John Stuart Mill got me thinking in terms of the situations of the women in No Exit, especially about the institution of marriage. So here are some of my thoughts:
First, Garcin’s wife. She’s really sort of trapped with this awful man who disrespects her entirely. Garcin continually refers to plucking her out of the sewage, so perhaps she feels the need to stay with him out of a sense of obligation. Garcin claims that she admires him, and maybe that’s true, but can we really totally trust Garcin? This guy has a huge ego, after all. Perhaps Garcin’s wife is actually staying because she feels a sense of duty to this guy who married her—which just shows how many women were shoved into marriage, or else had to face consequences such as maybe being thrown out of the house. Who knows what really happened with Garcin’s wife? I guess I’m just speculating, but it seems to me that she’s actually trapped by the institution of marriage.
Then there’s Inez. Inez, because she is a lesbian, doesn’t have the option of marrying for love. Inez is despicable, but she’s also trapped by her circumstances. I’m not making excuses for this woman, but her life seems pretty bleak. She has all this hatred and rage bottled up inside of her; that’s got to be fuel for the ways she acts, the way she tries to control people and get under other people’s skin. She’s very spiteful—another similarity to the Underground Man (whom I mentioned in my previous post). Women were expected to marry—and to marry men, but that part goes without saying. So Inez, just like Garcin’s wife, is trapped by the expectation of marriage.
And finally, Estelle. Again, as I said in my previous post, Estelle reminds me a lot of Edna Pontellier. Both women were definitely trapped. I really don’t think Estelle sees a way out of her situation, that is, having this child who is born from an affair. Edna, likewise, doesn’t see a way out of her unhappy marriage. I think Estelle, like the previous two women I mentioned, is again trapped by the institution of marriage. She didn’t marry for love; she married for money, because as a woman, she probably didn’t have any other way to support her brother. She’s trapped by this marriage, has an affair, and produces an unwanted child whom she has to keep secret from her husband and the rest of society. I guess we could reproach Estelle for not following her heart and marrying for love, but that would be sort of an empty comment, in my opinion. Ideals are nice and everything, but sometimes people have to do what’s just practical to survive, and for Estelle, saving her brother could very well have meant marrying a rich guy she didn’t truly love, sacrificing her own happiness for her sibling’s.
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I agree with a lot of what you're saying here! In terms of Estelle, I think you have a good point about how reproaching her for not following her heart would be an "empty comment." Sure, ideals are cool, but like Liza points out to Underground Man, life simply isn't always built on ideals. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, economic situations dictate how people act, both on a personal and actually also a global level. I also think the idea of sacrifice here is interesting. Normally when I think of "sacrifice," one of the first images that pops into my mind is a physical sacrifice, like dying for a cause or a person you believe in/love. But a lot of times sacrifices are also emotional ones. In fact, "back in the day," this type of sacrifice (marrying someone you don't love for financial wellbeing) wasn't even considered a sacrifice—it was just a normal part of life that women were expected to deal with (sometimes men too). I also like your comparison between Estelle and Edna. Both are caged into situations they really don't want to be in, expected to play certain roles that they simply aren't in tune with (again, the idea of the Gaze I think is relevant here). Without getting into whether their actions were "right" or "wrong" in the end, I think as an audience we can feel some level of sympathy for both.
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