life within. For half of this short, eight-page story, the protagonist remembers the alienation and abuse from her husband as well as from her family, townspeople, and church leaders who convince her she is at fault.
In contrast to the apathy and angry resignation to endure suffering that is seen in the first four stories, this unnamed female protagonist exercises control of the suffering and disillusion by ending it—a decision characteristic of the stories that follow the title story’s traumatic climax. She does not, however, seize control with the strength and determination of a woman claiming her identity. Similar to the resignation of the granny of “How Far She Went” and the fugitive in “Doing This, Saying That, to Applause,” she does so with the resignation that there is no other option. Thus, she remains unnamed like the other protagonists, another anonymous victim of the emptiness behind her portrait of a life.
This story addresses the isolation and loneliness that especially affect one’s psyche. The unnamed woman tried to get others to understand her abuse. Unlike other stories, she tried to connect and resolve her issues in the beginning, only to be denied help and belief. Startlingly, her own family and even her church, two institutions that should historically offer sanctuary and respite, convince her that she is at fault—an increasingly common practice known as “blaming the victim.” This sort of victimizing causes the victims to internalize their self-worth as something connected to their endurance. If they can’t endure, it is their fault (when all along the fault should be placed on the abuser). As such, most of the protagonist’s resignation stems from this internalization. Though her family finally hears from the “horse’s mouth” that he just used her and finally helps with ending the marriage, the damage has already been done. The protagonist simply sees herself as someone who has things happen to her, as opposed to someone who can take agency.
