The Husband Stitch is an interesting take on one of my favorite short horror stories “The Green Ribbon” A story of a girl with a green ribbon around her neck who never allows her husband to remove it till old age, only for her head to fall off. This variation of the story played very much into the entitlement the husband of the nameless protagonist had over her body. From the very beginning, she made the rule that he could not touch her ribbon repeatedly throughout the story he violates this boundary of hers. He claims she shouldn’t have secrets but the protagonist tells him it is not a secret it is just hers and since she has given her whole life to him he cannot respect the one thing she asks of him.
Another example of her husband’s entitlement is asking the doctor about “A husband stitch” while ignoring his in pain wife. A husband stitch is “an extra stitch given during the repair process after a vaginal birth, supposedly to tighten the vagina for the increased pleasure of a male sexual partner” as explained by a Huffington Post article on the matter. This is a very real thing that in itself is a disgusting violation of a woman’s body to indulge her husband’s pleasure but can also have potential negative impacts on a woman’s health. The nurse tells her that she is stitched up “nice and tight” but the protagonist is in so much pain she cannot physically sleep with her husband till around their son’s first birthday.
This attitude of her husband even comes to rub off on their son. Before he realized his father’s obsession with his mother’s ribbon he could touch it and his mother let him as “it never makes me afraid” (18). The boy simply accepts it as part of his mother. Then after his fight over the ribbon, he tries to take it off repeatedly when his mother says no and the special bond the two had before is gone. But the protagonist still loves her son arguably more than her husband, pained when she accidentally scares him and the relief of his forgetting of the situation. He also seems to understand when his mother explains her ribbon to him when he is older. It is hers and hers alone and that seems to not escape her son like it has his father.
Even in the end, when she lets her husband untie her ribbon it is not because she feels ready, but rather her “Resolve runs out” (32). And her husband is instantly ready to take it off. Even in her final moments, knowing what is going to happen she tells her husband how much she loves him. Her husband now is left with the consequences of his entitlement and selfishness, his wife’s decapitated body now in their bed, what will he do? What will he tell their son how his own actions caused the death of his mother? Was it worth it?