Widower’s Script

A widower (with the -er added) is a man whose wife has died…that is, until he remarries! I’m interested in widowers too. Women died in childbirth or due to complications associated with it afterwards…in literature, widowers tend not to be on their own for too long regardless of their age (unlike their female counterparts) and the story usually revolves around his need for a wife to care for him and what his dependent children (usually girls) will do if he brings a new woman into the domestic environment. Jane Austen features them in her novels, so do the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell and many others.  George Bernard Shaw wrote a play called Widowers’ Houses. Sometimes widowers write about their experiences. For example, the British Literary Critic husband of novelist Iris Murdoch, wrote about his experiences after her death in Widower’s House. For more on this, see my resources list.

This is a script taken from a diary written in 1943. It contains poems and lamentations written after the man’s wife died. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s written in old Hungarian.