#26
Posted: 7/24/14 at 12:52pm
It's important to explicate the word "well" and to look at its multiple meanings and symbolic interactions not only in the joke but also in the mytho-poetic collective unconscious. Elaine Stritch's "WELL!" takes on meanings unattainable by, for example, Jack Benny's "Well!". The way in which Stritch genders "WELL!" is in profound ways unattainable by a penised person such as Benny. A legendarily penised person such as Benny at that, with all the social privilege that implies, which is redoubled exponentially with his Caucasian-ness, his Hetero:sex-uality. This is some ways mitigated by his Jew:Ish-ness, which provides him something of an outsider status, but that is a topic for another paper.
With Stritch, the "WELL!" is both an epiphanic expression of the working class realizing the way in which its fortunes are yoked to the wealthy, the "john" in the example of the sex worker. But a "well" is also a source of water, the basic life force on Earth. Stritch's "WELL!" becomes declaration of woman-hood, an invocation of the womb from which all life emanates. "WELL!", Stritch announces with the authority of the mythical Eve, I am your mother, I am your guide to survival, I will show you how it is done. And how it is done well.
Simultaneous to this interpretive level is the fact that a "well" has, in the history of Western literature, been a symbolic holding place of human emotions. We have heard of "wells of loneliness," of "sad:ness" or, in the worst of all possibilities, of "empty-ness." It is this last notion that Stritch interrogates and undermines throughout "At Liberty" by clearly demonstrating that a post-menopausal woman is as capable of birthing greatness perhaps even more striking than that of women still capable of fecundity.
With Stritch, the "WELL!" is both an epiphanic expression of the working class realizing the way in which its fortunes are yoked to the wealthy, the "john" in the example of the sex worker. But a "well" is also a source of water, the basic life force on Earth. Stritch's "WELL!" becomes declaration of woman-hood, an invocation of the womb from which all life emanates. "WELL!", Stritch announces with the authority of the mythical Eve, I am your mother, I am your guide to survival, I will show you how it is done. And how it is done well.
Simultaneous to this interpretive level is the fact that a "well" has, in the history of Western literature, been a symbolic holding place of human emotions. We have heard of "wells of loneliness," of "sad:ness" or, in the worst of all possibilities, of "empty-ness." It is this last notion that Stritch interrogates and undermines throughout "At Liberty" by clearly demonstrating that a post-menopausal woman is as capable of birthing greatness perhaps even more striking than that of women still capable of fecundity.
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