a price above rubies

Yesterday I read a profile of Caitlin Flanagan in Elle. It is brilliant and scathing, and Laurie Anderson showed great presence of mind where a lesser writer might have broken down and never been able to complete such an assignment.

Flanagan is the sort of woman who has always made my head hurt, because she began her essays in the Atlantic by sounding so articulately sensible and well-attuned to the crises of the well-educated, middle-to-upper-middle-class woman. And then the contradictions and reversals began, slowly at first, and then spiraling more and more sharply downward. Was it that I, unrepentant feminist, was simply having trouble accepting her carefully-reasoned conclusions because of my own stubbornness? Was it that I simply wasn't intelligent enough to grasp her argument? Why did I leave her essays feeling as though she were trying to pull out the rug from under me?

Because, apparently, she was. And she wasn't.

It appears that Caitlin Flanagan is something of a fraud. Those early essays about the comforts of housework, the rightness of being at home and not allowing some other person to care for one's children, the blessings, after all is said and done, of being the less dominant spouse and the relief that ensued? Well, she apparently has a difficult time living up to her own standards (or down to them, if you consider her amusement about women who dislike clutter). Her house is impeccable, but not because she does her own housework: no, she has a housekeeper for that. And the cooking. And, if you can believe it, a "personal organizer." And while it's true that she is at home with her sons, she is still holding down a rather healthy writing career. And her children had a nanny for the first three years of their lives. (She insists that she was always there "to exert influence" over them, but I wonder who was doing the dirty work?)

There's really no reason to begrudge her any of these things, except that, as one of the few women writing in the mainstream about the private sphere, her perspective is entirely disingenuous. She has made almost none of the sacrifices that she expects other women to make, and at the same time deals a coupe-de-grace to women who do have careers and don't have those privileges. Make sure you read all the way to the end, about the gerbil, and you'll see what I mean.

And while she appears entirely concerned and sympathetic, she really isn't interested in helping other women achieve what she has: namely, a job and a life that allows her the flexibility to make a name for herself while watching her sons grow up. It could be because it simply hasn't occurred to her; as a "contrarian," her job is to judge, not to empower. It could be because she actually doesn't know how to go about it--apparently she despises housework as she despises the career women who attempt to do everything and end up doing it imperfectly--and she does not know how to cook--doesn't even know, according to Anderson, how much the ingredients in her refrigerator cost. She is, in this respect, what more outspokenly feminist bloggers than I would call a "tool of the patriarchy," and a seductively insidious one at that.

It could also be because she's afraid that someone else will do what she cannot.

Women on both sides of the divide bewail the conventional wisdom that "we can't have it all." What, exactly, is "all"? Perfect children, a perfect house, a perfectly organized life, a perfect marriage, a brilliant career, a social life, etc., etc. I'm not sure what "perfect" is, exactly. I know I'll never "have it all," because in order to preserve my loving marriage I gave in on the question of children. My husband doesn't want them. I long for them from time to time, but have found that I can live without them as well. Perhaps the corollary of that is that we don't have such a perfect marriage, either, since we've agreed to disagree on such an essential issue, and I'll always carry that loss with me. But if I didn't love my husband so much, if he didn't love me so much, I would have left him long ago for a man willing to be a father to my children, and that is always an unknown quantity. And I love our life together. The decision was not hard to make. And he's aware of what I've given up, and he's tried to make it up to me in every way possible.

And since then, we've noticed that other people our age, friends and colleagues with children, seem to be barely holding it together, even those who are quite successful professionally with wives at home in something akin to Caitlin Flanagan's position. And Flanagan herself seems unwilling to acknowledge that the dissatisfaction her mother experienced as a model housewife, which led her to work--is the same dissatisfaction that caused Betty Friedan--whom both she and her mother derided--to write The Feminine Mystique. There is, apparently, some discontent for many--not all--women who choose a subordinate position in a traditional marriage.

And, sadly, that kind of marriage appears to be based on an economy with which those of us in more-or-less equal-partnership-type marriages are not all that familiar: in exchange for security, financial well-being, and protection of herself and her children, the traditional wife feels she must be a professional housekeeper and childcare giver. But she also seems to be implying that her husband loves her because she is a traditional wife. Flanagan describes how her husband took care of her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing radiation treatments and chemotherapy:

"When I couldn't walk from the car to the doctor's office, [my husband] carried me. And if that's a traditional marriage I'll take it. If marriage is like a bank account, filled not only with affection but also with a commitment to the other person's well-being as much as to one's own, I suppose my balance was high. I suppose that all the days I had made a home for my husband, and all the times I had ended my writing days early so that he could work late or come home to a hot dinner and not a scene of domestic chaos -- all that, as much as the desire and intensity that originally brought us together, were stores in my account."

Love as a bank account. That made my blood run cold, as it did many other readers. One Salon reader pointed out that when a spouse has cancer, you drop everything and care for that person. Not because they've made you hot meals in the past, although that might be an expression of their love for you, but because you love them simply can't live without them, regardless of how much domestic chaos there has been in the past. (And since the hot meals, these days, are made by someone else, there must be some intangible reason Flanagan's husband keeps her around, even if she refuses to acknowledge it.) Equal partnership marriages are much more familiar with the give-and-take aspect than are traditional marriages, I think, because when one spouse--male or female--needs to slack off, the other can step in, rather interchangeably, without any need for expressions of guilt or gratitude.

So although there were points at which the essay on Flanagan angered me deeply, particularly on behalf of the writer, I came away with a feeling of overwhelming sadness. Flanagan, too, wants it all, and she's discovering that she has fallen short.

I have more to say on the subject, and it relates to what I want to do with this blog--something I really haven't found anywhere else.