Every Day A Little Death
Sondheim as feminist literature
I’m so happy to introduce our first guest essay since joining Substack. It is written by Christina Baker, an NYC-based journalist who writes about state and local government, disability, drug policy and more. She covers the Northeast region of the municipal finance industry for The Bond Buyer. You can follow her on Twitter at @christy_bakery or Instagram @christybakery. Her piece begins below:
“You’re a good wife, Charlotte. The best.”
“That’s a comforting thought to take to town with me, dear. It just may keep me from cutting my throat on the tram.”
Every woman who dates men knows what she’s dealing with.
We’ve all surveyed the mountains of raised toilet seats, repressed emotions, and Andrew Tate videos, and said something like, “men are stupid, men are vain; love’s disgusting, love’s insane.”
In fact, A Little Night Music’s depiction of straight relationships cuts so close to home that it ruins the show for some viewers — when I first showed the proshot of the 1990 version to my best friend, she was yelling at the screen, filled with so much frustration for the women and hatred for the men that she couldn’t find any enjoyment in the musical.
Anyway, I loved it. The frank depiction of misogyny in heterosexual relationships makes A Little Night Music one of Sondheim’s most political works. And its sincere exploration of how women cope with this mistreatment — with its conflicted conclusions — is more insightful than plenty of feminist discourse today.
Let’s set the stage for “Every Day A Little Death,” the heteropessimist anthem.
Charlotte and her husband Carl-Magnus have a long-standing arrangement where he cheats on her, lately with actress Desiree Armfeldt. Anne, an 18-year-old who got married 11 months ago, only discovered her husband Fredrik’s affair with Desiree when he took her to Desiree’s play the night before.
When Carl-Magnus realized his mistress was being “unfaithful,” he became enraged, forced her to have sex with him, then dispatched Charlotte to attempt to blow up Anne and Fredrik’s relationship.
It’s all pretty brutal, isn’t it?
In “Every Day a Little Death,” Charlotte introduces Anne to the horrors of heterosexual relationships.
Her husband’s behavior creates indignities in the domestic sphere:
“in the curtains, in the silver, in the buttons, in the bread”
And in the bedroom:
“I’m before him on my knees, and he kisses me.”
At first, it seems Anne is new to this view of relationships; she tells Charlotte before the song that her marriage has been wonderful, and listens silently for the first verse, finally agreeing when Charlotte says “I think love’s a dirty business.”
But in the second half of the song, we learn that Anne has her own collection of little deaths, which she lists in harmony with Charlotte:
“On the lips and in the eyes, in the murmurs, in the pauses, in the gestures, in the sighs”
Anne isn’t learning that heterosexual marriage is degrading, she’s learning that she’s allowed to express it. She’s learning about heteropessimism.
Heteropessimism, coined by Asa Seresin in a 2019 essay, is a behavior in which people lament and distance themselves from heterosexuality, still fully intending to participate in it. Most common among women (for whom heterosexuality is surely a worse deal), its popularity has blossomed in the 21st century thanks to social media, increased knowledge of sexism, and increased visibility of queer relationships.
Heteropessimists, Seresin explains, are responding to very real problems with men and straight relationships, but draw the conclusion that the problem lies with those men and straight relationships, rather than patriarchy and heterosexual culture. And, as they cannot stop being straight, they adopt a defeatist mindset.
Heteropessimism is also known as heterofatalism — “I would murder him right there but first I die.”
ALNM is both an expression and a refutation of heteropessimism, showcasing its causes, its effects, and its futility.
Charlotte, the show’s most vocal proponent of heteropessimism, said she lets her husband humiliate her because she loves him, but what other choice does she have? It’s the 1900s, all men are like this. Her sister has renounced men to teach gymnastics to children with intellectual disabilities, but we can’t all be gymnastics teachers.
Moreover, as Seresin describes, society often expects women to assume a heteropessimist attitude. Act too enthusiastic about your husband’s behavior and you’re clingy and annoying; try to change it and you’re an unbearable bitch. Complaining about it is okay, as long as it’s not in front of him.
The men in the show express these sentiments. Carl-Magnus calls women “insufferable” in “In Praise of Women.” In “You Must Meet My Wife,” Fredrik describes Anne thus: “How charming, how winning! How unlike a wife.”
This explains why Desiree is so hesitant to tell Fredrik about her feelings (and his daughter), and has an affair with Carl-Magnus, whom she clearly hates; why Charlotte, on her birthday, follows her husband to crash Desiree’s party; and why Anne, in “Soon,” reassures herself that she’s “endearing” and “not domineering.”
Expressing heteropessimism allows women to form bonds, like Charlotte and Anne’s, but without feminist grounding, it cannot create solidarity. In fact, Seresin argues, it encourages individualism.
We can see the danger of heteropessimism in this fantastic monologue Charlotte delivers before singing “Every Day a Little Death:”
As a man, my husband could be rated a louse, a bastard, a conceited, puffed-up, adulterous egomaniac. He constantly makes me do the most degrading, the most humiliating things, like … why do I put up with it? Why do I let him treat me like an intimidated corporal in his regiment? Why? Why? Why? I’ll tell you why. I despise him. I hate him. I love him. Oh, damn that woman! May she rot forever in some infernal dressing rooms with lipstick of fire and scalding mascara.
Charlotte never considers why her husband disrespects her, nor does she notice a pattern in his attitudes toward women. Instead, she determines that she loves him, which leaves her no choice but to put up with his mistreatment. Then she pivots to attacking Desiree. (Note that Charlotte’s idea of hell involves emblems of Desiree’s fame and femininity.)
Heteropessimism creates a soothing bond between Charlotte and Anne, but not a productive one. They spend Act II trying to humiliate their husbands and Desiree. The show’s other women, who are even more individually minded, never attempt to help each other or combat the patriarchy at all.
A Little Night Music is full of characters who mistakenly believe they’re trapped in their social roles. Henrik is desperately trying to enter the priesthood, for instance, and Desiree feels she can’t leave her fizzling acting career unless she marries Frederick. Although some characters manage to break out of their individual circumstances, none of the women ever realize that the gender roles they’re stuck in are socially constructed and could be changed.
Despite Sondheim and Wheeler’s brutal depictions of misogyny, A Little Night Music doesn’t have a political reputation. That’s likely because of the show’s “happy” ending, in which the central couples are paired off and every character seems to get what they want.
But, as Sondheim writes in Finishing the Hat, the ending is subtle, and “the apparent tragedy is comically averted, but the submerged one is not.”
I don’t find the tragedy very submerged, to be honest. These women are not better off after reconciling with their husbands. None of the problems we saw in the first act are actually solved.
It would be too much to expect Desiree and Charlotte to leave these men. They love them, although I don’t quite see why. But the musical indicates that the men will never apologize or face any consequences for their behavior.
Why do the women accept this? It might help to look to Hannah Wang’s description of heteropessimism as an “anesthetizing” force. If you believe that men are stupid and vain and domineering, that they can’t help but leave you for teenagers, you’re unlikely to expect them to change very much. The best thing you can do is to jump ship to another man, like Anne does.
In her essay on heteropessimism, Seresin quotes Judith Butler’s musings on heterosexual identity: “Precisely because it is bound to fail, and yet endeavors to succeed, the project of heterosexual identity is propelled into an endless repetition of itself.”
The characters in A Little Night Music are also propelled into endlessly repeating themselves and their mistakes as they wait, futilely, for the sun to set.
As Carl-Magnus carries Charlotte off into the night, the narrators sing them farewell:
“Men are stupid, men are vain. Love’s disgusting, love’s insane. A humiliating business — oh how true!”
Listening links:
Have a listen to this rare recording of “Bang!” This number was cut for “In Praise of Women,” and is much less flattering to Carl-Magnus:
And here is “In Praise of Women” itself:
… and “Every Day a Little Death”: