tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10566741.post112337137484477673..comments2024-01-05T20:18:45.991-08:00Comments on Et al.: From the sublime to the ridiculousAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829089563990675253noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10566741.post-1123526933126394532005-08-08T11:48:00.000-07:002005-08-08T11:48:00.000-07:00But isn't motherhood a choice you made willingly? ...But isn't motherhood a choice you made willingly? (I realize I am presuming here) Even if it was without full understanding of the consequences, because you are right that motherhood is something that can be truly understood once you are a mother.<BR/><BR/>I guess I'm curious what you think of those who deliberately "opt out" in today's world, as compared to those from Dickinson's time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10566741.post-1123520039292585762005-08-08T09:53:00.000-07:002005-08-08T09:53:00.000-07:00Amen. And again. Even with partners who share and ...Amen. And again. Even with partners who share and then some, family is, for a woman, simply relentless, constant, numbingly hard work. That isn't intended to denigrate the pleasures and joys it brings, but I know just what you mean. I agree completely that I spent so much of my own life knowing *abstractly* the perils and exhaustion of motherhood, but still having the reality hit me like a ton of bricks. <BR/><BR/>And my resentment at that is immense. No matter how I theorize or politicize it, I have no fucking time for myself and I am beginning to believe that that fact is biological and evolutionary to a large extent--which is not, of course, saying that we can't evolve past that into a version of motherhood that recognizes and addresses the stupefying labor (emotional, physical) involved. <BR/><BR/>Which makes women like Dickinson, Olson, Woolf all the more extraordinary. From what I've been reading of Dickinson, she appears (from the minuscule records available, and from a good deal of interpretive reading of her work) to have made a conscious choice for poetry over "life" as it was constituted for mid-19th-century women. The courage of that choice makes me a bit breathless, I confess.<BR/><BR/>And I actually have had book reps send me "Dickens" instead of Dickinson texts, if that makes you feel any better...not that the average book rep is required to know the difference, but that it's a common slip even for those who routinely work with the names...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07829089563990675253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10566741.post-1123513931441835762005-08-08T08:12:00.000-07:002005-08-08T08:12:00.000-07:00I like Emily Dickinson on Zoloft. I mean, not tha...I like Emily Dickinson on Zoloft. I mean, not that I prefer her to the real Dickinson, but I found the satire (was it satire?) funny. I also always misspell "Dickinson," and then have to correct it. Every single time. I can tell that I've misspelled it, but I can't ever remember how it's spelled in advance. Drives me nuts.<BR/><BR/>I've also developed a theory in recent years that one of the great tragedies of the world is that few women understand *why* separatism or any of the great anti-family writings of any of the older feminists (including Tillie Olson) make sense until it's too fucking late. Oh, you can get it in kind of a theoretical way, but we've all grown so used to seeing ourselves as autonomous individuals that we never paid a lot of attention to how very much work the mothers were always doing. Until we have our own kids and then we go, "oh shit."bitchphdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15118578280520171800noreply@blogger.com