The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.^1In the self-consciously feminist eighties, readers often objected to what they
perceived as the rape fantasy in this poem: if the young housewife is compa-
rable “to a fallen leaf,” and the “noiseless wheels” of the poet’s car “rush with
a crackling sound over / dried leaves,” he is evidently longing to “ride over”
the young woman, to possess her. This analysis, I shall suggest later, is not
incorrect, but the reference to rape ignores the wry humor of the poem’s
tone, the delicacy of its irony.
In 2002 the response was much more bizarre. A number of students, for
example, took the young housewife to be a prostitute because she comes to
the curb and calls men. She is, moreover, in a state of undress—“in negligee”
and “uncorseted.” And the poet compares her to a “fallen leaf ”—that is, a
fallen woman. But, I asked these students, what about those men the young
housewife actually calls from the curb: “the ice-man” and “¤sh-man”—
which is to say, delivery men who bring daily domestic goods to the house?
And why is she doing these things, shyly “tucking in / stray ends of hair” at
10 a.m.? Again, why does the poet “bow” to this prostitute or call girl and
“pass smiling”? Why such respectful—and distant—behavior?
This last question prompted mere dismissal on the part of the class, for,
it was argued, there must be something funny going on here, because you
can’t bow in a car! In response I started driving in my chair and dof¤ng my
imaginary hat, as was the habit in early-twentieth-century America, so as to
show them that all “bows” are not Japanese deep bows of the kind they have
seen in the movies. Indeed, I’ve been practicing the Williams bow and smile
in my car ever since.
Another reading proffered by the class was that the poet-speaker has been
having an ongoing affair with the young housewife. Otherwise, how would
he know that she wears negligees in the morning? No doubt he is jealous of
the husband who owns her, the husband behind whose “wooden walls” she
is forced to perform her daily tasks. And he is bitter about being “solitary”
in his car and hence fantasizes about “crushing” her.
This reading is really not much more convincing than the ¤rst. One
doesn’t refer to one’s mistress as “the young housewife,” and a “shy” one at
that. If the speaker, who evidently doesn’t know her by name, is passing “soli-
tary in [his] car,” he can only surmise—or imagine—what she might be
wearing. When he does see her as he passes, she is outside the front door,
shyly calling the ice-man and ¤sh-man; so, if the two are indeed lovers, she
xii Introduction