Women and Power Redux

My essay on “Women and Power in the Enlightenment” is late again, in part because I lost most of a work week to the vicissitudes of pediatric dentistry.

A few Mondays ago, my five-year-old bit the inside of his lip while it was numb from the effects the Novocaine administered while he was having a cavity filled. Without ever getting infected or anything, it caused him pretty much the worst pain he’s ever had in his life—including actually teething, and the surgery he had when he was five months old. For most of the week, he couldn’t eat, drink or sleep. For several nights straight, he woke up every hour or two, presumably when his mouth dried out and the sore rubbed against his teeth.

He missed two days of school, and I had to have my TA teach my class on the Friday of that week, while I spent the day at home with my son, coaxing him to drink, tearing up food into tiny pieces and pushing them past his lips into his mouth (because trying to explain to a five-year-old that the merits of nourishment are worth the perils of pain is a losing battle).

This, I kept thinking, is something that birds—who chew up worms and regurgitate them straight into their babies’ mouths—do far better than we humans.

So I was all set to write something about the irony of my essay on “Women and Power” being derailed by the basic disempowerment of maternity. Because, of course, staying home with my son prevented me from the taking up the various forms of power available to me in my professional life: the (hopefully benign) exercise of power involved in getting my students to think about Jane Austen in new ways; the (slightly less gentle) power involved in making sure the Undergraduate major runs smoothly; and certainly the power of having an influence in my field by publishing my ideas about eighteenth-century literature and culture, including that long delayed essay on “Women and Power in the Enlightenment.”

All of that blunted, thwarted, to devote myself to the purely animal concerns of life. What did the Enlightenment ever have to say to women about that?

But then I realized that, from another perspective, what I had been experiencing wasn’t disempowerment at all, but a kind of empowerment that Mary Wollstonecraft—a major figure in my essay—and many other feminist writers of the time had sincerely wished for women: control over the physical, intellectual and moral well-being of their children. Domestic power, in other words.

And even though we’ve been taught by Foucault et. al. to see this as an aspect of a new regime of power, as the inculcation of a self-regulating individual rather than the coercive imposition of force, I’m here to tell you that that’s not what it feels like most mornings in my house.

For what is it but an exercise of power to ensure a minimal level of hygiene(to make sure, as my friend says, that the boys have a bath once a week whether they need it or not)? Or that we all sit down to a meal with actual nutrients in it rather than three bowls of popcorn followed by Oreos, as the boys would prefer? And, believe me, it is nothing but a naked, and somewhat violent, imposition of order upon chaos to get everyone into the car at 8:30 Sunday mornings so that we can make it to Hebrew School in time.

And let's not even talk about homework.

The boys certainly see it that way—see themselves as armed and ardent insurrectionists fighting for their basic rights (to sugar, cartoons and staying up late) against an arbitrary and tyrannical state.

Most of the time, I win, albeit at a not inconsiderable expenditure of energy.

So why does it feel like disempowerment?

The answer to that question is not a paradox, I don’t think, but a misprision—a confusion about what we take power to mean.

Because I’m starting to wonder whether we all live with a kind of post-Romantic conception of power: power as the ability to “get what you want”: ie; Napoleon wanted to invade Russia, and so he did; or “consumer power”—where you chose what you want—a car, a cell phone, a pair of shoes-- and decide to buy it. The power to bend the world around your individual needs and desires. Power, that is, as self-realization.

Whereas the power that Mary Wollstonecraft may have actually been wishing for women, when she asks that women be allowed to be “more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens” may have been somewhat different.

What domestic power feels like, at any rate, is not a realization of self, but an evacuation of self. Because all those things I listed above have nothing to do with what I “want” (hey-I enjoy Oreos in front the TV as much as anyone), but my allegiance to a set of things I think are right—in Enlightenment terms, things I think are virtuous (things, yes, like the need to wear underwear to kindergarten).

These things are enforced through my will, but they don’t have much to do with my desires, or anything at all to do with my individuality (because, as we all know, the primary reason to wear underwear to kindergarten is because everyone else does). To work well, they require what the eighteenth-century would call a strict disinterestedness, a refusal to let my own feeling interfere, an abnegation of self.

Which may in fact be what Wollstonecraft is calling for in the phrase with which I began the first of these posts, when she say insists that she is not calling for women “to have power over men, but over themselves.”

First Football

Took the boys to their first football game last weekend. Haven't been to a game myself since college (despite all those years at a big-twelve school) and it was surprisingly awesome. Though that might have been the cotton candy, the halftime fireworks, and, in Jacob's words, the "wrestling."

J: You have to wear tight pants for football, right, mama?

I nod.

J: And shiny, too.

We had a fabulous time in Vancouver, an extraordinarily beautiful city, as the pictures below will attest.

So it was well worth the spot trouble we had getting into Canada in the first place.

Here follows my conversation with a (young, male) Customs Officer on a Tues. afternoon in the Toronto airport. He was certainly only doing his job, but this was by far the worst grilling I’ve ever had in a fair amount of international travel over the course of my life.

Let me preface it by saying, with confidence, that I am by no means an imposing or sinister figure—I’m a curly-haired, bespectacled person, only about six inches taller than my nine-year-old. I don’t think I looked particularly crazed on that afternoon, though maybe a little frazzled by international travel with two children under ten. The kids in question sat dopily by while all this is going on.

Customs Officer: What is your purpose in visiting Canada?

Me: Attending a conference—my kids are coming with me.

CO: Who’s going to be looking after the kids while you’re working?

Me: Um, my friend found a babysitter.

CO: And you trust this babysitter?

Me (slightly put out now): Well, I trust my friend.

CO (skeptical, but on to something else now): Where’s their father?

Me (taken off guard): Uh, in Colorado. I’m divorced.

CO: Okay, then—let’s see your letter.

Me (taken completely by surprise): Letter?

CO (impatient): Yes. If you travel internationally with your kids, you need a signed letter from the father giving permission. Didn’t anyone tell you that?

Me (starting to get a little freaked out): No, no one told me that. I had to get a signed, notarized form from him to even get them passports—I thought that was all I needed.

CO: No, ma’am. You also need a letter.

Me (unable to get my head around this): But I have full custody. I really still need a letter?

CO (solemnly): Yes, ma’am. [and getting a little personal now]. Do they see their father?

Me: Yes—they just saw him yesterday. He knows all about the trip. You can call him if you like.

CO: Can’t do that—privacy issue [“What about my privacy?” think I, but absolutely do not say aloud]. You still need a letter. You can understand why we ask for it—you know what kinds of things go on.

Me (switching tactics to full-on obsequious charm, as wide-eyed and earnest as possible, because, seriously, this has gone long enough): Oh yes sir, I do. I can completely understand why you ask. I just didn’t know about the letter—but I absolutely understand why you need to be vigilant.

We go back and forth for a bit about the terrible things that happen and the depravity of mankind, and he eventually seems somewhat mollified. But he has one
more parting shot:

CO: Where are you staying in Vancouver?

Me: With my friend.

CO: And how do you know this friend?

Me: Well, we went to grad school together. I’m American and she’s Canadian….

CO: She’s Canadian?

I nod.

He lets us through.

Now, let me say in his defense, that:
1) I have been in Heathrow and LaGuardia in the past few months, as well as the Vancouver and Toronto airports, and Toronto was by far the busiest and most hectic of all of them—even at 6am, when we passed through on our way back (no trouble in that direction, just a glad-to-get-rid-of-you sneer).

And 2) Yes, terrible international kidnappings of children happen every day, and objectively speaking, I’m glad the Customs Service is vigilant about this.

I asked people in Canada about the letter business, and many had heard of it, though no one traveling alone with their kids had ever been asked to produce said letter.

It’s just that weird sensation of being taken for a much more suspicious person than you in fact are, y’know?

Guess I’ll bring a letter next time.

And in any case, it was well worth it to get to Vancouver:

Wild in the streets

I spent most of the past week trying to finish a long overdue essay on "Women and Power in the Enlightenment" (you can see the irony anvils falling from the sky already, right?). I thought I'd begin said essay with Mary Wollstonecraft's famous line, "I do not wish [women] to have power over men, but over themselves." But after a week of buying new shoes for the boys, dealing with the blisters from said new shoes, intermittent puking and non-stop rambunctiousness, I feel like saying, "you know what, Mar'? I think I'd settle for the former right about now."

It made me think of my favorite passage from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own,

"What had our mothers been doing that they had no wealth to leave us?...If only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureship and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex...[But no, because] to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether. Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children--no human being could stand it. Consider the facts, we said. First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in feeding the baby. You cannot, it seems, let children run about in the streets. People who have seen them running wild in Russia say the sight is not a pleasant one."

Who's a pretty bird?

Well, after ~6 mos. of research, negotiation and questing, we finally have a new family pet: meet Gerry, the baby cockatiel. I have to say that's it's way more fun to have a bird than I expected! He's pretty and friendly--happy to sit on one's hand or knee or shoulder (or head)--and yet happy to go into his cage with a sheet over it all night. (nb: the boys named him after Steven Gerrard, captain of the English football team. Why? I have no idea, but it suits him).

Austen-land

I'm back from England. Despite my diffidence, it was a really wonderful trip--as everyone except me told me it would be.

I went to a conference, which was surprisingly interesting. Along with everything else, it was lovely to be treated as neither a domestic nor an administrative drudge (these days, I think of my paper-giving persona as my professional avatar, and I'm always shocked by how differently people treat her than "me").

Then I spent an amazingly sunny weekend in London seeing old friends and doing a little bit of sight-seeing. It was an English "heat-wave" at ~82F, and everyone was pretty much stripped down to their underwear. Since it was 101F when I left NC, it was a cool and lovely respite for me. I didn't go west of the Tate Modern or north of Clerkenwell--mostly, I just walked up, down, and across the truly magical Thames.

Jane Austen's writing desk, Austen House, Chawton.


Ivory letters (like in Emma)


Austen's hair, and some topaz crosses:


Austen's house.


Graffiti in the Tower of London.

Not-Birthday

Since I bent your collective ear with about how sucky my birthday was, I wanted to let you know what a lovely not-birthday I had.

I had long-standing plans with friends to go to the coast at the end of last week (taking advantage of the boys’ spring break)—and even though I lost a day of it to the atypical chicken pox disaster, I sent the eight-year-old off with most of the gang Thursday morning, and followed with the four-year-old, and the working spouses (ie, the husbands) on Friday morning

And even though it was mid-afternoon by the time we rendezvoused with everyone else, we still decided to take the nifty little motorboat ferry out to the National Seashore barrier islands (Shackleford Banks, if you’ve been to that part of NC).

And it was a gorgeous, clear, spring day.

And we saw wild horses.*

And dolphins in the harbor.

And pelicans skimming the waves.

And the beach was deserted and pristine enough to remind me of my favorite poem about the ocean:

If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
from Elizabeth Bishop, “At the Fishhouses”

And my friends made me an angel food cake with pudding sauce and berries, and everyone—five kids, five grown-ups—sang happy birthday.

So, I declared my real birthday null and void, and took that day for my birthday instead, because I’ve reached the age where you can do things like that if you want to.

Remember our slightly bizarre rabies vaccine experience? Well, here’s the latest:

Tuesday morning, I took my four-year-old in to the pediatrician for the hive-like rash he’s had since Friday. He’s been on spring break from preschool since 3/29, and was supposed to go back tomorrow—but I knew they’d show him the door tout suite if he showed up with an undiagnosed rash. Hence the preemptive strike, even though he hadn’t been sick, and it seemed to be clearing up on its own.

The doctor took one look at him and said, “That’s not hives, that atypical chicken pox.”

Cut to my astonished face.

“But,” I spluttered, “he’s been vaccinated” (as is mandatory).

“Yup,” said she, “that’s why we call it atypical chicken pox. It’s the kind you get when you’ve already been vaccinated.”

“But,” I spluttered some more, “they looked like hives—no blisters.”

“Yup,” she said,” with atypical chicken pox, it can look like anything.”

“I’m stunned,” I said.

“You look stunned,” she said, “but at least you’re laughing.”

Well, because, lucky for her, I had already hit rock bottom the day before, as I spent my whole birthday watching four sweaty, squabbling little boys (we’re having a heat wave here, wrapped in a green haze of tree pollen)—watched them in the service of having my friends watch my kids so that I could actually work today and tomorrow. Which now? is moot—since I’m home with the (not-sick) four-year-old until new pox stopping popping out (just a day or so, with any luck).

So, yup, hit the muddy bottom of the slough of despond and have bobbed back up to the surface-- where there’s nothing I can do about the fact that it’s impossible to look after my kids, have a full time job, and retain my sanity except laugh. Laugh slightly maniacally.

And, on the upside, it got me out of the horrible meeting I was supposed to be in yesterday. And after you’ve had four cranky boys rampaging through your house, one pox-y one seems relatively peaceful.

And, poor thing, he is kind of itchy, though not, I repeat, particularly sick. Still: Job? What job?

NB: Before you ask, apparently being vaccinated does make things better—makes you less sick if you do end up with chicken pox, for one, and much less contagious when you have them, for another.

The flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la) have nothing to do with the case.

I know that it is the kind of thing you either love or loathe, and that it makes me an irredeemable geek that I love it, but I was inordinately cheered up by seeing the local Savoyard production of The Mikado Saturday night. For approximately three hours, it made me forget how pissed I was that my eight-year-old had spilled water on my laptop and shorted out the keypad, and how guilty I felt when my four-year-old wailed inconsolably as I left him with a sitter. Because, no matter how much the mire of domesticity has felt like quicksand lately, you can always get a USB mouse, and, if you are four, be instantly consoled by a battle between the forces of Playmobil and Leg. And it was the genius of Gilbert and Sullivan to write an operetta that actually works better when it is performed with a fair amount of amateurishness and campiness—as long as the love and gusto is still there.

The Mikado is an amazing panoply of silly costumes, pretty songs and people motivated either by pure love or pure pettiness. My most musically literate friend organized what amounted to a field trip for us all last night: ten adults, seven kids, joining an already packed house (who knew?). Given the incredibly fond memories I have of my dad taking us to G&S productions every year, I had to bring my eight-year-old. And I have to say, the eight-year-olds—three boys, two girls—all seemed to enjoy it immensely. But then eight-year-olds do have a natural affinity for comically exaggerated characters and crazy turns of fate.

(picture of Tim Spall as the Mikado from Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy--a film about the making of the opera that I recommend no matter how you feel about G&S.)

Project Milliner

Yesterday afternoon, through no fault of my own, I saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

It was part of a negotiated agreement with H., for doing the spelling bee and multiple activities Saturday, and still getting to Hebrew School Sunday morning. He enjoyed it. J. was a little scared. As for me….well, I expect the degree to which you enjoy the movie has to do with how much you enjoy Tim Burton as a rule. The only Tim Burton film I've ever truly liked was Beetlejuice.

Mileage varies, I know, and if you like the Tim Burton aesthetic, you’ll probably like this one. To me, the tone seemed equal parts sour, lugubrious and cutesy. The Lewis Carroll books, which made a huge impression on me when I was a kid, get most of their charge by dealing with absurd (or disturbing) things in a matter-of-fact way. Now, I doubt that it was any part of the intention of the Burton movie to capture the feeling of the books, but it was still a striking contrast: it seemed to be trying to get that same charge by dealing with absurd (or disturbing) things in a bombastic way. With an extra layer of bombast on top.

Which is not to say that it didn’t have its moments. Most of them, needless to say, courtesy of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. I’ve never seen an interpretation of Alice in Wonderland that took the Hatter’s profession quite so seriously, and the best parts of the movie played like some kind of weird mash-up of Alice in Wonderland and “Project Runway.”

There’s a cute running gag about the way every time Alice changes size her clothes don’t fit any more, and have to be ever more cunningly re-cut, re-draped, or re-tied (a couple of times courtesy of the Mad Hatter). Alice spends a chunk of the movie slightly over-sized, stalking around the Red Queen’s castle in some hastily sewn together curtains (a la Scarlet O’Hara), looking like some Amazonian ‘80s supermodel.

And the Hatter gets some great scenes in which he—makes hats. And peddles his hats to the Queen. And fights people with his hats. And hat pins.

I wish I could say that it was all done with a light touch. But I guess that’s not what you go to a Tim Burton movie for.

The boys and I agreed that the CGI Jabberwocky was awesome, though.

NB: Kathryn Bigelow, in contrast, deserved that Oscar like nobody’s business!

H. vs. the Spello-Dragon

(H. won his school spelling bee in Jan. and competed in the Regional Spelling Bee yesterday).

Maybe I’m biased, but sometimes it’s nice to have an English professor as a university president. Not only did ours come down at 9am on a Sat. morning to address a bunch of grade-schoolers and their parents, but he also gave a kickass speech. “There’s going to be a basketball game later today,” he said, “and there will be big crowds and a lot of cheering. But I want you to remember that while basketball is a skill, language is what makes us human. You all are the athletes of the mind.”

And the spelling bee was certainly a parade of humanity: every size and sex and color of kid between about eight and fourteen. Those ages will give you a heck of a lot of human variety: some of the middle-school girls were easily twice the height of the elementary school boys.

I’ve been resisting seeing that documentary about the spelling bee, or even Akeelah and the Bee, because I didn’t want to be exposed to any more evidence of the craziness of these things. But now that I’ve witnessed a couple, I can see why dramatists are drawn to them.

Spelling has a special kind of crazy, internal drama. Each kid has his or her own style: fast, slow; staring into space or using their fingers to sketch the word on their palms; going deep, deep inside themselves looking for the right sequence. Sometimes, when they don’t know a word, they just railroad through, cobbling phonemes together in a desperate drive to get to the other side; sometimes, there’s a terrible pause, when they know they’ve said a letter wrong, a momentary dead space, then a decrescendo as they trail away towards the end. It’s mesmerizing—halfway between a basket of adorably wriggling puppies and a train wreck.

H. didn’t win, but he did great. He was remarkably poised, but so were almost all the kids. I kept expecting someone to burst into tears and run off the stage—either in disappointment, or just unable to stand the pressure and scrutiny—but no one did. He got through four rounds (“mirage,” “rouge,” “cafeteria” and “sashimi”), and was in the fifth round, one of only 12 kids left from the original 52, when he was stymied by “Provolone” (a cheese henceforth banished from our house). He exited gracefully, and was rightfully proud of his performance.

All the boys were gone after that round, and all but one of the elementary school kids. It had devolved into a battle of the geeky middle-school girls. They were all gawky and adorable and anxious, and the crowd loved them, gave each one a standing ovation when she got knocked out. It came down to a battle between an eighth-grade girl who was miniature version of Chloe Sevigny in “Big Love” (ramrod posture, righteous diction, floor-length skirt and hair scraped into a tight bun) and one who was a little more “Sons of Anarchy” (baggy black t-shirt and sneakers, waist-length lank blond hair). The Chloe Sevigny girl won, in a real nail-biter, and her teacher burst into tears behind me.

Just by chance, the night before we had read (again) the scene in Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire where Harry has to face the Hungarian Horntail with only his wand. What if he had to spell words at the same time, we wondered. What if he had to spell “nenuphar”? What if it were a spello-dragon? These kids would have taken it down.

Bats'll drive you batty

Maybe you remember how we had a bat in our house in January? And how the pest control people, led by Donny, the two-fingered man, came and supposedly sealed up the places where bats could get in?

Well, it didn’t take, and last Monday evening, at about 7pm, there was another bat careening around my living room. The boys and I ran screaming out onto the porch, and bat followed shortly after. Since then, we’ve been bat-free, but that may be because I’ve been leaving every light in the house on all night.

So, I thought the worst of this was that I would have to wrangle with the pest control people about coming back to finish the job. But then, last Friday, I heard two separate stories, about two different local families, who had had bats in the house, and had been told by their doctors that they all needed rabies shots.

Because rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know. No. Really. They can.

I was equal parts disbelieving and freaked out by this bit of information. Our bats didn’t act the least bit rabid, and we never touched them (that we know of). But someone says “rabies” in the same breath as “your children” and it’s really all over.

So: I called our pediatrician’s office this morning to get advice. And, sure enough, it turns out to be a NC state law that if you have been exposed to bats you need a post-exposure rabies shot. Because rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know. No, really, they can.

But, and here’s kicker #1: the clinics don’t stock post-exposure rabies vaccine. The only place to get it is the emergency room. Or maybe the County Health Dept, said the nurse at my pediatrician’s office.

I called the County Health people, and got the same information: rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know. Really, they can. But they don’t have the vaccine either—the only place in town to get it truly is the ER.

At this point, I called my insurance company. Now, I have very good health insurance, but nevertheless they told me that even though they would pay for the vaccine, I would still have an ER co-pay of $250 for each of us for each visit (kicker #2). The shots are given in a series of 3-4 shots. So, 3 x 3 x 250. I pretty much started to cry when I did that math.

Then, our wonderful pediatrician herself called and said, “It doesn’t sound like much exposure to me—maybe you don’t need to do that. Let me make a few calls.” I was hopeful for a few minutes, but then she called back and said, “yes, you need to go into the ER and start the shots: rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know.” The only good news she had is that after the first shot, the boys can get the rest of them in her office, which will save me most of those $250 co-pays.

It was the middle of the day by this point, and I figured there was no point waiting for the ER to get busier. H. was already home from school with some kind of minor stomach thing (rabies? Probably not, says the pediatrician), so I grabbed J. from pre-school, and we headed into the ER of the excellent teaching hospital that is conveniently nearby.

And there we were for the next three hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever spent 2+ hours in a small cubicle with a lot of expensive medical equipment and two small healthy boys, but I wouldn’t recommend it—it’s like being inside one of those bouncy castles at a school fair, except with sharp things. H. had his DS with him, and I take back all the curses I’ve heaped on that thing, because it mostly kept him occupied for the duration. J., however, was literally hurling himself at the walls by the end of hour two.

Finally, they rounded up the immunoglobulin shots for the boys (I won’t even tell you how many steps that took). The eight-year-old cried through his four shots and the four-year-old laughed through his three.

Since we were in the pediatric section of the ER, for a while it looked like they weren’t going to be able to give me my shots there at all, and I was going to have to go back out and wait some more. But they figured out a way around that, thank goodness.

Another nurse handed me three Tylenol tablets. “Really?” I said She nodded. I took the pills.

An then we were into the comic portion of our adventure. Two cute young female nurses and one cute young male paramedic trainee had given the boys their shots. But for whatever reason, the girl nurses went away, and a big male nurse came to give me mine. The paramedic trainee stayed.

Whereas the boys had gotten their shots in the arm, I got five shots: one in the arm; one in each thigh; and one in each hip. And for “hip,” read upper butt cheek.

So just in case you thought motherhood allowed you to retain even a shred of dignity, picture this: there I am in the cubicle with four guys—my two sons, the nurse and the paramedic—dropping my pants. Miraculously, I had managed to take a shower that morning, but I really cannot answer for my underwear.

“They’re professionals,” I said frantically to myself, trying not to completely dissolve into embarrassed giggles, “they’ve seen much worse than my middle-aged thighs, right?”

H. remained resolutely focused on his DS, but J. watched the whole thing with utter glee. “Mama. I can see your underwear,” he announced delightedly; and then, even more happily, “Mama! I can see your blood.”

And then we were finally done. We’re lucky, of course—we’re healthy and not in pain, unlike the poor kid in the adjacent cubicle, and I have great insurance. But still: ugh.

On the bright side, though, I’m thinking of turning off some of the lights tonight—‘cause what’s the worst that can happen? Even if a bat does bite us in our sleep and we never even know, we won’t get rabies.