ON THE
PERSONIFICAITON OF CUMBERSOME OBJECTS
By Stephanie Bishop, London Review of Books, Feb. 7. 2019
Three men have come to our house in order to remove the
furniture. They can carry two chairs apiece, and while one
appears to spin a coffee table on his index finger, another
heaves a sofa up with a single hand, so that it can stand at
an
angle while his comrade at the other end adjusts his grip.
‘In
India,’ I tell them, ‘I once saw a man with a fridge strapped
to
his back climbing up a steep hill.’ They laugh because they
think I am making a joke, ‘Good one love,’ they say, because
I
am a woman, the only woman in the house. Or so I think, until
I hear them grunting and huffing as they tip the wide antique
wardrobe onto its side and try to ease it out the bedroom
door.
It is a small room, the wardrobe was here before me, I cannot
tell them how it ever fitted though the door, or if it does.
I
watch, anxious that they don’t drop it or scratch the
paintwork.
Here she goes. Watch her there. That’s the girl, they say.
Easy
does her. The wardrobe, I realise, is also a woman. So, it
turns
out, is the king-size bed base, the long dining table, and
the
cumbersome frame of the trampoline. Why are they women?
Are they rendered female because the men feel they need to
be extra careful with these objects, even though the said
objects are large and heavy? Or do they identify these
objects
as female because they are large and heavy – it’s hard to
know
how to grip them, what part to grip, and so require
thoughtful
handling when moving through a narrow passage? Because
the men have been charged with ensuring the survival of these
objects? Personified as female because they are dependent on
these men moving them, because they have not the agency to
move themselves – into the truck and then off to their new
home. Or because they are unpredictable, depending on how
they are handled, and, if dealt with badly, might harm a man
– crush his misplaced hand, for instance. Maybe these objects
are rendered female because the men don’t really know what
to do with them. They circle each one for a while and talk
logistics. Then they pick her up and start to grunt. For each
cumbersome female object there are three men attached to it.
They want each female object to be safe and well cared for,
but
each one makes them uncomfortable. Is the reward worth the
effort? Hard to say. They sweat a lot, but still, they
persist with
doing their duty. I would like, next time, for my removalists
to
come dressed in white lab coats, the kind Dior insisted his
petit mains wore in the atelier, when thinking in great
detail
about the bodies of women and how best to disguise and
enhance them, and who might cover my furniture with white
sheets for discretion before lifting each girl gently onto a
wheeled trolley, the way I was once wheeled on a gurney from
this same house at the very peak of my womanliness, a long
time ago. They were very gentle, those ambulance men, and
very quiet. It was, after all, the middle of the night. But
as they
rolled me carefully down the garden path and lifted me over
the step by the front gate, I heard them say, ‘Easy does her,
watch her there,’ and to this day I do not know if they were
speaking of me, or of the cumbersome gurney on which I lay.
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