On the surface, "The Waltz" appears to be merely a woman's complaint against an inept dancing partner who moves too fast and kicks her shins. Read allegorically, the story offers a stinging assessment of marriage. Parker achieves this by setting an external voice that agrees to dance against an internal voice that complains about the experience.

While the external voice is one of compliance, the internal voice is characterized by exaggeration: "I guess I'm as well off here," she tells herself of her waltzing.

"As well off as if I were in a cement mixer in full action." Yet the waltz does not last for "one-hundred years" or for "one-thousand years," but for a significantly specific number: "And here I've been locked in his noxious embrace for the thirty-five years this waltz has lasted."

Parker was thirty-five years old when she divorced her first husband in...