To hear my mother tell it, I was a tomboy from birth. From the time I mastered control of my limbs, I peeled off the pretty, but itchy, girly stuff she loved to dress me in. Once I could talk, I asked to wear pants. Other girls wanted tea sets and dolls. I wanted a microscope and (though I never got them) sea monkeys.
It wasn't that I was totally hopeless at the feminine thing. Given a comfortable outfit, I could rock it. I slept on curlers for many special occasions (as long as they were sponge curlers.) I was a hopeless nurturer of stray animals and helped my mother care for my younger siblings, so it's not like I didn't have the requisite nurturing skills.
It's just that the culture my mother had been raised in, and where we still lived, had fairly rigid gender roles. I was, early on, flunking an important female social task.
Doing something I didn't like and pretending that I did.
A glimpse into the future
Even though I was surrounded by the insistence that one day I would flatten my personality like a paper doll and become a Real Girl, I managed to become aware of what truly awaited me in the current adult world. It was because of my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook.
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| it was domestic... science! |
It wound up at my maternal grandparents house one summer I spent there. It was a great way to acquire an eclectic education. Between the local library's "two books a week" rule and my voracious reading rate, I mowed through Reader's Digests reaching back to the 1920's, several leatherbound classics that would have otherwise been undisturbed in the parlor, and finally, likely from desperation, this cookbook.
It was quite wide-ranging compared to cookbooks of today. There were sections on how to pack cookies for the men overseas so they wouldn't break in transit, and suggestions for "good travelers." Recipes would reference each other for economy, so the egg yolks left over from an angel food cake could be used for Golden Drop cookies. Those cardboard dividers were covered with tips for organizing a lady's day, illustrated with line drawings of an ecstatic housewife in heels, a poofy dress, and perfect hair.
I know I went into it with an open mind, because I still remember the dawning horror as I would leaf through it methodically, looking for more clues which fit the pattern my brain was slowly assembling.
Telling the truth is a revolutionary act
Many of the recipes were Bake-Off winners, or contributed by members of ladies' groups, with their names. I thought this was a nice touch, but as I skipped around, looking for things that sounded tasty and marveling at the impeccably crafted photographs, I noticed that everyone was listed as their married name.
How did I know? Because they were all Mrs. Norman Bates and Mrs. Humphrey Bogart and Mrs. George Jones. None of them had their own names.
I actually sat down and skimmed for every name and I found one woman's name in the whole book. She was, poor thing, Miss Fay Wray. The only one.
Stephen King, being a man, would never write a scary novel based on this discovery, but my conclusion was just as frightening to me. Getting married meant losing your name, your identity, yourself!
Stephen King, being a man, would never write a scary novel based on this discovery, but my conclusion was just as frightening to me. Getting married meant losing your name, your identity, yourself!
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| This was a glimpse into a world of madness |
Happy poofy-skirt lady surrounded by cups and bowls and cooking utensils: Don't clutter your kitchen and fill up your counters. Part of the cooking process is keeping up with washing your working tools. Take time between cooking steps to wash as you go along.
Happy poofy-skirt lady with a mop: Schedule time-consuming tasks like waxing the floor for parts of the day when the baby is asleep.
A drawing of a squirrel in a tree with happy poofy-skirt lady grinning at it: Take some time from your busy day to go outside once in a while. You might see something to share with the family at dinner.
There were some inescapable conclusions coming right at me.
One is not a choice
This was the life my society was laying out for me? An endless round of the same chores over and over again with occasional breaks taken to look at a squirrel?
In my childish imaginings, it was taking away school, where I had skills which were admired, and making me a full-time Mother's Helper. Promoting me to the actual Mother did not make a bit of difference to me. I loved my little brothers and I didn't mind helping to care for them, but I had already noticed that when men came home from work their work was done. A housewife never came home from work.
I had already been taught this was the only thing women were supposed to do. That it was the only path to love and happiness. To spurn it would result in my being one of those "maiden ladies" I saw around our small town. The ones who lived in small dingy surroundings with small dingy jobs, the ones of whom my relatives whispered, "She never married."
I had not yet read Huckleberry Finn, so I was ignorant of the famous passage in which Huck decides to buck his culture's take on morality, and choose friendship instead. A choice which would result in him going to Hell. I didn't know I was struggling with a similar choice, and that I made a similar decision.
Okay then. I'll become an old maid.
When I first began to work for the educational non-profit, it was standard practice to refer to the Board of Trustee members by their formal names, i.e., Mrs. Shirley Fisk, etc. (BTW, Shirley Fisk was a Brit and that WAS his first name.) After a few years, Mrs. Shirley Fisk began using Mary Harriman Fisk and we began using that form for most of the Board members.
ReplyDeleteThe university that gave me a master's degree regularly sends me fund-raising letters addressed to Mrs. Richard [my last name]. Ha, ha! No money for you, university.
ReplyDeleteAs a woman in this culture, losing one's first name upon marriage is one thing (or was). But even before marriage, one's last name was Dad's, rather than Mom's.
ReplyDelete