Summary
In the chiaroscuro of a marriage that has ossified into a ledger of condescension, Norma Ellis—once a luminous bride—finds herself shackled by the quiet tyranny of her physician-husband’s contempt. For half a decade Hugh Ellis doles out housekeeping coins like alms, convinced that a uterus disqualifies a brain from comprehending compound interest. One crystalline morning, Norma’s mutiny detonates: she declaims that American matrimony is merely chattel-slavery with lace curtains, demanding a joint checking account as reparation. Hugh’s derisive snort ricochets through their mahogany hallway; Norma responds by folding her apron into a paper boat and letting every domestic duty drift downstream. Copper pots ossify, cradles sour, ledgers hemorrhage red ink. Meanwhile Hugh’s brother Ned—a jittery faun of a man with cocaine pulsing in his corneas—is ambushed in a Chinatown opium dive by a sylph who hurls carbolic acid like a priestess casting holy water. Ned’s scream becomes the overture to a marathon surgery lit only by Hugh’s trembling forehead-lamp. In the hush of the operating theatre Norma learns that a serendipitous stock-option payment—her potential emancipation—looms. She barrows the sum from David Power, a crusading neurologist waging war on morphine’s dominion. When Ned, detoxed and contrite, plants the rumor that Norma’s fidelity has migrated to her creditor, Hugh loads wife and infant into a roadster and roars into a thunderstorm. Only after Power exorcises Ned’s final demon does the lie collapse. Husband and wife stand beneath the sulphur glow of a 24-hour bank marquee, signing a deposit slip together while the night teller—unaware he is witnessing a revolution—counts their cash beneath bullet-proof glass.
Synopsis
Norma Ellis is humiliated for five years by her husband, Dr. Hugh Ellis, who believes that no housewife is capable of handling household finances, and she finally rebels, proclaiming American women are more often regarded as bonds-women than wives, asks for a joint bank account. When her husband scoffs, Norma renounces all household duties. Ellis begins to acquiesce as the combined responsibilities become overwhelming. Meanwhile, his brother Ned, a cocaine addict, is attacked by a drug-crazed girl, who tries to blind him with acid. During Ned's lengthy surgery, performed by Ellis, Norma discovers that payment is due on a stock option that promises to make them rich. She borrows from David Power, a family friend who is trying to cure drug addiction. After Ned is stopped from getting more cocaine by Power, he tells the doctor that Power and Norma are having an affair. Ellis drives her and her baby away, but after Power cures Ned, he confesses his lie. The couple reconcile and open a joint account.
Review Excerpt
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I. The Ledger of Contempt
Picture, if you can, a parlour wallpapered in arsenic-green damask where every repeat in the pattern feels like a bar in Norma’s invisible cell. Edwin August—actor turned hyphenate writer—lets the camera loiter on Maude Fealy’s gloved fingers as they tally grocery receipts with the exactitude of a bookkeeper in Dickens. Those fingers, porcelain under nitrate, quiver not from arithmetic fatigue but from the slow recognition that five years of marriage have reduced her t..."
