Wish Her Safe At Home

After reading the repeated and enthusiastic recommendations of Stephen Benatar's novel Wish Her Safe At Home over at Booklust, I had to see what all the fuss was about, and there's been a good bit of fuss over this book, as it turns out. Originally published in 1982, when it was hand-sold by the author in British bookstores on weekends and submitted for the Booker prize, it was reissued in paperback in 2007 by New York Review Books Classics. Although the novel is set in the 1980's, the reissue cover photo is of a woman sitting at a table that could date anywhere from the Victorian era to the 1950s.

For those of us who, like the novel's heroine Rachel Waring, have memorized every detail of the Elia Kazan version of A Streetcar Named Desire, the sinister parallels begin early and go deep, from Rachel's delight in saying she's had her looks compared to Vivien Leigh's to her eventual declaration that she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers." But Rachel's rendition of the line doesn't make me cry, as Blanche's always does. Rachel is nothing if not endlessly cheerful.

Her childhood is more likely to make me cry than her eventual fate. The poor little girl who had been taught that she must never accept a gift the first or even the second time it is offered is a pitiful figure:
"my mother was in hospital one Easter and I was staying with the elderly couple who lived upstairs. Well, on the Sunday morning there wasn't any egg beside my plate--of course, I hadn't been expecting one--but what there was, was a packet of Ross's Edinburgh Rock. When I took my seat I saw it and felt jubilant; you didn't get so many sweets in those days. Yet I didn't say anything because, again, I had been told never to assume that something was yours until you'd actually been given it. But after a while Mrs. Michaels, who was a funny little woman, spindly-legged, slightly hunchbacked, jumped up from the table with a small cry of distress and exclaimed to her husband as she went, 'It was meant as a surprise. So why isn't she pleased?'
Well, I sat there in shocked silence for a minute, gazing dully at the gift, and then I said quietly, 'But I am. Very.' Yet by then Mr. Michaels had gone after his wife and there was nobody left to hear.
There was nobody either--but this I was glad of--to see the silent tears which trickled down my cheeks.
And I didn't know what to do with the rock. I carried all the dirty dishes to the sink and washed them and put away the cereal packet and the butter dish and the marmalade but in the end I just left that packet on the table...it simply disappeared and wasn't spoken of again."

Stories like that come out of Rachel at the most wildly inappropriate times and in unlikely places because, having left a flatmate whom she wasn't overly fond of and who doesn't seem to miss her very much either, she doesn't really know anyone. She talks to people in shops and workmen she hires to renovate the house she's inherited. She's the kind of old lady who talks to a stranger who sits beside her on a train about uncomfortable subjects, the kind who takes an enormous amount of pleasure in her clothes, forever acquiring and describing and suiting her mood to the state of them. At one point, when a child accidentally spills on her skirt, it ruins Rachel's afternoon, and although she doesn't come completely unhinged enough to whisper "blot gently" like Vivien Leigh does as Blanche, she does rush home with an acute awareness of people laughing at the wet stain. But nothing discourages Rachel for long; she just sings a showtune and puts on an even more determined face.

You want to like her; you start out identifying with her aspirations and disappointments. Eventually, though, you come to realize that Rachel is living in a world of her own. If wishing her safe at home would work, you'd wish it every time she goes out in public and makes a fool of herself. Even at church her behavior is so odd she makes people uncomfortable:
I prepared myself quietly and without fuss to listen to his address. Firstly I smoothed my skirt out beneath me and after I'd resumed my place, carefully crossed my legs. There was so little room: even the arranging of one's hem required some element of expertise! Then I smiled with shared expectancy at those around me. (They didn't seem too friendly.) Lastly I cleared my throat and looked all eager and attentive. I even bent forward slightly so that he should realize I intended not to miss a single word. Vicars, after all, were only human: they too unfolded and grew happier with encouragement. 'It's just like talking to your flowers,' I whispered to the woman next to me.

But like Rachel herself, I was reluctant to face the fact that the only people who show any interest in her company might merely be using her. I fought as hard against it, nearly, as Rachel herself, even after the moment one of them said to her "I think you need someone to look after you," thinking that it was an offer of help, rather than a Stanley Kowalski-type maneuver to be rid of her entirely.

I sympathized with her desire to surround herself with flowers, to sing, and to wear the most beautiful dress she's ever seen, even past the point where, from an outsider's point of view, at least, she has clearly taken to haunting her house like Miss Havisham, in a tattered wedding dress.

Rachel Waring answers a question I've always had in the back of my mind about Blanche DuBois: would it have been so hard to accommodate her desire for magic? The answer is yes. Seen from the inside, her desire makes a dreamy, romantic kind of sense. Seen from the outside, however, such desire is ludicrous, irritating, and eventually just too much to have to put up with on a daily basis.

And the dangers of being able to give into one's individual desires are growing as the opportunities for living, working, and even shopping without having any contact with other people are expanding. This is one thing that contributes to the novel's timeless feel. As Jessa Crispin notes in her review, "with reports of how isolating modern life in the digital age has become, the book, nearly three decades after its original release, couldn't be more relevant." Certainly Rachel's recollection that one of her most becoming outfits had previously been criticized as an attempt to dress up "mutton as lamb" and her continued admiration of her landscaper's bare chest through the emptiness of her days will stay in my imagination through the rest of my day as I work at home and make my trip out to buy groceries at the scan-it-yourself counter.

Without other people to measure yourself against, how do you know when you've gone over the edge from delightfully eccentric to completely delusional? This novel asks that question and shows what it's like to not be quite sure of the answer.

Chivalry from M is for Magic

This story is one of my favorites from Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic, mostly because of its elaborately mundane tone. From the very first line--"Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat"--everything that happens seems entirely plausible. The fur coat is in an Oxfam shop, the British version of Goodwill, and an old lady buys it: "Mrs. Whitaker gave fifty pence to Marie, who gave her ten pence change and a brown paper bag to put the books and the Holy Grail in. Then she went next door to the butcher's and bought herself a nice piece of liver. Then she went home." She polishes the Grail and puts it on her mantel.

When one of her friends comes over and asks what it is, Mrs. Whitaker explains "It's the Holy Grail....It's the cup that Jesus drank out of at the Last Supper. Later, at the Crucifixion, it caught His precious blood when the centurion's spear pierced His side" and her friend, who "didn't hold with unsanitary things" says it's nice.

After the friend has gone home and Mrs. Whitaker has had her lunch and her pills, the doorbell rings, and it's a knight on a quest. He identifies himself by handing her a scroll which says he is "Galaad, Knight of the Table Round" before she'll let him in. Once he sees the Grail on her mantle, he drops to one knee and lowers "his head as if in silent prayer." He offers her gold for the grail, but she refuses, saying she likes it on her mantel, as "it's just right, between the dog and the photograph of my Henry."

Undiscouraged, Galaad returns a few days later and offers her a sword that will make the wearer "unconquerable in war, and invincible in battle." Mrs. Whitaker doesn't want it, of course, but she "made him some cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches for the journey back and wrapped them in greaseproof paper."

The next time Galaad shows up, Mrs. Whitaker makes him move things around in her attic while she cleans and tells him about her family and how she met her husband. In return, Galaad tells her about "his mother, Elaine, who was flighty and no better than she should have been and something of a witch to boot" and the rest of his family. They have tea, and then Galaad produces the Philosopher's Stone, the Egg of the Phoenix, and the Apple of Life and offers them in exchange for the grail. Mrs. Whitaker is tempted by the apple, which Galaad tells her "is one of the apples of the Hesperides....One bite from it will heal any illness or wound, no matter how deep; a second bite restores youth and beauty; and a third bite is said to grant eternal life." Although Mrs. Whitaker thinks about "how it was to be young: to have a firm, slim body that would do whatever she wanted it to do," she is no fool. She knows that necromancy never pays.

So at length Mrs. Whitaker tells Galaad to "put that apple away....You shouldn't offer things like that to old ladies. It isn't proper....But I'll take the other two....They'll look nice on the mantelpiece. And two for one's fair, or I don't know what is." Galaad goes down on his knee and kisses her hand. Then they finish their tea and Mrs. Whitaker wraps up "a large slice of fruitcake" for him, "along with a banana and a slice of processed cheese in silver foil" and tells him to use the toilet before he goes.

It's a charming story. Mrs. Whitaker is the exact opposite of a character like Blanche Dubois. Blanche desperately wants magic in her life, but Mrs. Whitaker reacts to magic in the same no-nonsense way she responds to slugs in her garden or her guitar-playing vicar. (Do you know a guitar-playing clergyman?)

The Daughter Song

I've had a tune running through my head, and it's been irritating the life out of me. The household remedy for that is to sing the "Digimon monsters" song or the Flintstones theme to the afflicted person, but that hasn't worked to eradicate it completely. It's such a simple tune it just creeps back in there. (On top of the tune, I keep thinking of Blanche DuBois asking Stanley "don't you ever get something awful stuck in your head?" and Elia Kazan's dance tune at every point when Blanche thinks of her dead young husband in the movie version.)

I know very well where this tune came from. A poet once sang it to me in a seminar room at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her name was Ruth Stone, and she had come to do a big poetry reading in the evening, but she met with a group of us graduate students who were interested in poetry earlier in the day, talked to us about her writing, and read some of her poems. I will never forget the moment when she began to sing us her poem "I Have Three Daughters." It was memorable for many reasons, not least of which was her aplomb. She sang out with no apparent self-consciousness, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world to be doing in that seminar room at that particular time of day.

Here is the tune, starting with middle c: c e a g e, e c d e, c e a g e, f e d c
Repeat (and add repeated notes) as necessary. Here is the poem:

I have three daughters
Like greengage plums.
They sat all day
Sucking their thumbs.
And more's the pity,
They cried all day,
Why doesn't our mother's brown hair
Turn gray?

I have three daughters
Like three cherries.
They sat at the window
The boys to please.
And they couldn't wait
For their mother to grow old.
Why doesn't our mother's brown hair
Turn to snow?

I have three daughters
In the apple tree
Singing Mama send Daddy
With three young lovers
To take them away from me.

I have three daughters
Like greengage plums,
Sitting all day
And sighing all day
And sucking their thumbs;
Singing, Mama won't you fetch and carry,
And Daddy, won't you let us marry,
Singing, sprinkle snow down on Mama's hair
And lordy, give us our share.

When Ruth Stone finished singing this poem, she had a roomful of mystified but newly devoted fans for the rest of their lives. Devoted because you just couldn't help loving a woman who would do something like that. Mystified because we just weren't equipped to understand this poem.

Twenty years later, I'm equipped to understand it, because I have a teenage daughter who is trying to find ways to assert her independence from me. It's a tangled process, though, and the tune must be going through my head because below the level of consciousness, I've been thinking about the mixture of little girl who needs me and adult girl who is making her own life ("sucking their thumbs" vs "give us our share"). Also I really get the "greengage plum" image now. My daughter is ripe and glossy and gorgeous, and soon someone won't be able to resist her.

I'm also understanding the gray hair theme. I have some gray hairs, as mothers of teenage daughters tend to have (I will swear to you that my first gray hairs appeared the morning after Eleanor broke both her arms). My new haircut makes me see a "bride-of -Frankenstein" gray streak at my temple a little more. On top of that (literally), I keep brushing the top layer of my hair against the white paint I'm putting on the trim in our house, so I have new white hairs every other day or so.

When school is out for the summer (two more days), I think there might be less daughter-pulling-away pressure for a little while. There will be less pressure, anyway! One of the results will be that this blog will get updated less frequently. I have two rules ("well, they're more like guidelines, really"*) about summer: 1. you should go swimming at least twice a week, ideally in an all-day excursion including packed lunch, and 2. you should get out in the yard first thing in the morning at least once a week, for any reason--watering plants, filling up pools, sitting in the swing while there's still dew on it....this is a departure from my usual morning round of writing and reading, and often leads to less of either one. And that's okay. I'll still try to get here at least once or twice a week and tell you about what I've been reading.

*fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies will recognize this phrase

A Streetcar Named Desire

When I was young, I memorized a speech from the play The Madwoman of Chaillot about how, if everyone believed in them, her pearls would become real. When I got older, I read A Streetcar Named Desire and saw the movie with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando, rapt at Blanche's speech: "I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! Don't turn the light on!"

Blanche has always reminded me of my Aunt Jeanne, a fine-looking, hard-drinking southern woman who taught music to elementary school children and played piano at bars. She grew up conforming to all the proper ladylike behaviors, but was disappointed by marriage.

When I was in graduate school, I taught Streetcar in some of my classes, but my students could rarely move past a "Blanche shouldn't have lied" response to the play. Eventually, I gave up teaching it (moving on to Othello, where the main interpretive question is still "why couldn't Othello ask or accuse Desdemona about his suspicions?").

All this leads me to wonder: Are the emotions of A Streetcar Named Desire now dated? Or is it just that anyone under 20 is too young to imagine being in Blanche's situation? (Is this a possible consequence of sheltering our children?)

These days, it seems we want all uncomfortable truths brought out into the light, in the belief that this will resolve their uncomfortableness. What we want is the ending of the Simpsons cartoon "A Streetcar Named Marge," where at the end of their musical version of Streetcar (when Blanche is led off by the doctor from the state mental institution murmuring "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers"), all the Simpsons characters sing "A stranger's just a friend you haven't met!"