Message delivered by Professor Claudia A. Limbert at the 6th Annual International Conference on Women in Higher Education in El Paso, Texas, on January 7-9, 1993. Receiving the Message: Girls' Reading, Women's Lives by Claudia A. Limbert, Asst. Prof. Department of English Penn State University 147 Shenango Avenue Sharon, PA 16146 Office: (412) 983-5838 Home: (412) 983-1058 (Machine) FAX: (412) 983-5863 This is an uncomfortable kind of paper that needs a preface and is the kind of paper that I am not accustomed to giving. Like most of you, I have been trained to give scholarly papers, scholarly--that is--in the male sense of that term where the text is held at arm's length, third person is used, and the "scholar" never enters the text in discussion. What I propose to do here today is to try a different way to examine a text, a--for want of a better term--feminine approach. But let me explain the difference, as I see it, between the traditional male scholarship in which we have all worked and a newer, perhaps more female way of looking at a text. In the traditional male approach, the scholar--the viewer of the text--is like someone out for a walk. Suddenly, this person comes to a house where there are people at home--a novel, a play, a poem. Never leaving the path and always keeping his distance, he passes by the house, glancing sideways in at a window. In this way, the viewer sees and notes the importance to the scene of the red drapes at the window, the open fire, the tea things on the low table, and the arrangement of the occupants of the room as they sit together or pace back and forth. This is what we as scholars are used to, a very safe, arms-length way of looking at the text. The viewer passes on. In a more female way of viewing a text--an approach that I see as no less scholarly and one that we will see, I hope, more often--the viewer once more is passing a house--a novel, a play, a poem. But this time, she leaves the safety of the path, attracted to the scene before her. "Do I know these people?" she asks. "Do they know me? What are they doing? What does it all mean to me as a woman?" And she not only leaves that path, but she approaches the house where she either leans on the window sill of the room looking in with interest or, as in this paper, she goes around to the door, enters the room and enters the text, making it her own in a very personal way. That is what I am trying to do here today--find a nontraditional, personal relevance for the traditional texts that are given to young girls and which--whether we like it or not--inform our lives as women. I remember the house in the Missouri Ozarks and I remember in particular one winter evening in 1947. Outside, the snow hissed against the windows, but, inside, it was warm as I lay on the kitchen floor close to the wood stove that warmed most of our tiny house. I remember lying on my belly, my face almost close enough to the shiny blackness of the stove to toast my braids that were rapidly freeing themselves from their plaid ribbons. On the floor in front of me was a book of fairy tales sent to me by an aunt. The edges of this particular book's pages were tipped with gold and the lavish illustrations were almost medieval in their rich reds, blues, and greens. But even though the book was beautiful, the words themselves were what totally captured my attention. It was all because of a miracle that had occurred just a few months short of my seventh birthday. I had learned to read. Before that glorious moment, I had been a sickly child and had missed so much school that I had not learned to read with the other first graders. One day, as we went around the reading circle, my teacher had finally discovered that I was frantically memorizing the words on each page of the reader and immediately labelled me as retarded. She said that I should be placed in a special school for retarded children--"just like Claudia," she added. It was at that moment that my mother stepped in, taking time from her long days as an LPN to patiently teach me how to read. And one night as she ironed a uniform for the next day and I struggled--close to tears- -to make sense of what looked like random squiggles on the page, the words had suddenly seemed to come into focus as though through a viewfinder. I could read! I could read anything! I remember how, like an overwound toy, I raced around the room picking up a letter, the evening newspaper, the Bible--and was able to read any of the words that I saw! And ever since that moment, I had been reading anything with writing on it, almost as if I had a hunger that I was desperate to satisfy. And here, on this icy Ozark evening, I lay with the book of fairy tales before me, the popping of the wood in the stove close to my ears, satisfying that craving. As a new reader, I was just reading for the sheer pleasure of having the author's words fly off the page and come alive in my head. What I didn't realize at that time, as I turned the pages reading my favorites "Snow White" and "Cinderella" again and again, was that my purpose for reading was changing. From that moment on, I would begin both subconsciously and later consciously to search through books, looking for messages on how to change a skinny seven-year-old girl into a woman. However, most of the messages that I would find in the books traditionally given to girls would be lies. It had started that very evening. From my two favorite fairy tales, I learned several things. First, I learned that it was evil to admire myself in a mirror. After all, doesn't Snow White's wicked stepmother spend her days doing this while, on the other hand, the saintly Snow White looks through (not into) her looking-glass, even though that looking-glass is the glass of her own coffin? Too, aren't Cinderella's wicked step-sisters concerned about how they look and aren't they punished for it in the end? That same winter evening, I also learned that a woman can only be activated--Snow White--or fully happy--Cinderella--because of a man and that a woman doesn't carry within herself the ability to make herself real, alive, or whole. After all, Snow White had to wait patiently like a chuck roast on display in a butcher's case for her prince to find her, while Cinderella endlessly cleaned and was emotionally abused by her step-mother and step-sisters until her prince finally discovered her, seemingly unable to recognize her face or figure and only being able to identify her by matching her glass slipper to her foot--apparently seeing her as a physical part rather than a physical, emotional, intellectual, and psychological whole. Finally, these two fairy tales taught me that marriage is unequivocally the answer to a woman's problems and that whatever happened afterward was delicately covered with "and they lived happily ever after." A woman's sexuality was never mentioned and this absence of sexuality meant to me that it should never exist- -at least in a princess, a "good" woman. Perhaps these two stories were what caused me to spend my early adulthood in something like a fairy-tale trance, waiting for that something that I labelled "husband" to give me some kind of an identity, to make me real in a way that I could not do for myself. So, I married the first "prince" who came along, not on a white horse but driving an old blue Chevrolet, and I was totally unprepared for the consequences of what would be a long and very unhappy marriage. After I had passed the fairy tale stage, I remember reading and avidly trading comic books. I read and traded them voraciously, looking for a story--or perhaps a heroine--that I could believe in. But I could find no heroine for me. The women in comic books fell into two categories. Either they were shrews or they were idiots. Indeed, I could find only one character who seemed to be consciously conceived as a heroine for girls--Wonder Woman. Yet, I always quickly traded any Wonder Woman comics that came my way for either Superman or Batman comics. I instinctively know why. Because not only weren't Wonder Woman's adventures as interesting or as daring as the men's, but she seemed so ill-equipped in some ways and so overequipped in others. By ill-equipped, I mean her lack of real power and her reliance on bracelets--albeit magic ones--to protect herself. I mean, bracelets! Would a male super-hero ever rely on bracelets? I'm surprised when I think back on it that Wonder Woman didn't just have a magic garter belt. As for her lariat, I began to think that was perhaps just another attempt at the old adage: A woman must rope her man. Yet, while Wonder Woman was under-equipped as far as her weapons and power went, she was over-equipped as far as her looks went. I could not identify with her in any way. Indeed, as I poured over the pages of my Wonder Woman comic books, I wondered whether any female could have a body like that. I remember one hot August day when I was nine, stripping down to my underwear, standing sideways in front of the mirror in my mother's bedroom as I surreptitiously glanced from the mirror to the comic and back again. First things first: my chest was hopelessly flat. Would it ever look like Wonder Woman's with her pointed bra? I had great hopes for myself that--alas--never quite materialized. Legs? Hers were long, smooth, and beautifully shaped. Mine were short, knock-kneed, covered with fuzz, and heavily scabbed from falls out of trees and mosquito bites. As the years went on, my legs would get longer but that is about all that would happen to them. Hair? Wonder Woman's was a rich, glossy blue-black that looked perfect no matter how many bad guys she was fighting off. Mine was dark brown, more or less in braids, and stuck up here and there in cowlicks. With passing years, I would find that my hair would grow even more rebellious. Considering the messages implied by the Wonder Woman comic books, it is no wonder that I always felt like a failure physically. No one ever told me that I was beautiful and never once did I ever feel beautiful. And wasn't Wonder Woman so powerful in part just because of her beauty? I mean, would she had been Wonder Woman if she had been what my society would have termed short, fat, and ugly? Who would even want to read about such a person, let alone identify with her? At ten, I discovered the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and began reading about a girl who, at least on the surface, was like me--a tomboy who spent most of her days up in a tree or walking a picket fence or roaming in the rattlesnake-infested countryside around her house. And wasn't the Laura of the books always pushing against constraints, always wanting to be herself--just like me? I should have felt comforted by Laura. I didn't. I remember one day sitting high up in a cottonwood tree, kicking my heels against its solid trunk, one of the Wilder books in my hands, and wondering why I felt so uncomfortable with them. Why didn't I even like their heroine? Then, it hit me. Indeed, Wilder does present a tomboy to her readers. Yes. But she also allows this same girl to be reprimanded and punished for her actions as a tomboy. After all, isn't Laura's mother--the spokeswoman perhaps for all "real" women--constantly admonishing Laura to become a lady? Learn to be a woman. Learn to sew a fine seam. Learn to walk like a lady. Learn to be quiet. And most important: Learn to be like your older sister, Mary. So, I looked at Mary--the epitome of gentleness, humility, and ladyhood. And she was blind, actually physically blind. What did that mean? Did it mean that in order to be a lady in the real world you had to be blind, if not physically, then at least in the wider sense of that word? Was being a lady--like Snow White and Cinderella and Wonder Woman and Mary Ingalls Wilder--always tied in some very real way to suffering and unhappiness? And, even when Mary was totally blind, did she just quietly retire to the sidelines? No, not only did she relearn all her ladylike skills, she seemed to get even better at them. Yet, as a result of the Wilder books, I spent weeks trying to impose Mary's qualities on myself, starting with trying to learn how to embroider. Well do I remember a linen towel with its stamped design of an iron and the message "Tuesday" on it, a not-so-subliminal message saying that a woman ought to be properly engaged with her iron on that day. I also remember the blood spots all over that same towel, the twisted threads and the uneven stitches. By the time that I had furiously stuffed it into the back of my closet, I had once more been forced to conclude that I must be doomed to failure as a woman. At eleven, I was unconsciously looking for an easier way to become a woman which I had by then equated with the word "lady." And I thought that I had found such a way when I discovered Alcott's Little Women. Obviously a cautionary tale--note the title. By this time, I was beginning to worry about the "little" part of that title. I would have to try to be a larger scale version. At eleven, I had shot up from being the tiniest child in the first grade to my eventual height of 5'8"--towering over all the girls and every single one of the boys and most of the teachers in my school. At night, I would go to sleep worrying about whether I would end up as a giant and have to work in a circus sideshow. Because of my worries about my height, books became a solace for me, almost a narcotic. While I was reading, I didn't have to worry about my height or whether Tyler whom I admired from afar would ever even look at me. (He didn't.) I could just lose myself in a story and, as I went along, find out more about becoming a woman, surely the next logical step for me. After all, I had--God help me!--gotten taller. Also, there was a faint suggestion (which would never become much more than that) of a bosom. My hips had become wider and I had a real waist now, meaning that I could wear a skirt without holding it up with boy's suspenders as I had done in the first grade. My legs were better in that they were long enough now but they still looked scabby since I refused to give up climbing trees, and they looked fuzzier than ever because my mother wouldn't let me shave them, no matter how hard I begged her. Mama claimed that once I started shaving my legs, I could never stop because shaving made the hair grow more vigorously than ever. And immediately after Mama told me this, I had visions of myself looking like the gigantic King Kong, my body totally covered with long, matted hair, and I stopped asking. Instead, I read Little Women over and over again. I was excited to find out that the heroine of this book--like Laura Ingalls Wilder--was much like me. Her best feature was her hair and so was my hair--through the process of elimination. Jo was a tomboy who wore swashbuckler boots and took all the great male parts in the plays that she wrote. I was also a tomboy. Jo had a bad temper. So did I. Jo didn't suffer fools gladly. Neither did I. She wanted to write and, by this time, I too knew that I had no choice: I had to write. Obviously, this girl--on her way to becoming a woman--could get me past the so-far uncharted areas. Or could she? As I read, I became more and more alarmed. This becoming a woman was not an easy process. I mean, look at what happens to Jo in that refining process. She constantly makes a fool of herself. She is always measuring herself against her sisters and finding herself lacking Meg's motherly kitchen skills, Amy's social graces, and Beth's gentle lassitude. Jo feels responsible in some way for every ill that hits the family. After her father lost the family's money in an ill-conceived and irresponsible attempt to bail out a friend and money is urgently needed to finance her mother's trip to the bedside of that same father, Jo feels she must be the one who finds the money for the trip. So, she sells her hair, her one pride and --through projection--one realizes that Jo has sold her body, much as a prostitute will. The image of the shorn Jo haunts the reader's mind as Jo not only loses her mane of hair but her sense of self as she continues to take responsibility for every negative thing that happens to her family. For example, she feels responsible for her favorite sister Beth's almost fatal illness, an illness that obviously points the way to the grave for Beth who so successfully becomes a lady that she is too good to live. Jo does not blame her mother who had encouraged her daughters to visit that disease stricken family nor her other sisters who had not taken their turns visiting this family, causing Beth to do it for them. Jo also feels responsible for the welfare of the spoiled Amy when Amy falls through the ice into the creek even though Amy, in a fit of pique, had earlier destroyed Jo's manuscript that had taken her years to write. Not only does Jo feel responsible for every bad thing that hits this ill-plagued family, but she is constantly being punished for not being a true lady. For example, Jo is punished for outspokenly saying that she wishes to be an independent woman by being passed over as her Aunt Carrol's companion for a European tour while Amy is selected to go on the prize trip. In fact, Jo even punishes herself by giving Amy the clearly dishy Laurie, a young man who obviously prefers Jo. More and more pressures are applied to Jo in this refining process, but the worst part is saved until the last. Jo becomes Mrs. Bhaer, a clear punishment for her unladylike behavior as far as I--an eleven-year-old reader--could see. After all, just look at Mr. Bhaer. He is much older than Jo. He is an economic failure reduced to living in a rooming house and wearing rusty black suits and badly darned socks. Even worse, marrying Mr. Bhaer means that Jo must give up her "scribbling"--Mr. Bhaer disapproves of it--and sublimate her personal desires in order to devote all of her time to her husband and his school and all those boys. What exquisite torture: To be in charge of boys when what Jo wanted more than anything else was to be a boy herself or maybe just to have the freedom that being a boy would bring her. Anxiously, I finished Little Women and picked up Jo's Boys and found that while there was indeed a character named Jo in this book and that while this Jo was to all intents and purposes at least a semi-lady, that she wasn't my Jo anymore and that I didn't like her. Jo had sold out. By twelve, I had decided that I was destined to be a misfit as a woman. I look back on my class picture that year. There I was, still the tallest girl and perhaps the tallest person in the school, a girl who preferred books to real life, a girl who stood at the back of the class and watched life through guarded, apprehensive eyes. No wonder I could identify with Jane Eyre, my next heroine. Like Jane, I thought that I was plain. I was not popular--Tyler still paid no attention to me but rather devoted himself to a vivacious and popular girl with ruffled blouses and smooth, dark Wonder Woman hair. Like Jane, I was too smart, and I had been warned by everyone that men don't like brainy women. So, maybe I could learn something from Jane. I did. From the very beginning of the book, Jane is punished unmercifully for just trying to be a real person, let alone being an intelligent, real person. Can any reader of Jane Eyre ever forget the terrible scene when the child Jane is locked in the Red Room for finally standing up to the brutality of her male cousin? If that weren't enough to destroy most people, Jane is then shipped off to the horrible Lowood School where her only childhood friend, the saintly Maria--note the name--dies in Jane's arms, another of the young women like Beth from Little Women who are so good that they have no choice but to die as genteelly as possible. At last, after being shoved into a tiny case marked "lady" that she doesn't really fit, Jane goes out into the world, damaged goods at best. And where does she go? Off to a job. Now, this looked like a real possibility for me. But I could see right from the first that Jane's job wasn't the sinecure that it ought to have been. After all, even though her boss was good looking and rich, he was moody (something Jane had never as a woman been allowed to be), secretive (something Jane had never as a woman been allowed to be), and a liar (certainly not a ladylike quality). He was also married to a mad woman whom he kept locked in the attic and who escaped periodically, terrorizing the household. I didn't need to be told explicitly that this mad woman was Jane Eyre without the straitjacket that she had made for herself with the assistance of others. Nor did I need to be told that the madwoman was also me without the shell of reserve with which I had carefully covered myself. I remember trembling as I read the scenes involving the mad wife as she sank her teeth into men, set fires, and roamed raving throughout the darkened house on the moors. Bertha Mason could be Jane. More alarmingly, Bertha Mason could be me. In the end, Jane finds out about the insane wife and denies her own love for Rochester, plunging out into a storm and ending up in a cold relationship with the detestable--but perfect--Mr. Rivers. Yet, Jane is rewarded in the end, isn't she when--that horrifying wife having plunged over the parapet after setting the house on fire--Jane is reunited with Mr. Rochester? Didn't this mean that even a plain, overly bright girl like Jane or me could someday find a rich, handsome man to marry her, thereby validating our very existences? No. What it meant was that we would have to settle for a piece of a man, a maimed man who was blind but who, at the same time, was alarmingly regaining the vision in one eye. I say alarmingly because I always wondered what would happen to Jane If Mr. Rochester ever regained his sight? Would he see her for what she was and leave her? About this same time in my life, I became a woman, meaning that I had my first menstrual period, confronting the reality of it in fear because I had no idea what was happening to me. I remember calling my mother at work and sobbing that I was bleeding to death and then her coming home to explain the situation to me, that I had become a woman. Maybe the total surprise of this aspect of being a woman contributed in some way to the reason why I suffered so much each month, spending hours retching, lying drugged with paregoric and Darvon for two or three days as the doctors sought to free me from the very real physical pain that I felt. Maybe. But just maybe it also had something to do with all the lessons that I had already learned about being a woman--and about how I didn't want to become a woman as it had been defined for me in books. Whatever the reason, I continued to suffer from the monthly pain and, for a long time, I also gave up reading novels, somehow feeling that I had been receiving messages wrapped like poisoned candy in the books that were obviously earmarked for women readers. I found that I didn't want to be ladylike--i.e., weak and languidly trailing about talking recipes, babies, and housekeeping hints. I wanted to be a tomboy: strong, striding along and not mincing my steps, climbing trees, running, jumping off the garage roof, exploring the wild countryside around our house and within myself. I didn't want to have to wait for a man to come along to tell me that I was okay and that I could marry him and not be left an old maid. I didn't want to avoid mirrors for fear that they would show me a skinny, unattractive, unwomanly body. And, even though I hardly dared to admit it to myself, I wanted to feel alive in my body, in my sensuality, to feel something when a man's hand touched me. I wanted to be beautiful--at least to one person--just one time in my life. I wanted someone--preferably the man who would love me just as much as I would love him--to tell me that I excited him and that he found me pleasing in every way. I wanted to glory in my height, not to be afraid that I was becoming a circus sideshow attraction. I wanted it to be okay that I had a temper and for it to be okay that I railed against injustice and didn't just sit meekly and take whatever happened to me. I wanted to yell and scream at stronger people who picked on weaker people, to hit bullies as I had once done on a third-grade playground and, maybe most of all, I wanted to have a real job that meant something to me and not just have to wait for approval from a man to give my life some validation. But the women in books did not live this way. Nor did the women that I saw around me. So, I grew up and assumed being a lady like assuming an ill-fitting corset. Perhaps that is why I married my "prince" and, by the evening of my wedding day, knew that I had made a terrible mistake as I stood wearily at the bathroom sink washing sheets covered with my own blood. Perhaps that is why I was pregnant five times, bearing four children who did indeed give my life some meaning and a reason to keep living when some days I felt like slashing my wrists as my own mother had done when confronted by the hopelessness of her own life and marriage. And just as I almost plunged over the edge, I was saved. At thirty five, I found college for the first time and, more importantly, I found novels again--not as a narcotic but rather as an exhilarating elixir that I badly needed. But, this time, with the guidance of my teachers, I began to really look at what I was reading, to see the motivations behind the writers, the influences in their own lives, and the societal forces that eventually gained expression in their books. So, once again, I began to read compulsively but now I read for other reasons. I no longer needed to discover what I was supposed to be. Somehow, some way, because of all the reading and discussing of books that we were doing in the classroom, it all came together for me and I knew who I was as a person, as a woman, just as suddenly and just as magically as I had learned to read. I knew that I was capable of great emotional and physical strength, that I could give and receive love in a hundred ways, that I could glory, in the movement and exercise of my body, that I could allow myself to feel passion with every ounce of my being, that my looks were just right for me, and that I had to wait for no one--man or woman--to bring me to life. As I began to read again for the sheer pleasure of the words flying off the page and into my head, I once more had the same sense of a miracle that I had experienced when I had been seven. But now, I also began to realize that although reading itself was a miracle, being a woman was an even greater one. -- Claudia A. Limbert, Asst. Prof. Department of English Penn State University 147 Shenango Avenue Sharon, PA 16146 Office: (412) 983-5838 Home: (412) 983-1058 (Machine)