#this is a really disorganized ramble bc im doing this quickly inbetween my readings for class

[dementedgnomicwizard]

“I spent fifteen hundred bucks on a state-of-the-art sound system so that Myra wouldn’t miss a single golden note on her Barry Manilow records and her “Supremes Greatest Hits,” he thought, and then felt a flush of guilt. That wasn’t fair, and he damn well knew it. Myra would have been just as happy with her old scratchy records as she was with the new 45-rpm sized laser discs, just as she would have been happy to keep on living in the little four-room house in Queens until they were both old and gray... He had bought the luxury sound system... because he had been able to, and because they were ways of appeasing the... always implacable voice of his mother; they were ways of saying: I made it, Ma! Look at all this! I made it! Now will you please for Christ’s sake shut up awhile?”

where sonia made a point to constantly doubt and belittle eddie to keep the power dynamics shifted in her favor and keep him feeling indebted to her/like he had to do exactly the right thing in order to keep her happy, myra... simply Does Not do that. she’s literally just happy to be with eddie, and he is (as illustrated by this quote) ABSOLUTELY aware of that difference. also this quote highlights the fact that myra is financially dependent on eddie—so in terms of the power dynamics at play, eddie has the upper hand.

“Once, shortly before actually proposing marriage, he had taken a picture of Myra... and had put it next to one of his mother... He had made the comparison, he supposed, in a last-ditch effort to stop himself from committing psychological incest. He looked from Mother to Myra and back again to Mother.

They could have been sisters. The resemblance was that close.

Eddie looked at the two nearly identical pictures and promised himself he would not do this crazy thing... He would break it off with Myra. He would let her down gently because she was really very sweet and had had even less experience with men than he’d had with women.

...But in the end he had married Myra anyway. In the end, the old ways and the old habits had simply been too strong.”

eddie is aware that he is trying to cling to and repeat his cycle of abuse. he’s aware that his marriage to myra is less about her and more about sonia’s metaphorical ghost hanging over him, AND he knows that myra 1) is oblivious to this and 2) has very little dating experience, which makes her vulnerable (hence the need to treat her gently). he marries her anyway. that’s not fair to myra and he knows it, it’s not healthy for him and he knows it. myra doesn’t! myra doesn’t know any of this! myra is just trying to be a good wife!

“Tears had been more than a defense for his mother; they had been a weapon. Myra had rarely used her own tears so cynically... but, cynically or not, he realized she was trying to use them that way now...”

once again eddie acknowledges a key difference between sonia and myra, which is that while sonia often used her emotions/distress to manipulate eddie, myra’s expressions of emotion are (for the most part, just like everyone else in the world) genuine. 

a lot of people like to point to this quote:

“The thought of simply bundling him into the closet and then standing with her back against the door until this madness had passed crossed her mind, but she was unable to bring herself to do it, although she certainly could have...”

as “proof” that myra is abusive (because having and then quickly dismissing an unpleasant thought is a moral failing, as we all know, lmfao) but that reading requires one to conveniently ignore this bit:

““I hate it when you shout at me, Eddie,” she whispered.

“Myra, I hate it when I have to,” he said, and she winced. There you go, Eddie—you hurt her again. Why don’t you just punch her around the room a few times? That would probably be kinder. And quicker.”

hmm!! seems like they both had and dismissed unpleasant thoughts about how to deal with each other/resolve the conflict at hand! it’s almost as if this was an intentional move on king’s part to help the reader understand that while neither of them genuinely want to hurt the other, the relationship is mutually unhealthy! and its very existence is hurting both of them! 

also, why does no one talk about what eddie says to her here??? myra is distressed—UNDERSTANDABLY SO—because her partner is behaving erratically and literally packing and leaving without telling her where he’s going, why, or how long he’s going to be gone. that is not how you behave in a relationship and myra is well within her rights to be frightened, confused, and upset. when she voices this (again, very reasonable!) concern, he shouts at her; when she tells him that she doesn’t like when he shouts at her, he tells her that she deserves to be shouted at. that is not a healthy or okay way to talk to a partner.

“Was that what he meant? That he had finally decided it was all right to love her? That it was all right even though she looked like his mother when his mother had been younger and even though she ate brownies in bed while watching Hardcastle and McCormick or Falcon Crest and the crumbs always got on his side and even though she wasn’t all that bright and even though she understood and condoned his remedies in the medicine cabinet because she kept her own in the refrigerator?”

this is nearly the only moment in the entirety of “Eddie Kaspbrak Takes His Medicine” where we get to see eddie’s thought process about myra when he’s not thinking through the lens of how his mother behaved. and it about sums it up. she looks like his mother, and she “understood and condoned his remedies in the medicine cabinet”—they weren’t her idea. they were a part of eddie’s life before she entered it. myra is a woman whose husband has told her that he is ill, and in response she encourages him to take his medication. that’s it. 

in addition, this passage implies (not for the first time either!) that just as myra “understands and condones” eddie’s medication, he “understands and condones” her over-eating and weight gain ("She had only been big when Eddie married her... but he sometimes thought his subconscious had seen the potential for hugeness in her...”)

there is no villain here. there are two people trapped in a mutually unhealthy relationship. both of them are deserving of sympathy and love. stop being blinded by your hatred of fat women.