Sex Objects, Purely Poem by gershon hepner

Seen as sex objects, purely
domestic creatures, wives
must feel indignant, surely,
the ones who’ve got their lives,
I mean, of course, deserving
of respect, which I give mine,
and yet it is unnerving
when they fall out of line.
By nature sorceresses,
they cast their spells until
age creeps and repossesses
their passion potion skills.
Before that, it is vital
that none of them objects
to that which they entitle
their lovers, I mean sex.


Inspired by Michiko Kakutani’s review of John Updike’s novel The Widows of Eastwick, a sequel to his 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick (“Old Black Magic is Old, and So Are These Witches, ” NYT, October 20,2008) :
John Updike once described his 1984 novel, “The Witches of Eastwick, ” as an attempt by him to “make things right with my, what shall we call them, feminist detractors, ” who complained, he said, that he tended to portray women as “wives, sex objects and purely domestic creatures.” It was a curious statement since it seemed odd that a writer would feel the need to answer his critics in a novel and odd since Mr. Updike’s earlier books, which happened to focus on male characters, seemed no more sexist than, say, novels focusing on women characters written by the likes of Erica Jong or Sue Miller…. In Mr. Updike’s latest novel, “The Widows of Eastwick, ” Alexandra, Jane and Sukie are back. In the decades that have passed, they’ve all left Eastwick, conjured new husbands for themselves and gone their separate ways. Alexandra moved to Taos with Jim Farlander, a potter and ceramicist given to cowboylike silences. Jane married a wealthy investment adviser named Nathaniel Tinker III and settled into a posh life in Massachusetts. Sukie moved to Stamford, Conn., with her husband Lennie Mitchell, a philandering computer salesman who struck it rich. Now all their husbands are dead, and the widows — “three old ladies, gone brittle and dry in their corruption” — have reunited and made plans to return to Eastwick for a summer’s visit….It is when Mr. Updike sets aside the magical mumbo jumbo and his petulant remarks about the witches’ decaying bodies that this imperfect novel is at its most powerful. His leading ladies are more compelling not as supernatural sorceresses but as ordinary women, haunted by the sins of their youth, frightened of the looming prospect of the grave and trying their best to get by, day by day by day.


10/20/08