The 'Woman' (2)

McCarthy needed something that is no longer present to represent life as it used to be in the time before.

The Woman's death enables her to be stuck in time - not necessarily just before the apocalypse, but also after when she took her own life. This feeling of being 'stuck' enables McCarthy to refer back to the woman at any point in the novel, but also at any point in her past. Unlike the Man and the Boy, whose lives can only be thought of as they are in the present, the Woman has the ability to escape time and exists at whatever stage in life the Man dreams of her in. Therefore, the woman can act as a representation of her former life with the Man, but also as a deterrence to the Man visiting his past - as with her constantly present, his memories are bitter and painful.

The Woman has a powerful and ambiguous symbolic function in the novel: she represents both the giving of life and the temptation of death.

The Man, during his flashbacks, speaks unaffectionately of the Woman during the birth of their son and refers to her only when mentioning that her cries "meant nothing" to him. The birth extract concentrates solely on the Boy, giving the reader an impression that the Woman is simply a childbearer to the Man at this point, and no longer his wife. This alienates the constructs from the reader, as the woman becomes simply a symbol of life - and possesses this virtue exclusively, quite dissimilar to the role of a mother in a 'traditional family' in the external world.