When describing Benjamin’s frustration with how Hildegarde has changed over the course of their marriage, the narrator uses a metaphor and imagery:
In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery—moreover, and most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste.
The metaphor here—“the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery”—compares Hildegarde’s eyes to dishware. While, at the start of their relationship, Benjamin saw her eyes as being made of “blue enamel”—a rich indigo material commonly used for expensive pots and kettles—he now sees them as “cheap crockery,” insinuating that they are like cheap dishware dyed blue. This metaphor helps readers to understand the extent to which he has fallen out of love with Hildegarde as she ages normally and he ages in reverse.
The imagery here—“her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown” and “she had become […] too anemic in her excitements”—similarly helps readers to visualize Hildegarde’s natural aging process through the eyes of a younger Benjamin. The word “anemic” is usually used to describe someone who looks pale and lethargic. While it’s likely that Hildegarde lost some of her energy and vitality while aging, the language of “unexciting brown” and “anemic in her excitements” says more about Benjamin than about Hildegarde. As he “ages” into a young man, he wants to be with someone who matches his particular developmental state, and the middle-aged Hildegarde certainly does not.
When Benjamin returns from his time fighting in the Spanish-American War, he is reunited with Hildegarde, discovering that she looks older than when he left. The narrator uses a metaphor to capture the shift in Hildegarde’s appearance:
Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on the porch, and even as he kissed her he felt with a sinking of the heart that these three years had taken their toll. She was a woman of forty now, with a faint skirmish line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressed him.
When the narrator describes the “faint skirmish line of gray hairs in [Hildegarde’s] head,” they are using a subtle military metaphor. A “skirmish line” is a military strategy in which soldiers spread out in an intentionally irregular (as opposed to linear) formation so as to disrupt or delay their opponents. The metaphor here helps readers to visualize the irregular pattern of grey hairs on Hildegarde’s head, as well as reminds them that Benjamin has just returned from war and is still viewing the world through that lens.
The fact that Hildegarde’s grey hairs “depressed him”—and that Benjamin greets her with “a sinking of the heart” because “these three years had taken their toll”—shows how, as he ages in reverse, he starts to desire women who are the same biological age as he is rather than his middle-aged wife.
