Facing the "Ick" Factor

A few months ago, I read an interesting blog post on Frances Hunter's American Heroes Blog that talked about William Clark and his two wives (sequential, not concurrent, by the way). Clark met the girls who became his wives when they were tweens (11 and 14, to be specific) and he was "just past 30," according to the blog. He eventually married the younger of the girls, Julia Hancock, when he was 37 and she was 16. As the blog author said, "...we may recoil with a certain ick factor today...."

The book I just finished had a similar "ick factor."

A Mixed Reaction

(Sorry, this will have lots of spoilers.)

Somewhere along the way, A Northern Light and I parted ways. At first, I loved it. The main character, Mattie, reminded me in many ways of my teen self. She loved words and writing, but her day-to-day life made it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to see how she could follow her dreams of studying literature and writing her stories. I liked the dilemma she was facing (and wrote about it in an earlier post). I liked the supporting characters of Weaver and Royal and Miss Willcox and Mattie's family.  I liked the slice-of-life glimpse into early 20th-century upstate New York, where the rich came to vacation in the mountains and the poor made a living by serving them.

But toward the end of the book, Jennifer Donnelly made several choices as a writer that I disagreed with and that left me with a bad taste in my mouth as far as this book is concerned. First, I think the turnaround of Emmie Hubbard was just too darn convenient. Emmie has been a -- well, I don't know what she has been. A victim? Royal's father has definitely been taking advantage of her for years. A prostitute? She's been accepting his "gifts" of the first, freshest milk, etc. for all those years. Whatever she is, she's definitely weak. I think Donnelly wants us to view her as a victim, but I can't see it entirely that way.  But, I digress - her turnaround.  At the end of the book, Weaver's mother has moved in with Emmie and, in the space of a week or so, has completely reformed Emmie, so that she is clean and respectable and able to provide for her children. I don't buy it. For one thing, if Weaver's mother has been living across the road from Emmie all these years (and it came as sort of a surprise to me when that was revealed at the end of the book), and if she's such a good influence, and if everyone in the area knew what was going on with Emmie and Royal's father, and if she thought Emmie was being wronged - then why didn't she do anything about it before???? I think it's because it ties in to something else that bothered me about the book - the way Donnelly wanted us to feel about Royal.

I'll admit I've changed my mind about having Mattie get together with Royal since my previous post. I really don't think they would be compatible. She is attracted to him because he's good-looking and because she thinks he is attracted to her, despite her plain and bookish self. She doesn't really care for him or have anything in common with him and isn't really interested in the things he cares about, so for them to marry would definitely be a mistake.

However, I think Donnelly wants to push all the blame for this failed relationship onto Royal. The reason he wants to marry Mattie is because he sees the opportunity to build a farm "empire." He doesn't love her or care about her interest in books. The two things that eventually make Mattie decide to dump him are that he is going to pay the back taxes on Emmie's land so he can have it (which means Emmie will be homeless) and that he brings Mattie a used cookbook for a birthday present. Although she doesn't say so, I imagine that Donnelly wants us to say, "The nerve of the guy!" and write him off as a jerk. Well, I refuse to do that.

What's wrong with Royal wanting to get Emmie's land? She hasn't been meeting her responsibilities for years, either for paying her taxes or for taking care of her kids (they regularly come to Mattie's family's house to eat). He wants to take the land and make it productive. Then add to that the fact that his father has been having a long-standing affair with Emmie, and Royal sees his chance to get her out of their lives. I totally understand his motivation, and don't see it as being particularly ignoble. Yet Donnelly wants us to see him as selfish and grasping, willing to turn a mother out on the streets. And she even has Weaver's mama step in and straighten Emmie out so Emmie's not a bad mother anymore. I just didn't like that whole bit.

Another thing I didn't like was making Royal into a jerk for giving Mattie the used cookbook for her birthday. When she sees the gift and knows it is a book, she gets her hopes up, only to have them dashed. The way it comes across in the story, that's the worst thing a guy can do - be so insensitive to his girl's feelings and so unaware of her desires. Like the "right" guy for a girl is going to be perfectly in tune with her and understand exactly what she wants. Come on. I bet most women out there have had a gift like the used cookbook. Maybe it's something you open and you think, "Why did he think I would like this??"  Or maybe it is a useful and totally impersonal household appliance. Yet the husband or boyfriend who gave the lame gift has enough other, good qualities that you'll let it pass. At least Royal thought about Mattie enough to remember her birthday.  He should get some points for that, instead of being turned into an insensitive lout. Let's face it - he's not the only problem in that relationship. Mattie didn't care about his dreams, either. She was thinking about Emily Dickinson instead of concentrating while he was talking about a new kind of corn.

As I said earlier, I don't have a problem with Mattie deciding she doesn't want to marry Royal, after all. That's actually a pretty good message for young women - don't marry the first guy who says you're pretty if you know you have nothing in common. What I didn't like was having Royal be villified for being that guy.

Finally, I didn't like having Mattie just leave at the end. All through the book, she's been so concerned about keeping the promise she made to her dying mother; at the end, she doesn't even think about that. She doesn't seem to care at all what will happen to her family, especially to Lou, the sister who seems to me to have some emotional problems following their mother's death.  Mattie's teacher once told her, "You are many things, Mattie Gokey, but selfish is not one of them." I disagree.

In Memory of Mr. Malvern

(February 22, 2009)

It's not kosher, I know, to admit that any of the characters in your writing are based on real people. Too much drama can arise as a result! Today, however, I'm going to make an exception to that rule, because one of the people who was the real-life model for a favorite character in Dancing in the Checkered Shade died Friday night.

His name was Malvern Gray, and he was the sweetest older man I've ever known. He was 88 years old and I guess he died of complications from pneumonia (not sure about that, though). His wife told me this morning they had celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary on Thursday. My family and I sat behind the two of them at church just about every Sunday, and I always found it so touching to see the little intimacies they still showed after so many years of marriage, like holding hands during the hymns. I guess that's why, when I needed a model of a loving, life-long marriage for newlyweds Maggie and John David to learn from, I thought of Mr. and Mrs. Gray.  I hope the portrayal in the book does them justice.

Settling...In a Specific Case

I just finished Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring last night, and I couldn't help thinking of the recent "self-help" book for women, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb.  Now, I haven't read Gottlieb's book, and from the reviews I've read, I believe I wouldn't necessarily agree with what she argues in the book.  But in the specific case of Griet, I think "settling" was probably a mighty good choice.

(Sorry - there just have to be spoilers in this discussion.)

 In this imaginative account of the backstory for Vermeer's painting, Griet, the girl in the painting, develops a strong attraction to Vermeer.  I think a huge part of the attraction is that he represents a world Griet treasures, yet can't be part of in her actual life. I don't mean that he's of the upper class and (on the surface) wealthy; it's the artist's eye that appeals to her, looking at clouds and seeing ALL the colors that are there instead of just mushing them all together and calling them white.  She appreciates the way he orders the elements that go into the paintings to lead people to look at them in just the right way.  She understands that when he looks at something, he doesn't just see the surface of it, but what the "truth" of it is (maybe I'm exaggerating a little there).

On the other hand, she always seems to notice the blood residue around Pieter's fingernails and the smell of meat that clings to him, even when he's not at the meat stall.  It bothers her that he doesn't pay attention to those details.   Although in the end, she chooses to marry Pieter, I think if circumstances had been different and had allowed for it, she would have chosen Vermeer in a heartbeat. 

That would have been a mistake.

I say that because of respect. As I was reading the final portions of the book, when Vermeer was painting her portrait, I was completely annoyed with him because he had so little respect for Griet.  He didn't care that keeping the fact that he was doing the painting a secret made Griet's life with the other women in the household miserable.  (Actually, that started much earlier, when he ordered her to help him with grinding the paints.)  Because he didn't want to have to put up with the flack he would catch from his wife, he left the entire burden on Griet to bear - not just the burden of the truth, but the burden of what the wife and the other maid feared because they didn't know the truth.  I really disliked him when he gave Griet no choice about the earrings. So what if she had to go through the pain of piercing her ears herself? So what if wearing his wife's earrings would  threaten Griet's economic security and that of her family? Vermeer had no concern other than that he wanted to look at the earrings actually in her ear so he could paint the "truth."  He even made her pierce the other ear - the one that wouldn't even be seen in the painting - and wear both earrings so it would be "true."  And once the painting was finished, Griet felt his fascination with her was finished, as well.  She was really no different from the jewelry box or the blue table rug that were part of the set pieces in other paintings.

Pieter, though, respected Griet enough to let her keep her secrets. Sure, marrying him meant moving into that patriarchal system that marriage has always been, where he would be the dominant party.  Yet, in the specifics of this marriage, I get the sense that Pieter thinks of Griet as his partner in the enterprise. She may be cutting up bloody sides of beef rather than sitting for a painting, but with Pieter, what she wants and what she thinks matter.

So, how does this relate to "settling"?  Some people I know argue that a person should never give up passion.  They think it is most important in a relationship to be "soulmates" who understand each other and who value the same things.  "Settling" for less than that, they say, is to do yourself a grave disservice. Yet I think if Griet had kept trying to maintain the relationship with Vermeer (if she had the option - Catharina probably wasn't going to give her the choice), she would have been miserable throughout her life.  There might have been moments of pleasure - those fleeting times when Vermeer actually seemed to notice and appreciate her -- but they probably would have been few and far between.  By "settling" for Pieter, Griet actually opened up the world for herself.  She became a respected businesswoman with the right to refuse to serve people who were rude to her.  She had her own family and she helped provide for them.  Pieter allowed her the privacy of her past and her thoughts without prying into everything and without having to know the entire "truth" of her - he was satisfied with the part that was useful for life.  Pieter wouldn't have made Griet wear the second earring.

I'm not in favor of settling just for the sake of having someone.  But when the most important factors like basic respect and an attitude of love and equality fall into place, why sweat the small details?  Does the bloodstain around his fingernails really matter THAT much?

Hey, Girls, Be Glad It's the 21st Century

My 11-year-old daughter has recently decided she wants to be a zoologist and work with big cats. She also wants to be a chef, thanks to too much time spent watching the Food Network with her dad. Whether her goals will stay the same over the next ten years or not, I don't know. But I do know she at least has a chance to be those things, which is more than could have been said had she been born in a different time.

I'm reading Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende right now, and I just can't keep from thinking about how restricted women's lives used to be. (Warning: There may be spoilers below!) The part of the book that got me started thinking about this theme was when Eliza turned 16 and her guardian/mother figure, Rose Sommers, begins to try to set up a "proper" marriage for Eliza. That's what girls did for most of human history - get married, whether it's really what they wanted to do or not. I think about Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman that I read last summer - Birdy isn't even old enough (only 13) to really have any idea of what she might want to do (assuming she had the choice), and yet her father is already searching around for a husband for her. Even women who were capable of taking care of themselves in a lot of ways, like Hannah in Hannah Fowler, realized that the world was stacked against single women. Eliza's guardian, Rose, is a good example of that. She never married, but she still had to be attached to a man's household in order to have any social standing. Luckily, she had an unmarried brother for whom she could serve as mistress of the household. Otherwise, she would have had a very sad, marginalized life.

I'm also struck by how much marriage has been used as an economic tool throughout history. Birdy's father isn't concerned with whether Birdy will like her new husband, but whether her marriage will add to the family's prestige and wealth. Mary Hoffman's The Falconer's Tale has at least two examples of a young woman who was married off to an older man to enhance her family's economic position. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise to me, but the practice really reduced a daughter to a commodity.

I suppose it's even more specific - it's the young woman's virginity that is a commodity. In Alice Turnbull's Alice in Love and War, Alice realized she had "lowered her market value" as soon as she slept with Robin. In Daughter of Fortune, there are three women who are seduced by lovers and face the consequences of lowered market value: Rose, who never marries and gets to/has to serve as housekeeper and hostess for a brother who silently but most definitely holds her "fallen" status over her head; Joaquin Andrieta's mother, who is thrown out of her family when she becomes pregnant and who is forced to raise her son in abject poverty; and Eliza, who actually gets off easiest, I think. I'm not sure what would have happened had she stayed in Valapraiso rather than running away to follow Joaquin to California. She might have faced a fate similar to Rose's, or she might have been tossed out, like Joaquin's mother. But because she broke the accepted social norms and found a way to follow Joaquin, she gets to have a satisfying relationship with Tao Chi'en (I think - I'm not completely finished yet, but I've read ahead a little, and it looks like that's where things are going). She gets a happy ending - though people at the time wouldn't have thought so, since she married outside her race. I guess they would have thought that fate was more disgraceful than either of the others.

One last thing strikes me as I read this. How unfair is it that the women have to pay for their lack of sexual self-control, but the men get a free pass, so to speak? Rose is put in a very restricted social role that could be blown apart if the story of her past was revealed. Joaquin's mother is sentenced to a life of desperate poverty and an early death from disease because she got pregnant out of wedlock. Eliza takes drastic action to get to the father of her baby, even if it means the danger of stowing away on a ship to a place she's never been before. Yet Joaquin and Eliza's father, John Sommers, get to go on their merry ways, pursuing their dreams of gold and their lives without another thought of the circumstances faced by the lover they left behind. Unfair!

I'm not trying to argue that girls should get a free pass for a lack of self-control, any more than boys should. These stories just make me reflect on what limited lives women used to have, and to feel fortunate that the world has changed in ways that allowed me to marry for love, not economics, and that give my daughter the chance to be a zoologist chef who feeds her leftovers to the tigers.

This should be required reading....

(Note: This entry will be rife with spoilers!)

When I was a teenager, I ordered a paperback copy of a little novel called I Want to Keep My Baby through the Scholastic book orders. It was about a teen girl who got pregnant and whose teen boyfriend refused to marry her. She decided to keep the baby and raise it on her own. I think the reason I bought it was because I was curious about sex, and reading about it in a book (although I don't remember there being very much, ha ha) was preferable to talking about it with my parents.

Well, that was a long time ago, and the world has changed a lot, but some things haven't changed. Teens are still curious about sex, and they generally don't want to talk to their parents about it. And they don't have to - messages about sex are everywhere in popular culture. Watch a half-hour of music videos, in any genre -- flip through the ads and articles in popular magazines -- read the books at the top of the young adult list -- you'll see plenty about sex, and most of it is much more explicit than anything in I Want to Keep My Baby. However, there's one thing you don't see a lot of, and that's consequences of sex.

That's why I say Ann Turnbull's fine historical novel, Alice in Love and War, should be required reading, at least for teen girls. Alice is one of them, albeit living 300+ years ago. She feels stifled and trapped on the farm owned by her aunt and uncle, who adopted her when her father died. She's 16 years old, old enough to be recognized as a sexual being (including by her uncle, who has recently begun to make advances toward her). She longs for escape and love. Both present themselves in the form of Robin, a handsome, flirting young soldier with the Cavilier army (this is during the English Civil War). Alice falls hard for Robin, and provoked by the fear that he will be leaving soon when the army moves on, she gives her virginity to him in a clandestine meeting in an abandoned shepherd's hut.

Part of Alice knows she shouldn't have done it, but she justifies her decision by convincing herself that Robin loves her - the fact that he wants to make love to her proves that, doesn't it? When the army is ready to move on, she begs Robin to take her with him, and he does. For the next several months, Alice follows the army. She is very lonely, even though she makes friends; she has little time to be with Robin -- except at night, when he always manages to find a place where the two of them can be together. Just before the army is going on leave for winter, Alice discovers she is pregnant. When she tells Robin, he evades her insistence that he must marry her, and when she wakes the next morning, he's gone. He's left her a note and some money, but no mention of marriage or of a way she can contact him.

Long story short, Alice goes through the pain and heartbreak of miscarrying the baby. When Robin does return in the spring, Alice has to seek him out and confront him, at which time he confesses that he is already married and had, in fact, gone home for the birth of his second child with his wife. Alice has made friends among the wives of other soldiers, so she remains with the army. Eventually, however, her friends are killed and she manages to find refuge in a small village nearby. There she meets a Parliamentary soldier who is severely wounded, and she helps nurse him back to health. As she sits by his bed and reads to him and talks to him, she falls in love with him, but she fears a godly man like Jem will never have anything to do with a woman with her history. When Jem returns to the army, they continue a correspondence, and eventually he asks her to marry him. Alice gets a happy ending, after all.

I think there are so many messages of value in this story for young women. Yes, one of them is that sex is a pleasurable thing that draws people together. However, the story also brings home the message that if the situation surrounding the sex is not right, the worry and insecurity and shame outweigh any pleasure. From the first time Alice slept with Robin, she was worried - about losing him, about the perceptions of other people, about becoming pregnant. She constantly has to reassure herself that he loves her, drawing on any little sign she can muster - or manufacture. Her married friends and their intimate knowledge of their husbands (and I mean "intimate" in the sense of knowing something deeply, not just sexually) contrasts sharply with the fact that Alice knows almost nothing about Robin, and she feels that lack. She tells herself that Robin takes care of her, but looking at it from the outside, we can see that he leaves her to fend for herself during the day, reappearing each night to take her somewhere that they can be together - even if that place is shared with a dozen other couples. There's no getting around it - Alice made a mistake, and even when she won't admit it to herself, she knows it.

I'm glad Turnbull redeemed Alice in the end, though, and gave us a picture of a positive courtship. Through the sickbed conversations and their letters, Alice and Jem come to know each other as people long before the relationship becomes a sexual one. Wait, I take that back. Alice feels herself attracted to Jem fairly early in their relationship, and I'm sure the same is true of Jem. But they don't allow that attraction to get out of control and to dominate the relationship. Their sexual attraction to each other is only one facet of their entire, healthy relationship. On their wedding night, Alice "felt not only passionate but also safe and certain in a way she had never felt with Robin."

In my humble opinion, that's the message teens need to get about sex. Parents and teachers and preachers may say it over and over, but I think sometimes a story may be more effective in allowing teens to reach their own conclusions. And that's why I think this book ought to be required reading.

Some Favorite Love Scenes

I'm still plugging along in The Big Knives (and I still think the cover with the woman on it is misleading), but I decided in honor of Valentine's Day I would look back at some of my favorite love scenes. I'm sure I'll think of others as soon as this is posted.

#10 - The Rough-Face Girl by Rafe Martin and David Shannon

Then they heard footsteps coming along the path, closer and closer. The entrance flap of the wigwam lifted up, and in stepped the Invisible Being.
And when he saw her sitting there he said, "At last we have been found out." Then, smiling kindly, he added, "And oh, my sister, but she is beautiful."

This is a picture-book retelling of the Cinderella story, but you develop such sympathy for the Rough-Face Girl that the moment when the Invisible Being acknowledges her as the woman he will marry is very satisfying.

#9 - The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

He could not believe his eyes at...our good fortune right there, big as life. After I put down the poultice and untied the horse, Thomas grabbed me about the waist and kissed me and spun me around. He kept saying, "I can't tell you how sure I was we'd have to backtrack! I didn't see any future her, I was as low as I've ever been, but now...!"
Well, how were we to know? At any rate, it was a splendid thing to feel my husband's arms and hands press against me and to lean into his chest and to hear his joyful voice in my ear, and to look into his face and have him put his fingers into my hair and take all the pins out, one by one, and then pause to put them carefully in the pocket of his shirt. Then I shook my hair out, and it fell to almost the middle of my skirt, and we went inside the cabin.

This is a marriage of convenience between a abolitionist pioneer in Kansas Territory and a plain "old maid" that grows to be more, though the Lidie's telling of their love is very restrained (which, to me, makes it even more intimate). Unfortunately, the marriage doesn't last long; shortly after this scene, Thomas is murdered.

#8 - Judith of France - Margaret Leighton

Already the figures crowding there were growing smaller. Above them all she could see Baudoin Bras-de-fer sitting his horse like a rock in the midst of a whirlpool, by some miracle keeping order in all the confused and desperate haste.
Across the glittering surface of the water their glances met -- and held. Something caught sharply in Judith's throat. A small, desperate voice - was it her own? - was whispering "No! No! No!" to the lift and fall of the oars that were carryng her away. Inexorably the distance widened, nevertheless, and she raised her hand in a hopeless little gesture of farewell.
She saw surprise in Baudoin's face. Slowly, with his bright, intent gaze still holding hers, he lifted his hand to his helmet in an answering salute.

I didn't say they were all happy scenes.

#7 - These Happy Golden Years - Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura opened the small package that Almanzo gave her. The white paper unfolded; there was a white box inside. She lifted its lid. There in a nest of soft white cotton lay a gold bar pin. On its flat surface was etched a little house, and before it along the bar lay a tiny lake, and a spray of grasses and leaves.
"Oh, it's beautiful," she breathed. "Thank you!"
"Can't you thank a fellow better than that?" he asked, and then he put his arms around her while Laura kissed him and whispered, "I am glad you came back."

Almanzo, you rascal!!

#6 - The Edge of Time - Loula Grace Erdman

"Well, I must be going. Good-by, Bethany."
He took her in his arms and kissed her, gently, as if he meant to be gone only a little while. Then his arms tightened around her, and he kissed her several times -- roughly, so that she knew that is she said one little word, maybe, or let one tear slip down her face, he might not leave her at all.
She did not say the word, shed the tear.
"Good-by," she said. "Don't worry - I'll get along fine."
She drew back just a little, but enough so that he remembered it was time to go.
He left her there, beside the dugout door. She watched him ride away; she continued to watch him, waving to him each time he turned to look back. And when he had at last disappeared into the vast reaches of the plains, she went back inside. She threw herself down across the bed and cried for a long time. After that she felt better.

This book is not that well-known, but I can see a HUGE influence on my own writing.

#5 - Hannah Fowler - Janice Holt Giles

He thought how it was you learned so much about somebody when you lived with them, things they never even knew themselves, likely, and how it made them so much closer - like a youngun of your own flesh and blood -- sweet, somehow, and kin. Like the way Hannah had of being shy and awkward before folks, sometimes even with him....And for all her bigness and smartness, she liked it best when he was some place handy. She never would say so...but when you got to know her you could tell the difference in the look on her face when she was contented and when she wasn't. She didn't know how her face changed when he came in and told her he had to go off somewhere. Not that she would ever say one word against it. She would get busy and fix him a bait to take...get him ready to go, not even knowing that the shine of her eyes had dulled and a little line between them had puckered. It made him wish he never had to go.

I like this one because it is from the male point of view.

#4 - Ruth 3:7-10

When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. In the middle of the night something startled the man, and he turned and discovered a woman lying at his feet.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer."
"The Lord bless you, my daughter," he replied. "This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier. You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. And now, my daughter, don't be afraid. I will do for you all you ask."

Ruth took quite a risk, but Boaz is just a really good man.

#3 - The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare

"Hold a minute, Captain!" called a voice. A commotion near the door had been scarcely noticed. "There's a fellow here says he has an important witness for the case."
Every voice was suddenly stilled. Almost paralyzed with dread, Kit turned slowly to face a new accuser. On the threshold of the room stood Nat Eaton, slim, straight-shouldered, without a trace of mockery in his level blue eyes.

What could be more romantic than having the man you love show up to save you from being burned as a witch?

#2 - The Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope

"You're not talking," said Christopher. "Go on talking."
"What do you want me to talk of?" asked Kate helplessly.
"I don't care," said Christopher. "Whatever you like. Anything. Only talk."
Kate cast wildly around in her mind for the 'anything,' wishing more than ever that it was her father who was sitting there, her father or Master Roger or the Lady Elizabeth or Alicia. Surely that was the least God could have done for him, the very least.
"Christopher," she blurted out, "do you ever think about food?"

I was charmed by the way Christopher and Kate fall in love by talking. They can't see each other at all, so their whole relationship is built on their talking.

#1 - Forged in the Fire - Ann Turnbull

We heard faintly, from a neighboring street, the nightwatchman's call: "Nine o'clock, and all's well!"
I broke free then. I went to the window and stood with my back to Will, looking out at the yard and passageway. Snow lay thick on the ground, and big soft flakes fell steadily against the window and built up on the ledge, cocooning us.
"If I'm to get home..." I began.
He came and stood behind me, put his hands on my arms, kissed the nape of my neck.
"Don't go," he said. "Stay with me, Susanna. Please."

Ok, so this is traditional romantic stuff. I'm still a sucker for it.

Virginia Woolf was on to something.....

You probably know the famous line from Virginia Woolf: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." In a break from my usual reading fare, I recently finished a non-fiction work called A History of the Wife, by Marilyn Yalom. After following the history of wives from ancient Jewish and Greek civilizations to modern times, I think Virginia Woolf had it right, and I'm going to offer this paraphrase of her statement: "A woman must have money of her own and control of her own decisions before she can be truly productive."

As I was reading Yalom's book, I kept thinking of the other books I've read this year that featured women who were married, or who were trying to get married, and one in which the girl was trying to avoid getting married. With this post, I'd like to try to pull together some of those thoughts.

First, I'll talk about A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer. To be honest with you, it wasn't really my kind of book - I'm not a fan of the "man (or girl) against nature" type of story in which a girl has to struggle alone to survive against every kind of natural phenomenon you can imagine (think Julie of the Wolves or Island of the Blue Dolphins. Award-winning, but just not my thing). This particular version of that story is set in Africa, with the girl (Nhamo) running away to escape a forced marriage to a cruel older man with two other wives. Nhamo's grandmother comes up with the escape plan and gives Nhamo some gold nuggets to wear in a little package around her neck. The gold nuggets then disappear from the story until the very end, when the people who have rescued Nhamo from the wilderness find them. The character who tells Nhamo about finding the gold is a woman who is a scientist, and she advises Nhamo to start a bank account with the gold. She tells Nhamo her grandmother gave the gold to help Nhamo avoid the fate of every other girl in the village. The grandmother's wish is that Nhamo will not marry young and become a virtual slave, but that she will have a chance to get education and develop her mind so she can have choices in life.

As I was reading that, I realized how important a gift her grandmother had given Nhamo; by giving her money, she made it possible for Nhamo to have some control over what happened to her, instead of having to relinquish control to a husband in exchange for him supplying the food and shelter she needed to live.

That leads me to think about Hannah Fowler by Janice Holt Giles. Hannah finds herself in the opposite position to Nhamo. Hannah's father has died, leaving her in the Kentucky wilderness with nothing more than a few household goods. While Hannah is a big, strong woman who is probably capable of staking out her own claim and being successful in raising crops, she gives in to the social pressure that tells her a woman shouldn't even try to do that. Faced with a string of potential suitors who recognize the value of a woman's help in taming the wilderness, Hannah bows to the pressure - but on her own terms. She searches out the man who helped her and her father in the wilderness and, in a break with social tradition, asks him to marry her. Fortunately for Hannah, she's made a good choice, and Tice Fowler turns out to be exactly the kind of companion, lover, partner that women are looking for in marriage.

Those two cases would seem to give credibility to my paraphrase of Woolf's axiom - at least for the lower classes. Ironically, though, the more money a woman (or her birth family) had, the less likely she was to have control over who she would marry, for most of human history. Yalom's book gives a number of examples of upper-class women who were part of a marriage that was more an economic or political arrangement than a love match. It wasn't until the 18th century that the concept of romantic love and a heart's desire became factors in allowing people to choose marriage partners.

I hope this post doesn't come off as cynical. I think most women, like Hannah Fowler, are willing or even glad to give up some of their self-determination to gain the benefits of marriage (myself included). But I also admire Nhamo's grandmother for providing the means to help put Nhamo in a position where she could choose to marry at some point in the future -- or not.

Romance, or Love?

(Please indulge me as I talk about my own book.)

It's been a whirlwind of a week in my journey toward being a published author. I had submitted my first three chapters to an agent in September, and on Monday of this week, I finally heard from her - she wanted to read the full manuscript! Naturally, I was quite excited. I got the manuscript to her on Tuesday and settled for some waiting. As it turns out, I didn't have long to wait - I heard from her this morning. She said, "I have decided not to take your manuscript at this time, although I would definitely reconsider it if you decide you would like to address the following concerns...." She then goes on to say that the first 150 pages are "very engaging" and that she "loved" the "initial development of the characters" and the "young love" between those characters. However, she said, once they start on their pioneering journey (this is historical fiction, of course), "all the strong characters, tensions, concerns, and issues...got left behind." She said the relationship between the characters was central to the plot in the first part of the book, but that it "takes a second seat to many of the external events in their lives" once they start traveling.

I've pondered this on and off (well, OK, mostly "on") all day, and I think I understand our differences: she wants romance, and I wrote love.

In the first chapter of the book, the hero and heroine meet and get married the same night through a set of unusual circumstances (that I won't go into here, because this isn't really about my book). It's a marriage in name only, though, and they plan to dissolve it as soon as they get an opportunity. But over the next five chapters, they begin to be "in love" with each other. Not to flatter myself, but I think the reader can sense the sexual tension of those characters being around each other, becoming more and more attracted to each other, drawn together by a desire to protect each other from angry and unfair parents. Finally, they give in to that tension and decide they will stay married. The very next day they leave on their trip. And that's about the time the agent says she lost interest.

Throughout the rest of the book, that sexual tension is not so intense. They are married, after all, and now they can have sex whenever they feel like it. But now their challenge is to learn to love each other, with all the flaws that they sort of didn't notice during that period of infatuation. So they fight sometimes. They have to figure out how to deal with problems in a way that takes into consideration the needs and wants of two people instead of satisfying only themselves. They hurt each other, and they have to face up to that and to decide if they can get past that pain to continue on as husband and wife, or if it's time to give up.

Personally, I find those kinds of struggles interesting. It's part of what I liked so much about Hannah Fowler. But....it's a different kind of thrill than reading about/experiencing infatuation. Now that I think about it, Forged in the Fire (which I loved) seemed to lose some of its drive once Will and Susanna married. The same is true once Baudoin Bras-de-fer spirits Judith of France away from the captivity the father has imposed on her. Heck, even in television shows like Moonlighting or Scarecrow and Mrs. King or Remington Steele (ok, now you know how old I am, ha ha ha!), once the two main characters got together, the thrill of the show was gone, and it didn't last much longer. I haven't read the Twilight series yet, but I read a comment about it the other day that made the point that the writer deliberately maintains that intense sexual tension for three books precisely because she knows it's necessary to keep people interested.

So, I guess I made an error in plotting my story, if I wanted to be commercially successful. Are we as a culture so in love with the idea of being "in love"? Is love only interesting when it is fired by infatuation? Do we turn off when passion has burned down to a warm, steady glow? Does marriage bore us?

The agent told me she would be happy to reconsider my book if I made some changes. She wanted a total re-write of the second half of the book, to change the entire reason I wrote the story in the first place. I'm not going to do it. Maybe it won't be a commercial success. But at least it will be what I want it to be, to explore issues I think matter. I hope somebody else thinks they matter, too.