The Triumph of the Nut or Too Many Marriages
John Webster, a Wisconsin manufacturer of patent washing machines, has a wife named Mary, a daughter named Jane, and a stenographer named Natalie. He begins having strange sensations in his head and concludes he is becoming insane, though he decides he likes himself better this way. Looking at Natalie, he suddenly perceives her not as a woman but as a house, short and broad like a bungalow. He realizes other people, including his wife, must be houses too, and that he himself is a house. He strips off his clothes at home and admires himself naked in a mirror. A winged insect at the window tells him he is a "bughouse." Back at the office, Webster is moved to tears on learning Natalie has bathed in a common washtub rather than a patent washing machine, which strikes him as lovely and natural. He declares he does not love his fat wife and will take a thousand dollars and run off with Natalie, abandoning washing machines to devote himself only to love. Natalie, dim but practical, agrees for the money. Webster sets up a shrine to the Virgin between two candles and paces naked nightly, convinced he has become a brilliant "nut" destined to write a devastating book exposing civilization, surpassing Sherwood Anderson and Krafft-Ebing. When his wife and daughter Jane spy on him, he summons them in, naked and cross-legged atop a dresser holding candles, and lectures them on his contempt for his wife's looks, his belief in free mating over marriage, and his plan to leave with Natalie. He details his wife's faults at length to Jane. Afterward he packs and leaves; his wife takes laudanum and dies. Walking to the station with Natalie, Webster paces oddly, one foot in the gutter, one on the curb, calling it a symbol of life's higher and lower natures, and orders Natalie to do the same. Seeing grass strips along the sidewalk, he declares "all flesh is grass" and begins stripping off his clothes in the street. Natalie's weeping turns to loud bellowing, drawing a policeman. Webster ends confined in the Wisconsin state asylum, dressed in a ready-made straitjacket.
By Christopher Ward · First published 1923 · Genre: Satire, Dark Comedy, Psychological Fiction · 7 chapters · 2,003 words
First lines
There was a man named Webster, who lived in a town in the State of Wisconsin and he made patent washing machines. He had a wife named Mary and a daughter named Jane and a stenographer named Natalie. And he used to have dreams, which was no great matter until he began to practise what he dreamed.
And so there was this Webster, and then this thing happened to him. He began to feel strange feelings and movements within his head, as though it were a newly wound watch.
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Genres
- Satire — The work is fundamentally a satirical critique of literary pretension, modernist philosophy, and pseudointellectual movements, with explicit self-aware commentary mocking serious literary works and their claims to philosophical depth.
- Dark Comedy — Absurd situations, darkly comic descriptions, and ironic tone throughout create a consistently darkly humorous effect, particularly in the protagonist's delusional behavior and his wife's suicide presented as consequence.
- Psychological Fiction — The narrative centers on John Webster's progressive mental breakdown, delusions, and psychological deterioration, examining his increasingly irrational thinking and paranoid-delusional behavior in clinical detail.
- Modernist Literature — The work employs modernist techniques including stream of consciousness, unreliable narrator perspective, self-aware meta-commentary about literature itself, and experimental narrative structure typical of 1920s modernism.
Tags
mental illness · marriage critique · free love · infidelity · madness · satire · domestic tragedy · sexual liberation · Wisconsin · early 20th century · American fiction · misogyny
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The Triumph of the Nut or Too Many Marriages is listed on Textopian as a short story by Christopher Ward, dated 1923 CE.
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- Work type: Short story
- Author: Christopher Ward
- Date: 1923 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Satire, Dark Comedy, Psychological Fiction, Modernist Literature, Social Commentary
- Length: 2,003 words
- Structure: 7 chapters, 42 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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