Romeo and Juliet is Not A Love Story

Okay, it’s kind of a love story. But only in a secondary, frustrating kind of way. Let me explain.

I have always felt like I was “over” the story of Romeo and Juliet. Even the first time I heard the plot explained, when I was probably around ten years old, I thought it was kind of dumb. Romeo and Juliet kill themselves over a misunderstanding? Seriously? When I got older, and watched, among other productions, the lush Baz Lurhmann Romeo + Juliet, I liked it a little better. But it still rang hollow for me. I still hated the idea that people held it up as the greatest romance of all time. And I didn’t want to read it because it just seemed kind of silly.

However, my Shakespeare class will be working on Romeo and Juliet, so this week, I actually read it for the first time. About half way through, I realized that I had been right: it is not the greatest love story of all time. It was never meant to be. But it is a very, very good play. A play that is so much more than the silly, passionate sob story it is misrepresented as.

My first realization hit me about the time Romeo and Juliet decide to get married. This happens a little over a third of the way through the play, on the same night that Romeo and Juliet first meet. Now, Shakespeare sped the timetable up quite a bit on everything that happened in his plays, but even taking that into account, this is a pretty rash decision. Especially since the two households are on such bad terms, I kept thinking, “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to wait, and plan this out? Isn’t anyone going to tell these two that this is a really bad idea?”

And then it hit me. That’s exactly what I’m supposed to be thinking at that point. Shakespeare didn’t mean for people to say, “What a great decision! Love conquers all! Yay Romeo and Juliet!” He wanted people to have my exact reaction--to realize that yes, this is a terrible decision. Romeo and Juliet’s passion is certainly legitimate, but rarely in any of Shakespeare’s plays does “love at first sight” hold much weight. Rosalind and Orlando spend weeks in the forest getting to know each other. Viola and Orsino are in close companionship for a long time while love blooms. Benedick and Beatrice spar and jest and flirt for years. It’s true, some of Shakespeare’s more minor couples do get together after a quick glance (Miranda and Ferdinand, Hero and Claudio) but by and large, love takes time in Shakespeare (and in the case of Miranda and Ferdinand, Miranda has a wise father who counsels them to take time to get to know each other before getting hitched.) So when Romeo and Juliet suddenly, rashly decide to get married the very next day, I don’t think it was intended as a triumph of love. I think it was a chance for the audience to ask, “Where are these kids’ parents??”

And that is what the play is about. It’s about what happens when the guidance that should be there, isn’t. It’s about the consequences of a family’s decisions on the younger, less wise members. It’s about a girl and a boy who can’t talk to their parents. That is why this play is beautiful, and horrible, and important. Not because of the fervent but misguided romance of Romeo and Juliet. Because no one is there to stop it.

Both Romeo and Juliet are smart and courageous, and very likable. But Juliet, we’re told, is not even fourteen yet. Romeo is probably older, but still very young. His youth is betrayed at the beginning of the play, when his storyline starts with him pining after Rosaline, only to switch his affections to Juliet when he sees her at the ball. The Friar, perhaps the only real source of wisdom in the play, chides him later for this sudden switch. But neither the Friar, nor Juliet’s nurse--the only two people who know what’s going on between Romeo and Juliet--have any real authority over the two lovers. They both try to dissuade them, but the nurse is so ineffectual that Juliet just laughs off her advice, and the Friar is likewise ignored. And though he gives good advice, by the end he is as cowardly as any, and leaves Juliet in the crypt to stab herself.

What struck me most was the tone of the love scenes. Shakespeare was still quite young when he wrote the play, and that youthful abandon--that whole-hearted passion--is abundant in the love scenes. They were all the more poignant for being so misguided; I felt that if the situation had been right, Romeo and Juliet could have been a beautiful power couple, with more eloquence and honesty than perhaps any other Shakespearean duo. But the love scenes are sandwiched between scenes of incredible violence--Romeo’s duel, Juliet’s confrontation with her parents--and ultimately end in the deaths of not just Romeo and Juliet themselves, but also Paris, who did nothing wrong but himself love Juliet. This is a love story gone all wrong, and not just because of the outside influences working on Romeo and Juliet. Because they themselves do not have the wisdom or the patience to deal with what is happening to them.

The scene that most broke my heart was not the final death scene. We all know that’s coming from a mile away. What just killed me was the scene in which Juliet’s parents tell her she must marry Paris, and she, already married to Romeo, refuses. Juliet, pleading, begs her mother to hear her. Lady Capulet replies: “Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word./Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.” She exits. I cried. I can’t impose on the text what it doesn’t say, but it makes me wonder what kind of relationship Juliet had with her parents previous to the opening of the play. If neither her mother, nor certainly her father, will hear her passionate pleas to delay the marriage, we must suppose that they have no real relationship with her. And while we don’t get to see Romeo’s interactions with his parents, we must assume that since he goes to the Friar for advice and comfort (and has before, it is implied) his relationship with his parents is likewise not one of counsel or influence.

Some people focus on the political morals in the play--the chastisement against feuding factions, the reminder to “make love, not war.” But I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. Because Shakespeare was the great playwright that he was, we sell him short by pitting Romeo and Juliet against the other characters in the play. It’s not as simple as saying, “Romeo and Juliet were good, and they were slain by the hatred of their families.” Romeo and Juliet were very flawed, and very young and stupid, and they were slain by the lack of wisdom available to them. It is a political play, it is a romance (with some of the most beautiful poetry found in any play)--but most of all it is a cautionary story about what happens when parents fail their children. Fail them by nurturing hate, or by neglecting to cultivate a relationship in which they are imparting honesty and wisdom. The result, Shakespeare tells us, is a generation of beautiful souls wasted.

~Ruthie

First Five Pages from a Potential New Novel

I'm starting a new story and since I haven't had any exceptionally deep thoughts about womankind recently, I thought I'd post the first few pages. It's loosely based on the life of my great-grandmother Carmel, and I'm hoping this attempt takes since I've tried to write about her several times. Any comments are appreciated!

~Ruthie

Carmel (excerpt)

There was a new man in town. I heard it from Papa, who brought the tale from the men who leaned up against the posts by the schoolhouse and watched passersby. They weren’t as watchful as the men who lined up by the tavern, but they were more reliable because they didn’t drink except out of their hip flasks. And mostly their liquor was homemade, which Papa said worked out better for them in the end.

This new man, I wanted to get a look at him because people didn’t come to stay very often in the hills. Way back when the land was settled, people thought the mountain where our farm lay was golden land, priceless. But farming ain’t what it used to be, I’ve heard Papa tell Mama. He stood by the stove in the wintertime when he was bit through with frost and went on about the cursed land, cursed right down from the time of Adam. I believed him that the land was cursed, but I think maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Adam. I think maybe it was just because of Papa.

The week before the new man came to town, I lay awake in my bed until I couldn’t see the moon in the sky anymore, and still Papa didn’t come home. Not until the chickens were beginning to stir in their coop did I hear the steady tread of the mare’s hooves on the road up the hill, and then I heard the front door open, because Mama had been wakeful all night, waiting for him. My heart sank into my toes, which were wiggling in the early breeze atop the covers, and I knew that no matter what Papa swore, over and over, even if he stacked up Bibles till they tipped over and clattered to the floor, he would never get free of the bottle.

I lay still and cold as I heard Mama’s voice rise hushed over the early light, even though we hadn’t got neighbors anywhere close by, and nobody was going to hear my Papa riding home drunk. But Mama kept her voice down, and I watched the sloping profiles of my sisters as they lay sleeping beside me. She was doing it for them, because Stella and Ruby still thought Papa got sick in the night. I wished I still believed that, and for a moment I listened tightly to the sounds, imagining that he was just sick. Mama’s gentle grunts as she lifted him from the horse, Papa’s sudden, sodden words, the accidental slam of the door, shuffling across the floor and a creak as Papa dropped into bed. That’s right, he was just sick. Poor Papa, getting sick like that.

There was silence for a few minutes, and my eyes rolled over the planks in the ceiling above my head as I wondered what my Mama was doing. And then her soft footsteps crept through to the door, and I could hear the clink of the bridle as she went to stable Annabelle. Faithful horse, bringing Papa home. I felt my blood heat and my eyes clench tight shut, waiting for the sweep of rage to pass me by on its way through my body. My little sister Ruby probably would have prayed for deliverance from the anger, but I wasn’t about to let it go. I was holding on as tight as I could, because I knew what kind of help it could give. The kind of help my Mama didn’t have, because she couldn’t summon enough anger to cure my Papa.

But Papa was better the next week. When he told my Mama the news, he cast a look in her direction that told me he hadn’t been hanging around the wrong side of the street, and then he let it out about Harry by the schoolhouse, and Mama smiled at him. I piped up quickly, easing up my fingers on the spoon I held.

“What kind of man is he, Pa?” I asked.

Papa fixed me with his brown eyes and shook his head. “Don’t know yet. Men say he’s in town looking for work, but there ain’t much round here to keep a man.”

“Is he young, then?” I asked. I glanced at Elsie, but she sat eating silently.

Papa nodded. “About all I know of him. From somewhere north, maybe Cuttersville. What he’s doing here I couldn’t say.”

The information barely registered before I looked again at Elsie. My older sister was approaching twenty years of age, and in the hills that was too old for a girl to be unwed. I made a note to speak with her later and pressed my Papa further.

“What’s he look like?”

Papa shook his head again. “Quit your questions, girl, I ain’t never seen the man.”

He said it hard, but I saw the twinkle in his eye. He knew I’d got the anger in my blood, and he knew it would keep me warm. He was proud of that.

I let my mind pass over Papa’s news as I was doing up the dishes afterwards, and my Mama clicked her tongue at me. She couldn’t abide to see my hands idle. When the water in the bucket had started to grow cold I finished wiping up as quickly as I could, but when I turned around, Mama was looking at me with her hands on her hips.

“You asked an awful lot of questions about that young man, Carmel,” she said.

I laughed. “Well someone’s got to marry Elsie.”

Mama came closer to me, and I thought for a moment she was going to put her hand on my arm. But then she passed me and picked up the dishtowel, and I saw that she was just going to give the table another wipe. She was silent, and I felt anger bubbling below my bellybutton, because she never spoke what was on her mind. But I was fifteen, and I knew better than to let my words out when they weren’t needed. So I bit them down and then I was out the back door, into the yard where the chickens Ruby was herding let out cackles of dismay at my fast feet.

“Where you going?” Ruby called after me, but I didn’t answer her. She could figure it out, if she wanted. Probably everyone knew by then where I went when I wanted to be alone. My steps took off up the line of trees, pattering softly because I wouldn’t wear the boots Mama told me I should. Behind me the white clapboard house stood soft against the brush of trees surrounding it, and to my right the fields stretched out over the gentle slopes of North Carolina hills. But ahead of me, up the mountain, the ridge of trees that separated one field from another stood like a line of schoolboys paying attention, and I cut through them and ran headlong into the waving grass on the southern slope of the hills. That ridge was too steep to grow anything but grass for the cows, and I gave them a wide berth as they crop steadily. Our cows paid me no mind, unless I’d got Ginger with me. Then they laid back their ears and listened up.

I used to hide in the trees along the ridge of that hill when Mama called for someone to help her bucket the water and bring it up to the house, or when Papa set us to bringing the cows down the slope. I didn’t hide much once I found my fifteenth birthday, but I still set off up there when I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. And my thoughts that day were all for my sister Elsie.

I knew why she didn’t want to speak about another man. I’d seen her down behind the smokehouse, making eyes with George, the man who’d been working on the farm for almost six years. That included his time in the service, when he went off and fought in the war and came back with bad breathing and a hitch in his walk. The winter before, just after he’d come home and I was taking him some soup, he showed me the scars along the side of his neck where he’d clawed at himself in a frenzy because he couldn’t breathe. I asked him what it felt like when the gas leaked through his mask.

“Like I’d swallowed liquid fire,” he said. “Like my throat was coming apart in pieces and hurrying up to come out through my nose.”

I wrinkled my own nose, but I wasn’t scared by his words. I was never afraid to talk about what people felt in their bodies. When Stella was born I watched the whole thing, and stood by with the scissors the doctor had sterilized to cut the birth cord. But Elsie wasn’t like me. She was more like Mama, and when she heard George talking to me her eyes filled up with tears and she turned to the window to wipe them where George couldn’t see. He saw, though, and his face got all concerned.

“Wasn’t so bad, Elsie,” he said. “They took me right away to the field hospital, and I ain’t none the worse for it.”

He was right. He was only lying in bed because Mama and Elsie told him to, and he was up and working again the next day. He limped and his voice came out in a thin little rasp, but he was just as strong as he was before he left. And I knew something else. He’d always been in love with Elsie, always. Before he went away to fight the Germans he used to watch Elsie from across the yard, or over the dinner table. Ever since his parents sent him to work he’d been watching Elsie and wishing she’d watch him too.

I reached the top of the ridge and lay down flat on my belly to watch the farm. The light was turning purple around the edges of the sky, and I could feel the chill breeze of early summer begin to dust up with the fading light. Maybe rain, too, though there weren’t clouds up yet. I could smell something on the air, and I knew the feel of rain when it came. Papa would probably be getting the cows in early, penning them up before one of us had to wade through the running hills.

The barn door was open, and as if I’d conjured him up with my thoughts like a circus man, George walked out into the yard. He was with Walter, my older brother, and though he wasn’t but seventeen he’d got the walk of a man. My Mama didn’t know it, but I’d seen him hanging around by the schoolhouse with his friends, and I knew it wasn’t but a few steps from there to the public house and if he started down that road, there’d be no coming back. Just like Papa. But I liked to see Walter with George because George didn’t drink nothing. Maybe because the only thing he ever thought about was Elsie.

My mind moved back to the things I heard them saying behind the smokehouse, and I blushed a little when I remembered that George had taken her hand in his. Elsie blushed too, but she didn’t mind it. She liked it, I could tell. And that was when I realized that she’d been sweet with George for a while, and she wasn’t going to get any less sweet. I had run back up to the house and found Ruby, and we tried to make sense of the fact that all it took for George to win Elsie’s affection was a war injury. He was still the same George, except now he limped. And he had a nice voice before, kind of deep with a little ache to it when he was tired.

“Maybe she just liked nursing him,” Ruby said, but I shook my head.

“She only got to nurse him for one day,” I said. “He was up and working about the next day.” But I guess I could see the romance in being sweet on a man who got hurt during a war, and I shrugged. “You can’t tell Mama,” I said to Ruby. “She might not approve.”

“Mama and Pa like George,” Ruby insisted. “They treat him like a son.”

I thought about her words and twirled my braid against my cheek. “Think he could run his own farm?” I asked. “Walter likes him just as much as Mama and Pa, but I heard him talking about the gimp in his step and saying that he might never be able to own his own land.”

Ruby was too young to have an opinion about this, and Mama soon called me downstairs to fetch her the bacon I was supposed to have brought back with me. But as I watched George and Walter I made up my mind that if Elsie didn’t take George, I would. Even if he did limp, he liked to laugh and he could tell good stories. And he didn’t drink.

Tired of watching the tiny figures, I rolled over on my back and gazed up through the branches climbing over my head. Another thing about George I liked was that he could tell the name of any tree I could find. Even Papa didn’t know as many trees as George, and he said it was because his Granny used to take him through the forest and teach him the names of everything they saw. My smile faded a little as I thought about that. George’s granny could cause trouble for Elsie and George, even though she was dead. George’s granny was a Cherokee.

I used to wish I had an Indian for a granny. I couldn’t remember either of my grannies, because my Papa’s mother died early on, and my Mama’s granny lived clear over the mountains in South Carolina. When George told us stories about his granny his voice always crept low and soft, and he didn’t speak of her when he was around my parents or any other grown-ups. It wasn’t until I was twelve that I understood why, and then I felt my welcome anger creeping up into my belly. What was so wrong with an Indian for a granny? If she could tell George the names of the trees and the difference between the wild herbs, I didn’t see what difference the color of her skin made.

But I thought Mama and Papa might not mind if Elsie married him. It had been a long time ago that George’s grandfather married his Indian bride, and things were different. Even in Birch Pass, people were starting to change their ways. There were even strangers moving through town.

I sat up quickly, because I remembered the reason I began to think about Elsie and George. The new man in town was a young man, Papa said. I began to think of all the reasons he might be in town, as I sat in the thickening dusk. He couldn’t be a schoolteacher, or we’d have all known it. Besides, we had a schoolteacher. He might have been looking to work in the general store, or one of the other shops, or even maybe open up his own business. But that didn’t seem likely, because if he had been enterprising he’d have gone to a bigger town where people needed lots of stores. Birch Pass barely kept the general store, feed store, tailor and tavern in business, and the hotel only had one bedroom right next to Mr. Wicker’s own room. He even let his cook go because she wasn’t cooking enough meals to keep herself.

So he was hoping for work on one of the farms. I grinned lopsidedly, letting my breath out in a scoff. He couldn’t have been a very bright one, that young man. Most of the farms around the mountains were small enough for family to keep them, and it was too late in the year to help with the planting and too early to help with the harvest. Anybody with sense would know to go north to the farms in the valleys the stretched toward Shenandoah, or even a few miles east out of the toughest of the hills. Unless he had kin nearby, there wasn’t any reason to stay in our part of North Carolina.

He might have kin around. I pulled my braid into my mouth and sucked on the end as I turned over this new thought. Maybe his Mama was dying, and he had twelve little brothers and sisters to care for. His Pa would be dead already, naturally, and he’d be the only man big enough to make enough money to support his family. Or maybe he had a young bride in a little cabin somewhere, and she was about to birth their first child, and their barn had burnt down with all their feed and livestock in it. He was bound to need some charity, but he was probably too proud, and he wouldn’t accept anything but good honest work.

I smiled to myself and squinted into the deepening dusk. I couldn’t tell whether Walter and George were still in the yard, and I could just barely make out the edges of the barn in the thick of dark descending. The house, hidden behind a crop of trees, was lost to me. I thought about sitting up on the ridge until it was really dark, and waiting for Pa to come looking for me. If I sat still enough, he probably wouldn’t find me at all, and I could stay out all night and sleep under the stars like George’s grandma. Maybe I’d climb a tree and sleep curled up on a branch.

But I’d tried to sleep in a tree, and I knew that it never worked out quite like I wanted it to. Before I knew it I was comparing the sharpness of the branches of a tree to the softness of my bed, and I stood up to brush my skirt off. Leave the stars to the Indians, and the trees to the birds. I wasn’t giving up my bed. I put my hands to my arms to brush away the goose bumps, and then I heard my mother’s voice rise over the hushing of the cicadas.

“Car-mel,” she called, throwing her voice up into the hills, “Car-mel…”

I started down the ridge toward her voice, and it seemed to me then that I was walking down out of the clarity of my thoughts into the reality of life—a thick web of it, up to my throat and smelly. But when I rounded the hill and saw the flicker of light in the windows, the feeling passed, or at least eased a little. Besides, my Mama was at the door, and she gave me a smile as I walked in.

“First call,” she said. “Very kind of you.”

Fenghuang as Needed Mythology

Recently, I’ve developed an interest in mythology as the imaginative representations of cultural beliefs and ideals. Beautiful pictures and stories from across the globe fascinate me, but currently, none more than the myth of the Fenghuang, or Chinese “phoenix”. Due to millennia of Fenghuang mythology, the creature’s symbolism is sometimes conflicted. But here is what I’ve gathered and why I think it matters for contemporary American women…

The Fenghuang is part of ancient Chinese cosmology and was responsible along with three other mythological creatures for the creation of the world. After these creatures had created our world, they divided it into four sectors of north, south, east, and west, each taking dominion over one. The Fenghuang’s domain was the south and as a result, the summer. This mythological creature’s body symbolizes the six celestial bodies with its head as the sky, eyes as the sun, back as the moon, wings as the wind, feet as the earth, and finally, tail as the planets.



The actual physical appearance of the Fenghuang is a composite of many different animals. The creature is made up of the beak of a cock, the face of a swallow, the forehead of a fowl, the neck of a snake, the breast of a goose, the back of tortoise, the hindquarters of a stag, and the tail of a fish. This sounds like quite the odd looking creature to me, but interestingly enough, artistic depictions of the Fenghuang never seem to show the bird’s described physical make-up. Instead it is depicted as a beautiful and graceful composite of many bird varieties, most often with a peacock tail with feathers made of the five fundamental colors black, red, green, white, and yellow (corresponding to the five elements of water, fire, wood, metal, and earth).

In China’s most ancient mythology, the Fenghuang was actually two birds united together. Feng represented the male entity and huang the female. United together to create the Fenghuang, they were a metaphor of the yin and yang, as well as the sacred union of male and female. Used to symbolize peace and harmony, the Fenghuang was said to appear only at the beginning of a new era or at the ascension to the thrown of a benevolent ruler. More recently in China’s long history, though, the Feng and Huang have been merged into one female creature, the Fenghuang, so that the ancient mythological figured could be paired with the male dragon as a symbol for the empress and emperor. In more recent centuries, the dragon and phoenix are often seen paired together as a symbol for marriage and unity.

What draws me to the Fenghuang is a particular ancient description of its symbolism. In the Shan Hai Jing (山海经), a classic of Chinese mythology, each part of the Fenghuang’s body symbolizes a word. The head represents virtue (德), the wings represent duty (義), the back represents propriety (禮), the abdomen represents belief (信), and the chest represents mercy (仁). What a beautiful symbol for femininity!

When I think about contemporary American culture, it’s hard for me to come up with any myths as deep symbols for femininity. We have larger than life caricatures of women as sex toys, power-hungry achievers, or spineless and wimpy prey, but there is a fundamental difference between myth and caricature. Caricature is based on what people perceive to exist. Myth presents what people want to be. The beauty of mythology is that it takes us beyond reality and gives us a chance to create an ideal. What does it say about us women if we do not have any collective symbols beyond our reality to remind us of what we hope to become?

If I could pick a mythological symbol to inspire modern women, I would pick the Fenghuang. The creature flies with beauty and strength, ushering in times of peace and harmony. It is virtuous as it carries out its duty. Representing a life filled with belief (I would add, belief in something bigger than itself), the Fenghuang is marked by mercy and compassion. Lastly, the Fenghuang symbolizes propriety, a lost word in contemporary times. But the word has richer meaning than its surfaces usage. In addition to referring to manners of behavior, propriety means “appropriateness to the purpose or circumstances” and “rightness or justness.” Who could argue that justness and an understanding of one’s circumstances are a beautiful component of feminine ideals?

I wish our society would dream again and intrigue us with its ideals.

~Hannah

Female Chauvinist Pigs: A Review

In her 2005 book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy addresses what anyone with two eyes has noticed – American culture celebrates a raunchy version of female sexuality with gusto and flair. This isn’t new information to anyone. But what Levy does highlight in a new way is the more than willing participation (and even leadership) of American women in creating and developing an environment where prostitutes, strippers, and three-somes are considered the ideals of thrillingly liberated womanhood.

But again, this is nothing new to anyone who turns on the television or picks up a magazine once in a while. Phenomena such as Girls Gone Wild, Paris Hilton, reality tv, and pole dancing have become so integrated with pop culture that one no longer needs to read an entire book (nonetheless a review!) about the trend to notice it. So what is this review about?

What kept me reading Levy’s book and caused me to furiously underline almost every paragraph was her own response as an avowed feminist to the problem. The reader senses Levy’s natural outrage at what she investigates, particularly in her chapter concerning the effects raunch culture (female exhibitionism) has on teenage sexuality, but she cannot bring herself to give moral weight or significance to the cultural trend. Levy’s worldview does not provide her with a strong enough reason to reject what bothers her so intensely. She feels something is wrong, but has only shallow arguments with which to try and persuade a self-indulgent culture that porn stars really are not the ideal images of female liberation.

Levy’s one and only argument against raunch culture is interestingly post-modern. The stereotypical post-modern argument for female liberation starts with the individual creating her own truth and happiness. Because Levy agrees, she carefully repeats throughout her book that raunch culture does not bother her in and of itself. According to Levy, what bothers her, and deeply so, is the way in which she feels all women are pressured into such trends, often by other women. In other words, Levy wants to say some women do naturally desire to be porn stars and flaunt certain kinds of sexuality, but she personally does not want to, so it should not be a cultural standard for women. Levy views sex as a mysterious thing that every person should experiment with in order to discover her personal preferences. Therefore, society should have no culturally prescribed expressions of it. The only criticism Levy makes of raunch culture is that all women are expected to participate in it as a collective standard for female sexual liberation.

Female Chauvinist Pigs displays Levy’s passion concerning female sexual trends, but it is exactly that passion which weakens Levy’s actual argument against raunch culture. Almost every page of her book belies an outrage and disgust at something Levy cannot seem to fully accept even despite her stated qualifications. The book’s central argument at times seems completely lost as Levy first works to document trends and occurrences she finds outrageous and then quickly inserts her relativist objections. She repeatedly shows the unhappiness, dishonesty, and lack of sexual pleasure the women she interviews experience, and yet she is constantly stating that she is sure some woman somewhere actually enjoys such sexual exhibitionism. Additionally, she dedicates a significant portion of her text to arguing that most people, male and female, do not like the current trend. In a book where the philosophical stance is that there should be no overarching standards or sexual ideals, her arguments against the trend because “most” people do not like it does not fit. Levy waffles between her passionate dislike of raunch culture and a highly intellectual and relativistic criticism of it.

But even Levy’s philosophical objections to the current trend do not deal with the real problem: the communal nature of humanity. Her argument is based solely on the individual. What the individual wants and likes, she should get. There is no consideration made for the fact that very few women, let alone people, make decisions based solely on what they want or like without any influence from peers. There is no realm of life where this is more true for a woman than in the realm of sex.

Female sexuality is grounded on being delighted in and admired by the partner. When the number of sexual partners is limitless, though, so are the number sexual competitors. Life does not give women a relational vacuum in which to decide what they want and like in order to then just go out and get it. The things we learn about ourselves and the things that define us exist against the backdrop of every person, male and female, we are connected to and engage with throughout our lives. And as our world gets smaller and smaller, the number of people we interact with increases. For a woman desiring to be sexually admired and valued in a world where there are no expectations for the responsibility of doing so belonging to one person, the push towards exhibitionism is only natural. The larger the pool for competition, the more a woman must do and display to single herself out as desirable.

Oddly enough, Levy adds an afterword in which she argues that the thing to combat the tide of raunch culture is a new generation of idealists. I assume she means to promote the ideal of each woman’s prerogative to define sex for herself. As I just argued, though, it does not work. Levy is right that what we need is a new idealism. But instead, I propose the old fashioned ideal of one woman and one man, for life. Women do want to be admired and delighted in sexually, but if we make sex a limitlessly individualistic endeavor, we also make it a limitlessly competitive endeavor. People do vicious things when in boundary-less competition with one another; on the other hand, rules provide safety and promote consideration within a community. I even venture to say that rules are what create community. The difference between a society of individuals competing endlessly for attention and a community living in harmonious respect for each other is often the rules and agreements by which the community lives. Concerning female expression of sexuality, the only thing that will halt the current trend will be a rise of communities committed to following shared rules for the benefit each individual.

~Hannah

Pandora's Curiosity, Eve's Willfulness, and Spiritual Misunderstanding

For two and a half years now, I've been discussing Christianity with Chinese friends. In these discussions, my understanding of my own worldview has grown in unexpected ways due to difficult or complicated questions posed to me by my friends. Usually a topic is brought up, they express their reservations about it, and I am forced to admit I don't have a ready answer.

One such confusing topic is Eve's involvement in the fall of mankind. What surprises me when discussing this topic with my Chinese friends is that they think Eve was condemned for curiosity. Growing up in a Christian home, I was always told Eve was condemned for rebellion against God, not human curiosity. Additionally, my Chinese friends quickly jump to the conclusion that Eve receives the entire blame for evil entering the world, another contradiction to what I was taught. It bothers them to see the female sex blamed for the world’s evil and problems. After all, isn’t curiosity a natural part of human existence?

A few weeks ago, I read something that shed light on this topic for me and has caused me to contemplate the Western worldview’s conflicting influences. I climbed into bed and took out Bulfinch's The Age of Fable for light reading before sleep. Remembering a painting depicting the story of Pandora I once saw and loved, I decided to educate myself and actually read the myth. In one short paragraph, my mind was filled with thoughts that kept me awake for some time. The Greek myth of Pandora relates how evil was brought into the world by the accident of a woman. In some ways, it resembles the Biblical account of Eve's participation in bringing evil into the world, and yet there are crucial differences. Within the West’s literary and religious heritage, we find competing descriptions of womanhood.

Bulfinch's recount of the myth reads as such:

"Woman was not yet made. The story (absurd enough!) is that Jupiter made her, and sent her to Prometheus and his brother, to punish them for their presumption in stealing fire from heaven; and man, for accepting his gift. The first woman was named Pandora. She was made in heaven, every god contributing something to perfect her. Venus gave her beauty, Mercury persuasion, Apollo music, etc. Thus equipped, she was conveyed to earth, and presented to Epimetheus, who gladly accepted her, though cautioned by his brother to beware of Jupiter and his gifts. Epimetheus had in his house a jar, in which were kept certain noxious articles for which, in fitting man for his new abode, he had had no occasion. Pandora was seized with an eager curiosity to know what this jar contained; and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man, -such as gout, rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite and revenge for his mind, -and scattered themselves far and wide. Pandora hastened to replace the lid! but, alas! the whole contents of the jar had escaped, one thing only excepted, which lay at the bottom, and that was hope. So we see at this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope never entirely leaves us; and while we have that, no amount of other ills can make us completely wretched."

In Pandora's tale, the creation of woman is a punishment, which is alone cause for concern, but even more interesting is the relationship between woman and evil. Evil is a problem that comes from outside of Pandora, rather than something that lies within, thus making the release of evil into our world an excusable mistake. The justifiable act of curiosity gets the better of woman by accident. Though woman herself is a punishment for an act of treachery, the action that brings evil upon humanity is not condemnable. Evil's entrance to the world is grieved and regretted, but not condemned because the culprit made a mistake rather than a choice. Pandora is a victim who is not held accountable, thus stripping her of a protagonist’s role. In short, woman is a curse without moral accountability for her decisions.

In the Biblical narrative, we see almost the exact opposite. Genesis 2-3 reads:

"And the LORD God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.' Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

And Adam said:
'This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.'

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’' Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden."

Here, Eve is a protagonist, someone capable of making important decisions. In the beginning, Eve is in her being and essence a blessing to mankind. Her purpose and existence is to fill a void, the answer to a felt need recognized by God. With her arrival, human relationship begins and she is recognized for her physical, mental, and moral comparability to Adam. Most importantly, she is a responsible being who will be held accountable for her actions. In Genesis, curiosity in not the cause for evil's entrance to the world. Evil enters by willful action, a choice to disregard the truth and forget the promises of God. There is no victimization by others, rather a sad and despicable rebellion.

This distinction is incredibly important to the way we view ourselves as women. One of the most common misunderstandings of Biblical Christianity that I've come across in my relationships with Chinese women is that Eve ate the fruit and fell from grace because she was curious. And how could God punish someone for being curious? For my friends, it’s like asking, how could God punish woman for being human?

We women need to reexamine what our inherited Western worldview tells us about Eve, learning to distinguish between the dignity given to woman in the Biblical account and the assumed Pandoraish version of the story we’ve inherited and is passed on to those outside the West. If we think of Eve as a Pandorian mistake-maker, then God’s condemnation of mankind truly does smack of injustice. But if I look at the Biblical account without the centuries long influence of Greek mythology, I find a much more dignifying, though terrifying, explanation for the state of woman’s sorrow and of the world.

The picture of womanhood given us by Pandora is the globally common and pagan one, and it is this version that has helped create the marginalization of women. A summation of this view goes, "Women don't know what they are doing, they can't be trusted, so to keep them from making harmful mistakes, keep them out of the loop." To say our involvement in the destruction of mankind was a mistake is the first step to giving up our dignity, our rationality, and our voice.

Interestingly, this is the first thing the Biblical account describes Eve doing after her eyes are opened to evil. Eve’s first statements after eating the fruit pass the blame of her actions on to someone else. She removes herself from the protagonist’s position and assumes the role of victim. Man was not the first to victimize woman, keeping her from being an active participant in the world’s decisions. Woman was the first to do so. Our mother Eve victimized herself and the rest of us when she told the first myth that it was someone else’s vault she ate the fruit. Since then, every victimizing myth, every story or fable that has made women helpless and stupid is only a retelling of what Eve herself declared to God when asked who was responsible. Pandora was Eve’s creation.

So how do we respond? By no means am I writing that women should be proud of Eve's actions. But I do believe that if women want to claim "comparableness" to Adam, our first step should be to stop passing the blame were it isn’t justified. Our second step should be to stop blaming the Bible for the victimization of women, for in its texts, even in woman’s worst moment, she is given more dignity than the world’s myths provide. And lastly, through my conversations with Chinese friends, I’ve learned that the third step is to grieve the reality in which we live and to reach out for the overwhelming grace given woman by her Creator.



~Hannah

The Mystery of Man Books, or, Please Enlighten Me

I recently read The Man Who Was Thursday. That book touched me very deeply, and I can’t stop thinking about it and the crazy, weird imagery that seems to make so much sense to me. But the content of the book is not actually what this post is about. Really what I want to talk about is the male to female ratio of the book.

It’s a very skewed ratio, since there is only one female in the entire work. Not that there’s only one main female character—there is literally only one female mentioned throughout the entire book. Except for the sister who brackets the book by a few pages at the beginning and a sentence at the end, every character—supporting or main—is male. There’s not even a waitress or a flower-seller. It’s a little weird, actually.

But I’m not writing this to complain about the lack of femininity in GK Chesterton’s book. What I really find interesting is the fact that I read this book over three days and until the afternoon after I finished it, I didn’t even notice that there were no women in the book. I, a woman, read an entire book, and loved it, and got a lot out of it, without even realizing that none of the characters shared this fundamental aspect of my identity.

This does not seem to be a huge deal. There are plenty of books I love in which all the main characters are men. But what I think really interesting is this: if this had been the opposite situation, and a man was reading a book comprised of a completely female universe, I doubt he would have had the same kind of experience I did.

I know there are lots of guys who like books about women. There are classic women writers like George Eliot and Emily Bronte who wrote about women, and men definitely read those books. There are even books like Sula by Toni Morrison that tell tales with lots of female characters, and men read and enjoy those. But honestly, how many books are out there that don’t have any main male characters? And of those books, how many men exist who would be chomping at the bit to read them?

I’m not really saying that this is a good or a bad thing. It’s just interesting to note, and I’m wondering why this is. Is it because for centuries men have been the dominant writers, and women are just used to reading men’s books? Because it’s generally thought that men are more universally relatable than women? Is it some weird impact of feminism—because women tend to be more open to the idea that men and women are equal and on the same playing field, they accept the experiences of men as relatable ones?

I have no idea why any of this is, and I’m really interested. I’d love to hear from some guys, in case I’ve totally misrepresented them and they would actually love to go read a book with all female characters. And I’d love to hear thoughts on this subject—if indeed I’m right. Why are women so much more ready to read man books?

~Ruthie

Shakespeare: Boy Did He Know Women

This semester I took a class called ‘Acting Shakespeare,’ a class that I was incredibly intimidated by. The thought of memorizing Shakespeare weekly for an entire semester was very daunting, but once the class started I realized that the scariest thing about the class was not memorizing the words or understanding what the heck they meant; the biggest challenge was doing justice to the characters created by William Shakespeare. And I realized that Shakespeare knew women. Really, really knew them.

This was a surprise to me. Through my experience with Shakespeare before the class, I knew that many of his female characters had great lines. But after studying and scanning and getting up and speaking some of those lines, I found myself connecting on a whole new level with the women whose lines I was saying. It was while I was weeping before the class as Hermione, having felt something pull at me in her lines:

How will this grieve you
When you shall come to clearer knowledge that
You thus have publish’d me. Gentle my lord,
You scarce can right me throughly then, to say
You did mistake

that I was really sold on Shakespeare. Really, really sold. This guy has something to say to every situation.

And he understood women. He understood them because he understood humans, probably, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive. Most of his female characters were smart as whips—many smarter than their male love-interests. And because Shakespeare had this understanding of women, he did what he could with them, and then when he needed a little more freedom he put a pair of pants on them and they paraded around the stage speaking as women in disguise.

It’s their wit that makes them impressive, but it’s their struggles and their hearts that make them unforgettable. Shakespeare’s characters are so much more than the intellectual, hard-to-understand thees and thous people commonly think of. Even Juliet, the archetypal girlish lover is so much more than her swooning stigma. How beautiful are her words—spoken from an incredibly agile mind—when she says to Romeo,

They are but beggars that can count their worth
But my true love is grown to such excess
I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.

I guess it’s that blend of strength and beauty that made me first fall in love with Shakespeare’s women, but there’s more. The situations he puts his characters in are so insightful. How did he know to write about Phoebe from As You Like It, and the more likable Olivia from Twelfth Night who are both proud and bored—how did he know that what they really want is just to be seen for who they truly are? Play Olivia as a woman who is beautiful and just wants to be praised, and she’s flat. Play her as a woman who is beautiful and has known only praise, and then is faced with a man who tells her that he’s not in love with her and calls her out for her pride—play her as that startled, intrigued woman and she breathes with life. Even if it means being told to their faces that they are “too proud,” women want to be seen. Shakespeare knew that.

How did he know to write about Helena, the lover from A Midsummer Night’s Dream who is beautiful, and smart, and in love with a man who doesn’t love her? How did he know to give her a part where she knows she’s too good to be chasing after Demetrius, and yet does it anyway? How did he know to write about Rosalind, the brilliant leading lady of As You Like It who gets in over her head and then tortures the man she loves with her playmaking because she’s dressed as a man and can’t stand the pain their interactions cause? How did Shakespeare know that it never works out well to pretend to be something you’re not, and how did he bring his female leads to that beautiful conclusion in so many of his plays?

There is poetry in Shakespeare’s plays, along with the wit. But it’s not the beauty of the words that makes Shakespeare’s work enduring. It’s the fact that he knew humans. He knew what they needed, and how they acted, and what they said and what they should have said. I’m convinced that my acting teacher is right—Shakespeare is not for English majors. It’s for actors. His work is worth reading and studying, but it was meant first to be seen on a stage. Of course an actor has to do the work of scanning and looking up words and figuring out what she’s saying. But if an actor truly knows her character, I’m convinced that Shakespeare’s plays will make more sense to the audience just by hearing her speak than if the audience spent hours studying the meaning of the text.

I worked a lot on Hermione, the wronged queen from The Winter’s Tale. After reading the play, I still don’t know why she comes back to life, and whether there is some deeper meaning in the text. But from working on her as an actor, I have learned about her forgiveness, and her grief, and her constant dignity. Those things—and the things that I still can’t articulate about her but can feel within me—are the things I think Shakespeare meant us to remember about her. Those are the things that made him a brilliant playwright, and a frighteningly accurate observer of human behavior.

So go watch some Shakespeare. Better yet, pull out a play, do the work of understanding the text, and then speak it out loud. Embody it. Figure out why the lines that are supposed to be iambic pentameter have an extra couple syllables. Shakespeare didn’t just make mistakes—he always had a reason. His women—and his men too—can tell you something about those reasons.

~Ruthie

Willa Cather on Being Understood

"But Alexandra," he said wistfully, "I've never been any real help to you, beyond sometimes trying to keep the boys in good humor." Alexandra smiled and shook her head. "Oh it's not that. Nothing like that. It's by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, that you've helped me. I expect that is the only way one... person ever can really help another."

I read the above a couple months ago in Willa Cather's O Pioneers! (trust me, the book is waaaaaay more interesting than it sounds) and it has stuck with me. I don't have any ready proofs (scriptural or secular) for why being understood seems like a basic need of humanity, but isn't it?

It seems to me, too, that this need, or at least the degree to which we feel this need, has dramatically increased in 21st century America. As our society becomes increasingly self-focused and expressive, the felt need to be understood has increased and the hurt and despair when we are not has multiplied.

It seems to me, though, that with so much desire to be understood, we are loosing our ability to understand. So often, it feels like we are all trying to out-shout each other in our attempts to express our thoughts and feelings. Maybe that is what I am trying to do with this blog. But where are the listeners? Where are those who don't desire to always express, but rather to hear others? How can anyone be understood if no one is listening?

It takes sacrifice to listen and understand. It means letting go of being understood yourself for the moment. But isn't that the only way one person can ever truly help another?

"So much information is available, locked up in the minds and hearts of each person in every city. It is there, if you will but ask... When you listen, you validate their experiences and thoughts."

~Hannah