“Woman writing” by Valerie Hardy, oil on linen (1997). 12″ x 10.” Image used with permission of the artist.
And then what happened?
We began pushing out the limits, tackling subjects old-fashioned “Page A Day” diaries usually avoided: family secrets, incest, abuse, sexuality—all the forbidden subjects, and the lavender and rose-scented atmosphere of the old diaries was quickly dispelled, replaced by something that smelled more like brimstone.
And then, subtly, slowly, our permission to write was withdrawn.
This is never an overt act, an edict, a statement in words. It doesn’t need to be. Because we have been trained to believe that we need permission—from family, boss, society—to do almost anything that entails an element of risk, we withdraw permission ourselves.
Publishers and agents lost interest in memoirs based on these revelations; readers are said to be tired of reading them (which I doubt); public spaces suddenly seem less welcoming, even the great variety of journals, in all price ranges, with all kinds of covers, began to lessen. Now I seldom see a woman writing in public. Studying a laptop, yes, and now probably some diaries are kept on the thing, so ephemeral, sure to be erased with the next change in technology.
I have always written in my journal, for five decades now, first thing in the morning, at home, and so this change does not closely affect me. But it affects the air we all breathe. If we don’t write it down, whatever “it” may be, we are much more likely to forget it, and denial takes over: did it really happen are did we “imagine” it”? And old accusations of women’s selfishness, narrow-mindedness, and vengefulness begin to emerge out of the silence in which they have been, for a while, buried. They never really disappeared.
This is always what happens to us: a period of liberation is followed by a period of constriction, and sometimes we hardly know it is happening until a liberty we have taken for granted is snatched away.
Writing in public insists that we exist as thinkers and creators of our own reality. It is of enormous importance.
My journaling has pushed and pulled me through life. I depend on my repetitions to come home to myself—good, bad and always a little confused.
One session at an early Women Writers Workshop at UK, Isabel Allende asked participants to take turns talking about writing. I can’t recall exactly how the prompt was set up but clearly remember one story related about a nun who had kept journals her whole adult life. Before she died she burned them all and all her history, experiences and thoughts with them. Saving people who deserved exposure, assuming their version was unimportant.
How many women do the same, extinguishing history, records of progress, a clearer picture of occurrences than the male view that makes way into publication. And insufficient number of In the Time of the Butterflies.
My weeping was a rare instance of being impossible to stop.
Interesting, the syncronicity sometimes. I’m in the process of looking over journals I wrote from the late 1970’s through the early 2000’s. Like the nun you wrote about, I am throwing most pages out, for they were written during years when I was excavating buried and distorted family matters, working from my own experiences outward. Those pages were a monotony. I’ve kept some, but no one is going to find page after page of my reclaiming and healing attempts interesting enough to spend years straining over all those words. For a Faulkner or a Mozart men will do it, yes. But we outlyers aren’t included in that system. Even I find my pages tiring to re-read. And, like others, I, too, throw out some pages because the few who are left (I am quite old) who might read them came after my time and experienced the “fallout” from the worst of times in the extended families, not the hot center of the worst times. Yes, Society everywhere needs to know what girls’ and women’s lives are like, but few people want their lives disturbed by such knowledge, especially when it would make them have to readjust their idea of their own lives. Still, I agree with the woman who left the other comment — it saddens me. The loss of any material is tragic. It is the stuff of tears.
I have bemoaned, for some years now, the non-existence of archives that want material from women who have not reached the public eye and made some patriarchal institution proud, but whose times and experiences were remarkable, too, in either wonderful or in horrible ways. My clearing out of journal pages comes at this moment because the owners of the apt. bldg. where I live are remodelling the apts., moving a few of us out at a time and leaving the rest of us to eat all the health-hazard dusts, etc. I am having to pack everything up, to leave the apt. bare in a few weeks. Such fun. But it has forced me to finally actually do the clearing out. I look back at what I went through “in the original” and in the journal time, and it wearies me to see what I bore up under, both times. And so it is for most girls and women. You bet the patriarchal world needs to have its horrific side revealed, but without places to store and incorporate such materials into the fabric of common knowledge, without scholars, journalists, authors to present such materials in a respectful way, The Boys aren’t making room for the “broadening” of their version of themselves and their history (pun intended). With so many things needing attention, will feminist (and so, democratic) women’s archives begin to suddenly be set up, and quickly enough? For myself, I am keeping enough journals and other writing, poems and pictures, for the full picture of my and my extended familiies’ lives and times to be shown but, while doing that, my thought is, Why? It’s bound to go in the dumpster, even the pics and things that the remaining few friends and family might value.
A dilemma. Doesn’t mean we outsiders in the male-dominance world shouldn’t keep on writing, painting, dancing, singing, acting, playing. But realistically…….???,,,,,.when it comes to getting our lives and accomplishments integrated into the fabric of common knowledge that is commonly taught?? Perhaps for most of us it’s best to write for self-knowledge and knowledge of the world culture (to stretch the word :culture”) and to try to interest some othes in developing ways and places to house and use the info of Everywoman’s life.
Sallie Bingham has done her part to help in this regard. Mr. and Mrs. Holladay created and help sustain the National Museum of Women in The Arts, and so many others are doing their part to help make women in the visual arts….visible. Rutgers has long had fine feminist studies and a library with a feminist archive. Others try in many ways to help as well, but……Well, we all know the buts so I’ll stop saying what we all know.
As for publishers (virtually all male-owned) saying they’d published enough memoirs, we do notice that they said that after they’d begun publishing, for a while, women’s memoirs, don’t we? Sexism and the gender roles at work. But I can tell you, I READ almost any memoir I come across one, and I am instructed, heartened, and enriched by them. Oh, yeah. So whadda ‘ya think? We keep on writing life down anyway? Yeah, I’d say so. Yeah.