Three women I knew as a child seemed to me to have mastered the art of being a woman. One was an opthamologist and eye surgeon. She had been named Woman of the Year in New Jersey. She was very Russian and I remember her saying, as she switched lenses to determine the right prescription, “Is it better-r-r now, sweethear-r-rt, or befor-r-re?” Another was a Frenchwoman who did, so far as any chronicler could tell, absolutely nothing but serve tea or coffee with a sweet in the garden, stroke Nora, the black cat, and move in the most effortlessly gliding way through fresh topics of conversation as if the afternoon sun would never set on them. These two women were my mother’s friends, and the third master of the art was my mother. She could read Thomas Mann in the German, Proust in the French and Dostoevsky in the Russian. When she died, the condolence notes cast aside all formality, as if the writers were sitting on her lap and she was their Mommy.
These women had been a success at something that is not ordinarily spoken of in terms of success or failure: being a woman. How did they do it, I wondered? Was there a set of instructions anywhere? Even a child could see that a woman could succeed at many things — yet also fail at being a woman.
I came to think that it must involve a definite problematic, like painting with a limited palette. The compression of forces gives the woman’s situation its intensity, potential for human achievement and risk of tragedy (tragedy not being the same as failure). There was something to solve here, a dance to be danced.
It’s not usually presented that way, as a skill or an art. Although we may if fortunate escape the burden of traditional limitations, the terms in which women’s lives are framed remain crucially uninformative. The advice too often misses the real stakes for us.
I would like to open this site for conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. I can be wrong as often as right, so specific advice will be avoided. What will be sought is light on how best to frame the situation of women, considered as a highly interesting problematic. What kind of hand have we been dealt, as women, and how can we best play it?
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One of my favorite angles to look upon feminism as a journey to complete womanhood and not to compare oneself to men. The attempt to “even the score” with men or to “Make things equal” both become absurd as you realize that differences between man and woman are sacred, God-willed, and perfect.
I believe there is a balance to this world set in place by God and trying to make genders the same is like trying to make apples and oranges the same thing.
Secondly, as the world changes we see the word woman being redefined every day, there is less identity recognition with the more traditional ideas of”ladylike” and “the martyrdom” of motherhood. I find that the woman we now choose to identify with is strong, independent and also still able to see with eye of compassion.
I could write more on either of these topics, a lot more, but one more thing…
“History is written by those in power” I once heard a teacher say, and how true that is of woman’s role in society, for instance, we are taught about the hunter and gatherer societies but the history books are quick to forget that many of these cultures were matrionic (is that the word?) and the hunters themselves were women as the men stayed home with the children.
From what I have read, it seems like the first gods were women based on statuettes of fertility goddesses and it was not until the man realized his job in procreation that we had a male representation of god. It also seems that the older and more original a culture puts more power and respect upon women.
Loretta Allen
Loretta,
You are so right about that. When I first started full-time work as an assistant professor, philosophy was an overwhelmingly male profession. All my colleagues would be men. In my college days, the women who taught me masculinized themselves in their gestures and dress, so that no one could accuse them of allowing seductive feminine wiles in the halls of academe…continued in “There is a balance.”