"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man." - Isadora Wing, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
*Disclaimer: This post may not be suitable for anyone uncomfortable talking about sex. Or sexuality. Or the notion of the zipless fuck. (Yes, that's a thing.)*
Okay so I'll admit. When I grabbed this book from the library, seeing the word "erotic" on the cover in a quoted review by John Updike made me a tad nervous. I didn't know that I was about to read a lesson in women's lib, as told through the erotic awakening of a late-twentysomething woman tired of being tethered to marriage. Generally, I'm all for a good Harlequin read. One of those paperback "bodice-ripper" types you not-so-shamelessly read on the beach at summertime. However, in thinking about the reason why I was planning on reading this book, and putting that into context with its content, I was uncomfortable. Who really wants to delve into the sexuality of their parents? It's bad enough that you have to admit that they did the deed at some point, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this now, would you?
Okay so I'll admit. When I grabbed this book from the library, seeing the word "erotic" on the cover in a quoted review by John Updike made me a tad nervous. I didn't know that I was about to read a lesson in women's lib, as told through the erotic awakening of a late-twentysomething woman tired of being tethered to marriage. Generally, I'm all for a good Harlequin read. One of those paperback "bodice-ripper" types you not-so-shamelessly read on the beach at summertime. However, in thinking about the reason why I was planning on reading this book, and putting that into context with its content, I was uncomfortable. Who really wants to delve into the sexuality of their parents? It's bad enough that you have to admit that they did the deed at some point, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this now, would you?
Anywho, it was with great trepidation that I cracked open this novel - and boy, am I glad I did. Our heroine, Isadora, has been twice married, and a few years into marriage #2, we find her at a crossroads: a therapist named Adrian Goodlove (seriously) derails her very existence and forces her to examine who she is, why she is, and what she is to become. She begins to lash out against her identity as wife, as woman tied to man, though she is painfully conscious of the fact that it is these very men who drive her insane that actually provide a frame of reference for how she decides to define herself. I found it a fascinating trip into the psyche of feminism in the 70s and 80s (Isadora was a child of the fifties).
I'd be hard-pressed to tell you that my mom was a feminist. To be honest, I barely understood what it meant until a few years ago. I suppose she'd say that after she and my dad split up, she would identify as a feminist - potentially misguided, as I figure she'd associate it to "man hating" (sorry, Dad). But reading about Isadora's attempts to free herself of men and the societal trappings of housewife culture at the time really resonated with the woman I knew as Mom, if not in part due to the way she had to piece together an identity after her father died, her marriage ended, and her kids moved on.
Early on in the novel, after walking out on a particularly unsatisfying therapy appointment (though to be fair, none of them really seemed to resonate with her anyway), Isadora finds herself taking solace in shopping: "I ducked into a shoe store and immediately spent $40 on a pair of white sandals with gold chains. They made me feel as good as fifty minutes with [Dr.] Kolner ever had. OK, so I wasn't really liberated (I still had to comfort myself with shopping), but at least I was free of Kolner. It was a start anyway." Holy cow, did I ever laugh when I read this part. I have no idea what kind of impulse centre lit up like Vegas in Mom's brain when she and my dad split, but suddenly her closet was bursting at the seams with new stuff. She absolutely adored shopping and in all likelihood, purchased something every day. Mom had lost a ton of weight due to her illness - she used to call it "the chemo diet" - and so maybe she was just happy to fit into stuff she would never have considered before. But she really did try to fill a void (romantic? familial?) with all of that stuff, and at the end of the day, she barely touched most of it. Trust me, at least half of it still had the tags on when we cleaned it out after her passing. One wonders if perhaps she was trying to figure out how to present herself to the world after going through hell a few times. (She did have a penchant for leather and studs...) All the dresses and lipstick in the world couldn't cover up the pain in her eyes, no matter how hard she tried.
I'd be hard-pressed to tell you that my mom was a feminist. To be honest, I barely understood what it meant until a few years ago. I suppose she'd say that after she and my dad split up, she would identify as a feminist - potentially misguided, as I figure she'd associate it to "man hating" (sorry, Dad). But reading about Isadora's attempts to free herself of men and the societal trappings of housewife culture at the time really resonated with the woman I knew as Mom, if not in part due to the way she had to piece together an identity after her father died, her marriage ended, and her kids moved on.
Early on in the novel, after walking out on a particularly unsatisfying therapy appointment (though to be fair, none of them really seemed to resonate with her anyway), Isadora finds herself taking solace in shopping: "I ducked into a shoe store and immediately spent $40 on a pair of white sandals with gold chains. They made me feel as good as fifty minutes with [Dr.] Kolner ever had. OK, so I wasn't really liberated (I still had to comfort myself with shopping), but at least I was free of Kolner. It was a start anyway." Holy cow, did I ever laugh when I read this part. I have no idea what kind of impulse centre lit up like Vegas in Mom's brain when she and my dad split, but suddenly her closet was bursting at the seams with new stuff. She absolutely adored shopping and in all likelihood, purchased something every day. Mom had lost a ton of weight due to her illness - she used to call it "the chemo diet" - and so maybe she was just happy to fit into stuff she would never have considered before. But she really did try to fill a void (romantic? familial?) with all of that stuff, and at the end of the day, she barely touched most of it. Trust me, at least half of it still had the tags on when we cleaned it out after her passing. One wonders if perhaps she was trying to figure out how to present herself to the world after going through hell a few times. (She did have a penchant for leather and studs...) All the dresses and lipstick in the world couldn't cover up the pain in her eyes, no matter how hard she tried.
I wish she would have spent the money on therapy.
Besides, in spite of the trendy, new clothes she bought, she couldn't stop time. She was definitely a beautiful woman, but what good is all of that at the end of the day? Isadora speaks to the process of ageing: "But maybe I was already a hostage. The hostage of my fantasies. The hostage of my fears. The hostage of my false definitions. What did it mean to be a woman, anyway?" Good question, Isadora. Does it mean that we bow to men? Other women? The gods (or goddesses?) that rule our spiritual worlds? Were women in the 50s and 60s (and hell, this rings true for any woman of any generation) permitted to create an identity outside of roles assigned to them of wife/mother/daughter?
As a Jewish woman of New York, Isadora paints the picture of the ideal woman as "a vehicle, a vessel, with no needs or desires of her own. When her husband beats her, she understands him. When he is sick, she nurses him. When the children are sick, she nurses them. She cooks, keeps house, runs the store, keeps the books, listen's to everyone's problems, visits the cemetery, weeds the graves, plants the garden, scrubs the floors [...] She is capable of absolutely everything except self-preservation." I can't even tell you how many women I knew growing up that fit this description, no less my own mother. I expected her to be absolutely everything - and, so did my dad, I believe. My dad worked long hours five or six days a week as a car salesman, and as such pretty well everything was left to my mother. She did the cleaning, the cooking, the listening and the nursing - and somehow, still held down a job. Looking back, I wish I would have done so much more to ease the burden. Instead, I remember coming home from school and being grumpy because dinner wasn't ready yet, shouting at my mother, and then hunkering down in front of my Playstation 2. Forget about the fact that she had to get me up in the morning, make sure I ate something, get herself sorted and out the door, work all day, then come home to do the laundry and help with homework and all of that. It is no wonder that she became depressed. I think a lot of that contributed to the guilt she felt, to her dying day, that she wasn't ever enough. We all asked so much of her without really asking her anything. Imagine how different things could have been if I'd replaced "Mom, can you do this?" with "Mom, how do you think I should do this?" The latter allows not only for a learning opportunity, but also a personal input and expression of self. And it was that expression of self that was seriously lacking for so long in her life.
"I feel guilty for writing poems when I should be cooking. I feel guilty for everything. You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty. That's Isadora Wing's first principle of the war between the sexes. Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture."
Well then. Let's just hit the nail on the head why don't we. Mom was a master of guilt. She wielded guilt like a sword chained to her wrist. She felt it, she made us feel it; at times she was consumed by it. Guilt that she should have done more, or could have done better. She even felt guilty for passing on the faulty BRCA1 gene to my sister and I. I mean, the woman had no possible way of stopping that - it was quite clearly NOT her fault - and yet she ate herself up over our genetic testing results. So much time wasted feeling guilty for things that had zero ability to be changed. What a shame.
And yet.
Besides, in spite of the trendy, new clothes she bought, she couldn't stop time. She was definitely a beautiful woman, but what good is all of that at the end of the day? Isadora speaks to the process of ageing: "But maybe I was already a hostage. The hostage of my fantasies. The hostage of my fears. The hostage of my false definitions. What did it mean to be a woman, anyway?" Good question, Isadora. Does it mean that we bow to men? Other women? The gods (or goddesses?) that rule our spiritual worlds? Were women in the 50s and 60s (and hell, this rings true for any woman of any generation) permitted to create an identity outside of roles assigned to them of wife/mother/daughter?
As a Jewish woman of New York, Isadora paints the picture of the ideal woman as "a vehicle, a vessel, with no needs or desires of her own. When her husband beats her, she understands him. When he is sick, she nurses him. When the children are sick, she nurses them. She cooks, keeps house, runs the store, keeps the books, listen's to everyone's problems, visits the cemetery, weeds the graves, plants the garden, scrubs the floors [...] She is capable of absolutely everything except self-preservation." I can't even tell you how many women I knew growing up that fit this description, no less my own mother. I expected her to be absolutely everything - and, so did my dad, I believe. My dad worked long hours five or six days a week as a car salesman, and as such pretty well everything was left to my mother. She did the cleaning, the cooking, the listening and the nursing - and somehow, still held down a job. Looking back, I wish I would have done so much more to ease the burden. Instead, I remember coming home from school and being grumpy because dinner wasn't ready yet, shouting at my mother, and then hunkering down in front of my Playstation 2. Forget about the fact that she had to get me up in the morning, make sure I ate something, get herself sorted and out the door, work all day, then come home to do the laundry and help with homework and all of that. It is no wonder that she became depressed. I think a lot of that contributed to the guilt she felt, to her dying day, that she wasn't ever enough. We all asked so much of her without really asking her anything. Imagine how different things could have been if I'd replaced "Mom, can you do this?" with "Mom, how do you think I should do this?" The latter allows not only for a learning opportunity, but also a personal input and expression of self. And it was that expression of self that was seriously lacking for so long in her life.
"I feel guilty for writing poems when I should be cooking. I feel guilty for everything. You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty. That's Isadora Wing's first principle of the war between the sexes. Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture."
Well then. Let's just hit the nail on the head why don't we. Mom was a master of guilt. She wielded guilt like a sword chained to her wrist. She felt it, she made us feel it; at times she was consumed by it. Guilt that she should have done more, or could have done better. She even felt guilty for passing on the faulty BRCA1 gene to my sister and I. I mean, the woman had no possible way of stopping that - it was quite clearly NOT her fault - and yet she ate herself up over our genetic testing results. So much time wasted feeling guilty for things that had zero ability to be changed. What a shame.
And yet.
A woman is her mother. That's the main thing. - Anne Sexton
Yeah, okay. I am my mother's daughter. I am susceptible to guilt. Like, a lot of it. I feel bad when people I don't know are sad. I'm very Canadian in that I apologize for everything, even when I know I'm not wrong. I feel guilty when my friends are ticked off. I'm one of those people who has those thoughts running through my head: Did I do something? What did I say? Oh shoot, I didn't post the right thing on Facebook. My hashtag on Instagram was a copout! Etcetera, etcetera. Perhaps that's why I felt a rush when I read Isadora's revelation, her realization that there was more to her than just a simpering woman under the crush of marriage: "But what was that other voice inside of me which kept urging me on toward zipless fucks, and speeding cars and endless wet kisses and guts full of danger? What was that other voice which kept calling me coward! and egging me on to burn my bridges, to swallow the poison in one gulp instead of drop by drop, to go down into the bottom of my fear and see if I could pull myself up?"
(A zipless fuck basically refers to a no-strings-attached sexual encounter, generally with someone you don't know and will never see again. Like a one-night-stand, but could be anywhere at any time. Additionally, it has the power to usurp the banality of everyday life. Isadora has a few opportunities for these in the novel. I enjoyed reading about them.)
I wonder if Mom had these thoughts, too. Especially when she found herself ill - could she push on and pull herself up? Could she trust others to back away as she crawled herself to safety? Would it be okay to get a boost if she needed one? I often think about what it must have been like for her to be a mother and wife and administrative assistant and daughter and sister all in one go in the 90s. To me, her life seemed pretty boring - solely because it was centred around the lives of others. I wouldn't have blamed her if she all of a sudden up and screamed "I'M OUT OF HERE!" and went off on an adventure or five. God knows she deserved it. (And as I've previously mentioned, she left it way too long. Life really is too short, folks.)
On that note, one of the more powerful bits of the novel.
"It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present, how much of daily life is usually spent making plans and attempting to control the future. Never mind that you have no control over it. The idea of the future is our greatest entertainment, amusement, and time-killer. Take it away and there is only the past - and a windshield spattered with dead bugs."
And ain't nobody wanting to spend their lives walking backward, looking through a dirty windshield.
(A zipless fuck basically refers to a no-strings-attached sexual encounter, generally with someone you don't know and will never see again. Like a one-night-stand, but could be anywhere at any time. Additionally, it has the power to usurp the banality of everyday life. Isadora has a few opportunities for these in the novel. I enjoyed reading about them.)
I wonder if Mom had these thoughts, too. Especially when she found herself ill - could she push on and pull herself up? Could she trust others to back away as she crawled herself to safety? Would it be okay to get a boost if she needed one? I often think about what it must have been like for her to be a mother and wife and administrative assistant and daughter and sister all in one go in the 90s. To me, her life seemed pretty boring - solely because it was centred around the lives of others. I wouldn't have blamed her if she all of a sudden up and screamed "I'M OUT OF HERE!" and went off on an adventure or five. God knows she deserved it. (And as I've previously mentioned, she left it way too long. Life really is too short, folks.)
On that note, one of the more powerful bits of the novel.
"It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present, how much of daily life is usually spent making plans and attempting to control the future. Never mind that you have no control over it. The idea of the future is our greatest entertainment, amusement, and time-killer. Take it away and there is only the past - and a windshield spattered with dead bugs."
And ain't nobody wanting to spend their lives walking backward, looking through a dirty windshield.