My ex husband

In the poem “My Ex-Husband” by Gabriel Spera the main character displays hate for her husband, which in time reveals her love for him. The hateful tone in the poem contributes to the fact that she dislikes her husband, but at the same time she is stuck in the past, which keeps her from moving on. The first two lines of the poem introduce us to the a picture of her ex husband: “Thats my ex-husband pictured on the self, smiling as if in love”. We begin to suspect that main character is no longer with her husband, but we are not sure. The poem switches into a ambiguous tone here, same as Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. The line suggest that something is odd, but leaves something out that catches my attention as a reader. We see that the main character is still mentally attached to her ex-husband; she speaks about him smiling as if was in love, suggesting that she didn’t believe he really loved her. This line foreshadows what will happen in the poem. While the main character shows off the picture, she mentions some of the positives about her ex-husband.

One positive she mentions is “with his ruddy cheeks, the neat mustache,/ those close-set, piercing eyes, that titled grin.” His physical appearance was one of the reasons she married him. Another she mentions is “ he’d a certain charm, charisma, style,/ That passionate, earnest glance he struck”, the way he acted was also a reason why she married him. She also mentions “He knew all the most romantic spots in town, where waiters, who all knew his face.” His popularity and wealth attracted her to marry him. The main character mentions these positive attributes as she reminisces. The main character also shows her lack of feeling loved at the beginning of the poem. She says he “Impressed with his officious self. And he flirted- fine! but flirted somehow a bit too ardently, too blatantly.” Here she explains that he was full of himself and cheated on her. The ex-husbanding cheating gives the main character reason to develop hate for him, that we later see in the poem. It was the lacking of feeling love and being cheated on that caused the wife to hate her husband, “My life’s a living hell, everything he does disgusts”.

The main character feels that since the love he was giving wasn’t only for her, everything he did made her hate him more. She further more explains her hate: “Let things get back to normal,even then/ You’d still be on the short end of the stick.” If the couple was to ever get back together the main character would still hate him; nothing would change. The Poem “My Ex-Husband” is one woman’s view on her ex-husband after a divorce. The Main character displays her hate to this man, while revealing the deep love for him. The tone of the story changes from the main character attempting to act careless about her last marriage, the true emotions comes out as her obsessive tone takes over because she is still in love.