A secretary offers the only kind of polygamy we
recognize in this country. - Helen Gurley Brown
recognize in this country. - Helen Gurley Brown
I.
Lawrence's short story of 1927 entitled 'Two Blue Birds' belongs to both a sociological history and a literary sub-genre all of its own. Certainly the idea of a love triangle between a man, his wife and his secretary wouldn't have been new or at all shocking. Indeed, what's most surprising here is that Lawrence desexualises the relationship.
From the day that women entered into employment alongside men, the idea that this would lead to extramarital affairs was present and the jokes, stories, and saucy postcards began to immediately circulate. The secretary quickly assumed her place within the pornographic imagination alongside other stereotypical female figures, such as the waitress and librarian, for example.
The phrase office wife dates to the 1920s, so there's a good chance Lawrence would have known of it - particularly as he spent a good deal of time in the United States. What he could not have known, however, was the popular novel of this title by Faith Baldwin published in the year of his death; or the Warner Bros. movie, directed by Lloyd Bacon, based on Baldwin's novel and also released in 1930.
In brief, an office wife refers to a secretary with whom a man shares a very special relationship. As we shall see, Miss Wrexall becomes a second wife to her boss, Cameron Gee. Not only does she spend many long hours working closely with him, bur she intuitively understand his personal needs and the pressures he was under, genuinely caring for his health and happiness.
I think we might legitimately speak of the propinquity effect in this case. And of sublimated desire, that is channeled into their queer-platonic collaboration, much to the wife's disgust (like many women in her position, she could accept her husband having a sexual affair, but not the strange intimacy of his relationship with Miss Wrexall).
II.
The handsome writer Cameron Gee asked his adoring secretary to do things "in that good-natured, confident voice of a man who knows that his request will be only too gladly fulfilled". Not that he ever asked her to do anything inappropriate. For whilst Miss Wrexall was quite young and quite good-looking - and whilst he absolutely depended on her - he didn't desire her in that way:
"They were just the young master and his secretary. He dictated to her, she slaved for him and adored him, and the whole thing went on wheels."
Nevertheless, his estranged wife despises Miss Wrexall, whom she regards as competent, but common. Naturally, this rather complicated matters. And like many secretaries before her, Miss Wrexall found herself at times having to manage not only her boss, but placate and reassure her boss's wife.
Ultimately, the two women are locked into a battle and the question is: Who does more for this clever, enigmatic and whimsical man? Perhaps the wife already knew the answer to this in her heart. She may technically have the husband, "but a husband is the mere shred of a man, compared to a boss, a chief, a man who dictates" and whose every word a secretary will faithfully take down.
The wife grows increasingly resentful. All the lovers and long winter vacations in the world don't help her forget her husband dictating to Miss Wrexall for ten hours a day "with nothing but a pencil between them: and a flow of words".
Worse! The secretary had brought her mother and sister into the household: the former as a sort of cook and housekeeper; the latter as a sort of maid and valet-de-chambre. Both provided an excellent service and soon all three women knew their master's affairs and personal tastes. Best of all, they hardly accepted any wages.
For the wife, of course, had helped push the man into debt. And it was up to Miss Wrexall, his secretary, to smooth things over whenever a creditor became dangerous and threatened to trigger a financial crisis. But the secretarial family still received the wife when she came home "with most elaborate attentions and deference", though this only made her feel ridiculous.
"Could anything be more impossible! They had the house spotless and running like a dream: how could an incompetent and extravagant wife dare to interfere, when she saw their amazing and almost inspired economy!"
The man, if not perfectly happy, was nevertheless perfectly comfortable. Only his wife suspects that such comfort is not good for him. Or his work. It wasn't so much the home-cooked food and a soft bed that were the issue; his comfort, rather, consisted of having "nobody, absolutely nobody and nothing, to contradict him". His secretary prided herself on the fact that she spared him any aggravation.
"They were just the young master and his secretary. He dictated to her, she slaved for him and adored him, and the whole thing went on wheels."
Nevertheless, his estranged wife despises Miss Wrexall, whom she regards as competent, but common. Naturally, this rather complicated matters. And like many secretaries before her, Miss Wrexall found herself at times having to manage not only her boss, but placate and reassure her boss's wife.
Ultimately, the two women are locked into a battle and the question is: Who does more for this clever, enigmatic and whimsical man? Perhaps the wife already knew the answer to this in her heart. She may technically have the husband, "but a husband is the mere shred of a man, compared to a boss, a chief, a man who dictates" and whose every word a secretary will faithfully take down.
The wife grows increasingly resentful. All the lovers and long winter vacations in the world don't help her forget her husband dictating to Miss Wrexall for ten hours a day "with nothing but a pencil between them: and a flow of words".
Worse! The secretary had brought her mother and sister into the household: the former as a sort of cook and housekeeper; the latter as a sort of maid and valet-de-chambre. Both provided an excellent service and soon all three women knew their master's affairs and personal tastes. Best of all, they hardly accepted any wages.
For the wife, of course, had helped push the man into debt. And it was up to Miss Wrexall, his secretary, to smooth things over whenever a creditor became dangerous and threatened to trigger a financial crisis. But the secretarial family still received the wife when she came home "with most elaborate attentions and deference", though this only made her feel ridiculous.
"Could anything be more impossible! They had the house spotless and running like a dream: how could an incompetent and extravagant wife dare to interfere, when she saw their amazing and almost inspired economy!"
The man, if not perfectly happy, was nevertheless perfectly comfortable. Only his wife suspects that such comfort is not good for him. Or his work. It wasn't so much the home-cooked food and a soft bed that were the issue; his comfort, rather, consisted of having "nobody, absolutely nobody and nothing, to contradict him". His secretary prided herself on the fact that she spared him any aggravation.
At night, the wife could hear her husband dictate and she "imagined the little figure of the secretary busily scribbling shorthand". Then, in the sunny hours of the following morning, "from another distance came that sharp insect-noise of the typewriter, like some immense grasshopper chirping and rattling".
The wife thinks to herself:
"That girl - she was only twenty-eight - really slaved herself to skin and bone. She was small and neat, but she was acually worn out. She did far more work than he did, for she had to not only take down all those words he uttered, she had to type them out, make three copies, while he was still resting."
And for what? A very poor salary - and she doesn't even receive his kisses (though whether his never kissing her made things better or worse for the secretary, the wife could not decide). But she and her family adored him and were devoted to him. Only such uncritical adoration and devotion was subtly undermining the quality of his writing: "His whole tone was going down, becoming commoner."
The wife felt she ought to do something to save him and his reputation as an author. She wanted to destroy the perfectly devoted secretarial family and "sweep them into oblivion". But what, really, could she do? There was nothing to be done. But still she had to do something ... things could not go on as they were.
The wife, with her long and shapely she-wolf legs, was determined to defeat the dark-haired little secretary with "the pretty but rather common little feet". The latter is rightly terrified by the "queer, powerful, elegant, wolf-like figure of the wife".
One day, in the garden, the wife challenges the secretary; she wants to know why she's so self-effacing and never considers her own needs - why it is she doesn't have the man pay her more heed. This is said in front of the husband, leaving him looking "pained and somewhat remote".
As for the secretary, she hung her head and felt indignant that the purity of her relationship with him had been insulted: "But soon she was veering downstream on the flow of his words, too busy to have any feelings, except one of elation at being so busy."
The wife thinks to herself:
"That girl - she was only twenty-eight - really slaved herself to skin and bone. She was small and neat, but she was acually worn out. She did far more work than he did, for she had to not only take down all those words he uttered, she had to type them out, make three copies, while he was still resting."
And for what? A very poor salary - and she doesn't even receive his kisses (though whether his never kissing her made things better or worse for the secretary, the wife could not decide). But she and her family adored him and were devoted to him. Only such uncritical adoration and devotion was subtly undermining the quality of his writing: "His whole tone was going down, becoming commoner."
The wife felt she ought to do something to save him and his reputation as an author. She wanted to destroy the perfectly devoted secretarial family and "sweep them into oblivion". But what, really, could she do? There was nothing to be done. But still she had to do something ... things could not go on as they were.
The wife, with her long and shapely she-wolf legs, was determined to defeat the dark-haired little secretary with "the pretty but rather common little feet". The latter is rightly terrified by the "queer, powerful, elegant, wolf-like figure of the wife".
One day, in the garden, the wife challenges the secretary; she wants to know why she's so self-effacing and never considers her own needs - why it is she doesn't have the man pay her more heed. This is said in front of the husband, leaving him looking "pained and somewhat remote".
As for the secretary, she hung her head and felt indignant that the purity of her relationship with him had been insulted: "But soon she was veering downstream on the flow of his words, too busy to have any feelings, except one of elation at being so busy."
Later, at teatime, the wife reappears in the garden and insists that Miss Wrexall join her and her husband for tea. Both women are wearing chicory-blue dresses. The wife again rather cruelly puts the secretary on the spot with her irony and her questions. Miss Wrexall knows very well that the wife is trying to embarrass her and make her feel foolish, despite the latter's insistence that this isn't the case and that nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.
Mrs. Gee teasingly suggests that her husband's books read as if they were not merely typed but actually written in large part by Miss Wrexall. This annoys him and Miss Wrexall finally finds the courage to speak up, accusing the wife of wanting to ruin the relationship between herself and the man:
"'You want to spoil what there is between me and him, I can see that,' she said bitterly.
'My dear, but what is there between you and him?' asked the wife.
'I was happy working with him, working for him! I was happy working for him!' cried Miss Wrexall, tears of indignant anger and chagrin in her eyes.'"
Of course, the wife protests (with simulated excitement) that she wants Miss Wrexall to go on being happy and to continue working for her husband. That the only issue she has is with him, for being an exploitative employer. But Miss Wrexall, being the perfect secretary - fiercely loyal and protective of her boss and full of what the Marxists call false consciousness - replies: "'But he gives me everything, everything!'"
Naturally, the wife wants to know what this everything means and just how all-inclusive it is: "'I mean nothing that you need begrudge me,' said the little secretary rather haughtily. 'I've never made myself cheap.'"
This provokes the wife to explode with contempt: "'My God! [...] You don't call that being cheap? Why, I should say you got nothing out of him at all, you only give! And if you don't call that making yourself cheap - my God! -'"
However, Mrs. Gee has finally realised that the game is up and her sham marriage over; that it was time she left for good: "'I'm afraid no man can expect two blue birds of happiness to flutter round his feet: tearing out their little feathers!'"
And with that she walked away ...
See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Two Blue Birds', The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 5-18. All lines quoted are from this edition of the text. An ebook version of the tale can be found online (thanks to the University of Adelaide) by clicking here.
