poach says her new favourite word for the month of june is "uxorious" and i was surprised because i thought her feminist instincts would revolt against it, it's so very edward and mrs simpson, or like the chinese emperors who are castigated for the neglect of the affairs of state (but why should affairs of heart be blamed for it? it's his job to do the job, not hers for loving or un-loving. of couse the rosamund harwells of the world go out of their way to wind men around their little fingers, but if peter wimsey stayed home and didn't go detecting is that harriet's fault? people have duties, well and good, we all know by now that personal is not the same as important.)

poach says she was considering the comedic potential of it. i expect that could be possible; i just noticed (i've been rereading thrones dominations, can't you just tell?) that charles parker called peter "uxorious beast!" (although paton walsh did have the edward viii affair in mind - she had peter opposed and harriet for) that was unfair, he who hath wife and children giveth hostages to fortune, or something. i can't remember how it goes.) i have got a long way from the point, because what i meant to say is that poach encountered it in updike, whereas i usually see it in renaissance tracts and the like, older literature. did you know it's attested in milton's eikonoklastes "effeminate and uxorious magistrates, govern'd and overswaid at home under a feminine usurpation." i'm not surprised! (though i don't actually remember the line, i expect it's because i only skimmed the text quickly before class.) anyway. in wondering if it's at all used for comedic purposes i went and looked it up in the OED and that's when i found it has been used figuratively to apply to inanimate objects, as in uxorious tide/river/flood:

1743 FRANCIS tr. Hor., Odes I. ii. 19 Th' uxorious River glides away,..smooth-winding to the Sea.

1813 H. & J. SMITH Horace in London 19 Sir Francis..To father Thames commits his fate. In secret the uxorious tide Safe bears him to the Surrey side.

1863 CONINGTON tr. Horace, Odes I. ii. 20 Old Tiber,..spite of Jove, his banks o'erflows, Uxorious flood.

the point is, the point is, the connection i want to make is, perhaps wallace stevens's rivers being desirous of the sea could be partially interpreted in this tradition? it is afterall a poem very much about desire.

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!