Sondheim

Ordinary mothers lead ordinary lives—
Keep the house and sweep the parlor,
Mend the clothes and tend the children.
Ordinary mothers, like ordinary wives,
Make the beds and bake the pies
And wither on the vine...
Not mine.
Dying by inches every night—
What a glamorous life!
Pulled on by winches to recite—
What a glamorous life!

Ordinary mothers never get the flowers,
And ordinary mothers never know the joys,
But ordinary mothers couldn't cough for hours,
Maintaining their poise.....

Sondheim makes it look easy. But it's not easy. Walk through the first sentence. Content dictates form: The hum-drum, oppressive life the speaker describes is paired with blunt, stressed syllables, "keep the house," "sweep the parlor," "mend the clothes," "tend the children." Monosyllabic verbs, each with one direct object. "Keep," "sweep," "mend," "tend." And there's the greatness of the last word: "children." This is a song about a kid trying to rationalize her mother's bad behavior. I must not be worth much; I must be on par with the clothes and the parlor and the house. One of these things is not like the other. "Tending the children" should not be a task as cheerless as "mending the clothes." But the speaker can't confront her own anger; she is repressing what she really feels.

The next sentence gives us more of those monosyllabic verbs: "Make the beds," "bake the pies." And then a transition: our first two-syllable verb, and our first verb not to take a direct object. "Wither on the vine." We're ready for a new idea: Which mother refuses to wither on the vine? "Mine." "Mine" is not an "ordinary mother."

There's a sense of "methinks thou doth protest too much" in this song. Constantly repeating "What a glamorous life!" leads the listener to have doubts: Is the life really all that glamorous? Also, it's funny that the speaker's fantasy of the theater concerns something that seems to be bad acting. Would a great actress really "maintain her poise" while "coughing for hours"? (And is the challenge of acting really about delivering a loud cough?) Sondheim is writing for a child--a smart child, but a child--and it's striking, and appropriate, that this child's vision of the theater would involve winches, recitations, flowers, and melodrama. 

I don't know how many other writers would spend time thinking about the impact of Desiree's career on her little daughter. Of those few writers who *would* think about that, how many would also decide to put this daughter in a state of denial? To make her incapable of saying, "I'm really enraged"--? But isn't this what children do? They idolize their parents, and they make up stories to justify inappropriate parental behavior. Sondheim is not writing about death or tuberculosis; he's just writing about loneliness. He is saying that this, too, is a worthy subject for the stage. The hurt feelings of a confused child. But--as in actual life--here you have to read between the lines to understand what is happening.