It's strange how separate events
seem, upon reflection, to be the same energy,
expressed in different ways.
A Rune reading refers to the Phoenix, that mystical bird which consumes itself in fire and then rises from its own ashes.
A derisive comment made by one of the judges of a women's- only book contest blends with a conversation with a friend about the play "A Doll's House."
And of course, it's Mother's Day.
Must mothers, too, rise from the ashes? Is there a way to have a self in a social environment where it's culturally demanded that you give your "self" over in your deepest relationships?
"Too many of the books were about women having nervous breakdowns, leaving their husbands and going off to find themselves." Val Hennessey, Chief Book Critic for the Daily Mail.
A provoking criticism from Ms. Hennessey, who was one of the five- woman panel to judge the recent inaugural $45,000 Orange Prize for female authors writing in English. Worse still, a disappointing dismissal of the pain many women appear to be suffering to have a self.
To me, it's a significant observation on how unhappy, or unable to cope, many women of a certain age appear to be with their lives. According to Ms. Hennessey, many women who write, want to write about this unhappiness that either drives women to a nervous breakdown or to a radical action, in quest of a self. Writers reflect the world around them. The stories are being told and in increasing numbers, whether Ms. Hennessey is bored with the subject or not.
The subject of a woman leaving home to find herself was anything but boring in the late 1800's when Henrik Ibsen wrote "A Doll's House." Audiences were shocked. At artistic risk, Ibsen took on the unspeakable task of showing the price one woman must pay to relate to her social environment. To never have had a 'self' is a dear price indeed.
Nora:
"Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task
(of raising children). There is another task I must undertake
first. I must try and educate myself--you are not the man to help
me in that. I must do that for myself. And that is why I am going
to leave you now."
("A Doll's House" Henrik Ibsen)
This struggle for an "awakening" is not a recent phenomenon of behavior. When Ibsen brought to light Nora's struggle for self a hundred years ago he was immediately criticized, his were plays called immoral. How dare he mention such a secret unhappiness and allow a wife and mother to walk out the door because it appeared it was the only way she could be a whole person?
If what Ms. Hennessey says is true, this quest for self has become so commonplace, it's "drivel." How can something so emotionally expensive to the entire human race be drivel? It is a very real crack in our social foundation. And if it is happening in significant numbers shouldn't we at least acknowledge it as concern when women feel there is no place in the home for them to have a self?
And, it's a real concern. It's not fiction. I believe all of us know at least one woman who has reached such a point; either self- destruction or self-preservation. What in our social environment leads to such a crisis?
And why must we label this very real occurrence as either immoral or drivel? Is it not a part of human nature to want to have a self? Is it not a rite of passage, a course of human development, that could be accomodated for women in a much less drastic way? How much better the world would be if the majority of it's population felt better about their "selves."
May 12, 1996 All Rights Reserved