For Madame X

by Jean Roberta



[A modern writing device, since 1873]

Like everyone else here on the Grip (I assume), I loved to write from the time I was first introduced to the alphabet.

Years later, when I decided to major in English at university, I thought of the study of language and literature as a kind of green pasture full of meditative types. The English Department seemed far removed from the political conflicts I had heard about in the social sciences, or the fast pace of change in the natural sciences, where every new discovery could make the knowledge of an older faculty member completely outdated.

Being a literary scholar and a writer on the side (or vice versa) also seemed more sociable, in some sense, than being a visual artist. The exhibits I saw always looked like displays of eccentric individualism.

I thought I could earn a living in a fairly uncontroversial way by teaching young adults to understand what they read and to improve their ability to express themselves in writing. Who could disapprove of that?

The establishment of the 1700s (the “Age of Reason”) and early 1800s, that’s who.

Nowadays it’s hard to imagine how radical the demand for universal literacy was in the English-speaking world before 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne and brought in a compulsory public school system which would teach basic skills even to the children of domestic servants and coal miners (e.g. my ancestors).

When my mother did some digging into her family history, I saw the signature (so to speak) of my great-great-grandmother, Margaret Nichols, on the baptismal record of her newborn son. Her name was printed beside her “mark,” an X, which was the only way she could sign. No one had taught her how to read or write. I noticed that her husband, the baby’s father, could at least write his own name.

I wondered how a “signature” like could even be legal. Surely a person who couldn’t write her name couldn’t read what she was signing. If someone asked her to sign a binding promise to hand over all her worldly goods to someone else, how would she know what she was agreeing to? Of course, marriage in those days was that kind of a contract. It was a legal covenant in which the wife’s identity was “covered” by that of her husband, and all the couple’s joint property was his to dispose of as he saw fit.

Early nineteenth-century marriage was really a form of identity theft in which the wife lost her family name and the few rights she had had as an individual. And keeping women of the “servant class” illiterate was part of a deliberate strategy to keep them in their place. To a lesser extent, even literacy among lower-class men seemed threatening to their employers.

What would happen to the social order if the people at the bottom could not only read but write? What if they could negotiate contracts? What if they could pen editorials and circulate them as pamphlets? What if they could write autobiographies in their own words? What if they could debate Scripture?

I’ve come to change my mind since I believed that literacy was politically neutral. Although written language is a tool that can be used to express an almost infinite number of messages, literacy is empowering. And power is political by definition.

Modern English-speaking culture is now spread through the written word at a speed that would amaze even the most radical reformers of 1800. Almost every adult in the “civilized” world can now sign his or her name. However, we can’t afford to take this skill for granted.

Those in power have never approved of what their underlings have to say if it is based on personal experience and self-interest. If literacy could be taken away from the oppressed or marginalized, I’m sure that efforts would be made to clear the alphabet from certain minds.

George Orwell was clearly aware of the importance of language when he wrote his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948. The appendix to the novel, “The Principles of Newspeak,” is often published on its own, and is taught as a plausible theory of how a fascist state could control a whole population by limiting the language.

I’m grateful for the ability to express myself in words, both spoken and written. The concept of universal literacy as a basic precondition for democracy is surprisingly recent, in historical terms.

I’m sure I’ve inherited something from the illiterate peasant women of the past. I just wish I could offer them a gift in return, by enabling them to write letters and journals describing their world for the generations to come.
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Library Voices

by Giselle Renarde

Once upon a time I was a teenager at the Toronto Reference Library.

A friend had introduced me to this edifice downtown, far from the wilds of suburbia, where books were housed, of course, but in addition to books they had all sorts of other media.  Oh sure, so did my local library, but the difference with the Reference Library was that they had listening booths. 

My friend showed me how to select a CD to listen to (a CD!  I didn't have a CD player yet!  This was really the future!) and check in with the lady guarding the listening booths and put on headphones and sit... and just listen.

We were both big on Broadway musicals, so we both picked out musicals to listen to.  I don't remember what she selected, but I picked out a musical called City of Angels.  I'd never even heard of it.  To this day I remember nothing about the soundtrack, but I remember the experience.

I wasn't the kind of kid (or teen) who went out with friends very much. I had too many family responsibilities, plus the cost of going out was prohibitive. To get to the Reference Library, I had to take a bus and a subway, and, while my mother covered the cost of my transit fare to and from school (I went to a high school that was out of area for me, a good hour from my house), any time I wanted to go anywhere that wasn't school-related it was my responsibility to cover my transit costs. 

Part of the reason I didn't go out with friends much is that the things they wanted to do cost money.  I was saving my money for university.

From the time I could write words on paper, every year at Christmas I would put the same one item in my letter to Santa: a university education. My parents hadn't gone to university.  My grandparents hadn't finished high school.  I would be the first in my family to get a degree.

You'd think a mom would be proud that her child had such lofty aspirations, but something else won out over pride with my mom--either pragmatism or crab-bucket jealousy, I don't know.  Every year she'd laugh at my letter to Santa.  She'd say, "If you want to go to university, you're on your own. I'm not paying for it."

I got my first summer job when I was 8 years old.  Picking berries. Same first job my grandfather had 58 years before me.  He earned half a penny per pint.  I earned 25 cents. Thank you, inflation.

But that money didn't last long.  Because the thing about living with a substance abuser is that sometimes they steal from you. Sometimes they steal every penny of berry picking money you earn. Babysitting money, birthday money. Addiction breeds desperation.

It's true what they say: life isn't fair.

And, you see, this is why it was a very difficult decision to go out or not to go out: can I afford to spend $1.35 on transit fare?  It'll take a lot of dollar-thirty-fives to add up to a university education.

So, more than not, I stayed home. 

But that day, when my friend invited me to the Reference Library, I decided to go out. Of all the friend-dates a person could go on, the library's a pretty good one.  And not just because it's free, although that's an attractive quality for sure.  It was more the fact that we could sit side by side at listening booths and just... listen.  No talking allowed. 

Libraries were different back then.

Not being allowed to talk can really be quite freeing.  People found me standoffish as a teen, but that's really because I had so much shame about my family of origin.  I didn't want people trying to get close to me and discovering what was behind the facade.  I didn't want people asking questions.

My friend didn't ask me a lot of questions. I didn't ask her questions either. I knew it was just her and her mom.  I didn't ask about her father because I didn't want her to ask about mine.  By that time my mother had a restraining order against him. He lived in a motel room in a small town, but he often swung by our place to break into our house, destroy our belongings, and threaten to murder us all.

One time my friend invited me to her place when her mom was at work.  She wasn't supposed to have people over, but her mother would never know.  It was kind of exciting for me to take the streetcar to her neighbourhood because she lived in a gentrified area with lots of quirky boutiques.

As it turned out, her house was one of the forgotten left-behind ones.  It was the tiniest house I'd ever seen, just two small bedrooms off one main living area that incorporated the kitchen. There must have been a bathroom somewhere but I can't recall seeing it.

The bedrooms had carpeting, but the main room was just a dirt floor covered in pine needles.

My friend transferred out of my school in Grade 10.  I heard she went to an alternative school, but I don't think she lasted long there. In Grade 12, I went to a university fair at the convention centre and there was my friend! I hadn't seen her in two years. I was overjoyed to see her again. I loved her in a way I still hadn't learned to express.

But she wasn't attending the university fair as a prospecting high school student. She was working it as a security guard. She'd dropped out of high school. She hoped to return at some point but she and her mom really needed the money and, well, you know how it is...

After working part-time and summer jobs throughout high school, I was able to afford my first year of tuition at the University of Toronto, but it was tight. Throughout university, I think I spent more time working than studying.

When I finally had that degree in hand, it was really a non-event. Aside from my grandmother, nobody in my family seemed to care much about my achievement.  But I never expected them to.

http://gisellerenarde.com

The Power of Silence

by Jean Roberta

As the person who posts last in a two-week (or fortnightly – such a handy word) cycle here at the Grip, I get to read everyone else’s post first. Much has been said about criticism, insults, negative messages aimed at us and/or our writing.

I’ve experienced some of that too, especially the question, “Why don’t you write serious literature instead?”

However, the most devastating message can be silence. If someone accuses you in words of something you haven’t done, you can defend yourself with words. If someone interprets what you have done in a way that seems insulting, you can critique their critique. If someone refuses to speak to you, the message is unanswerable. Whatever you say in response is likely to seem hysterical or unjustified – because they didn’t actually say anything, at least to your face. And the misunderstanding, the credibility gap, or the conflict goes on as though preserved in cotton wool.

“Jean, you’re just so --.”

The “co-operating” teacher never finished her sentence. Apparently she couldn’t find an adjective that was negative enough to describe me. It was the spring of 1980, and I was a student teacher in a large high school that served the upper-middle-class South End of town.

From the beginning of my four-month stint, there was tension. I already had a four-year university degree in English, and I had done all the classes for a BEAD (Bachelor of Education After Degree). All I had left to do was to get a passing grade on my practicum from my Faculty Advisor, who got his information from three “co-operating” teachers, all of whom had Education degrees only. They clearly thought I was over-educated. They all knew that if I got a pass, I would immediately graduate and enter the public school system as a high school English teacher, and I might get paid better than they did, due to my greater knowledge of language and literature. They had been wrangling teenagers for years, and they were inclined to think I was an educated fool.

Besides all this, I wasn’t Sally (as I’ll call her). This was my predecessor in the role of student teacher, and all the regular staff glowed when they mentioned her name. She must have done an excellent job of sucking up. And now here I was in her place.

Of course, I had discipline problems in the classes I was allowed (expected) to teach. Students act up when a student teacher is trying to maintain some sort of order. It’s a tradition.

I had been told that my three “co-operating” teachers would mentor me, explain their own techniques, and give me advice and support. Instead, they let me take over their classes while they hung out in the staff lounge.

At the end of four months, my three “mentors” told my Faculty Advisor that I wasn’t the stuff of which teachers are made. Faculty Advisor told me I wasn’t passing, just before I headed into a classroom of rowdy eighth-graders; later, he commented that I didn’t maintain enough discipline. (I was aware of the flying spitwads in the class, but I hadn’t found a way to force thirty kids to sit still and pay attention to me.)

Right afterward, there was a “conference” of five: Faculty Advisor, the three witches from Macbeth – uh, my “mentors” – the head of the English Department in that school, and me. One of the Team of Three smoked silently (smoking was allowed then), looked disapprovingly around the room, and hardly spoke. Another one listed my many faults, including my apparent inability to relate to high school students because I knew my subject-matter too well. The youngest one said I had an “unapproachable personality,” then made the comment quoted above, with the missing modifier.

What wasn’t said aloud upset me more than the actual complaints, which I could dispute. (But of course, when I disagreed with anyone in the room, that seemed to confirm my hostile, unapproachable nature.)

Later, I asked my Faculty Advisor what was the outcome, since he had the right to decide. He decided that I should continue my practicum, which was to last for another week, and then he would pronounce judgment. So the torture dragged on.

When my sentence was over, the youngest “co-operating” teacher told me that of course I hadn’t passed, and that this had been made clear to everyone involved, including me. (This seemed like another reference to a resounding silence.) Faculty Advisor said he felt uncomfortable giving me a failing grade, even though the practicum was supposed to be a pass or fail kind of deal. Since he didn’t think I had failed, exactly, and the Panel of Three thought I certainly had, he gave me an “Incomplete,” a kind of non-grade which prevented me from getting the degree I had worked for. To get the degree, I would have had to repeat the practicum.

So the loaded silence of those who judged me unsuitable became a gap on my resume. Luckily, I didn’t need an Education degree to teach at the university level, where knowledge is not frowned on. What I needed was a Master’s degree, which involved a somewhat different kind of torture – yet silence was still the method of choice of my new Advisor, who ignored my thesis-in-progress for months.

Before and after my stint in the High School Jungle, I often wondered whether my parents’ belief that I was hysterical and delusional (which they formed after I tried to commit suicide after being raped in my first year of university) still held, and whether my younger sisters really believed I was the madwoman of the family.

Months would pass when no one in the family called me insane – not exactly. My mother liked the term “high-strung,” which was vague enough that I couldn’t disprove it. How could I show that I was actually low-strung, or perfectly tuned? My sisters had their own concerns. So I would tell myself that bygones were bygones, and that if I noticed some eye-rolls around the supper table after I said something about the existence of institutional violence in any form, I was probably imagining the silent sarcasm.

Then something would happen to remind me that my image as the Madwoman was firmly intact. After the first time I brought my current spouse home to meet my family, she seemed shaken, and she urged me never to list my parents as my “next of kin” on any form that would give them legal power over me.

Later, she explained that my parents had taken her aside to tell her I was “completely lost,” that I didn’t know what I wanted in life (I thought I did), and that I really needed a husband to take care of me. This advice was clearly intended to scare off a lesbian date. Being the radical she is, Spouse rose to the occasion, told my parents she knew everything she needed to know about me, and that she would form her own opinions.

Since then, my parents have passed into a deeper silence, and my sisters no longer speak to me. Their silence doesn’t feel peaceful, but I can’t believe my well-intentioned friends who assure me that a “good talk” amongst the three of us would resolve a lifetime of distrust and disbelief. In some cases, silence is probably the only logical response.

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Confessions of a Sociable Hermit

by Jean Roberta

Writing this post has been a challenge. Maybe it’s because I always post after Annabeth, whose posts tend to express startling but authentic emotions in carefully-chosen words. How to follow that?

Connecting with other people has also been a challenge for me, although some of them (including my spouse, Mirtha, who has known me intimately for over 25 years) tell me I have a knack for it, especially at social gatherings. Small talk: I do that.

Maybe it’s because, according to some schools of astrology, I have a “cuspal” personality: born early in the sign of Virgo and therefore an introvert, I show traces of Leo, the performer of the zodiac. I do like performing, and therefore my long teaching career hasn’t felt like torture, as one of my fellow graduate students described it to me some time in the early 1980s.

This person was one of those with whom I didn’t really connect. I could sense her anguish at feeling pressured to perform for an audience of students when she only wanted to be a lifelong scholar doing research, and writing articles on literature. I wished I could have found a way for her to do that exclusively and get paid for it, but alas, I was not in charge of the Ivory Tower or any other corner of the world.

I understand that most people have a wound of some sort, whether hidden or openly displayed, and that I usually can’t help anyone else beyond acknowledging what they have shown me. In several cases, I’ve been aghast when the person I’ve been trying to console decides that their pain is my fault, or the fault of a whole demographic to which I belong (women, old women, mothers/parents, white folks, Americans by any definition, queers, feminists, leftists, the smart-ass, phony, intellectual class).

In too many cases, I have tried to move the earth while standing on it. An angry person in my life (my late ex-husband, each of my blood relatives, to various degrees) has demanded acknowledgement, an apology or some help from me. They have demanded that I make amends by confessing to something I didn’t do, as far as I know (which means that if I did it, I must be really delusional). They have pointed out how selfish, dishonest and unreasonable I am. To keep the peace, I have vaguely admitted that I have been self-centred, like all other people I have ever met. I have apologized for giving the wrong impression. This confession is never enough.

I suspect that after I have left this world, some of the people who thought they knew me will feel cheated: I have escaped without paying for my crimes, once again. They will still be in pain, and they will still believe I am the perpetrator. How could I get my work published, so many times, when they haven’t? How could I be relatively healthy when they aren’t? How did I hang onto a job that pays a living wage when so many others are chronically unemployed? Why am I not being roasted over a slow fire in Hell? (I assume that a fundamentalist Christian version of the afterlife for sinners is not real. I could get a rude awakening in my eternal sleep.)

In a recent guest appearance on OWN (the Oprah Winfrey television channel), Susan Sarandon tactfully discussed several of her failed past relationships by saying that some people, including herself, try in their innocent youth to overlook huge differences between themselves and their Significant Others, but such deal-breakers always destroy the relationship, sooner or later.

I had some great sex with men when I was younger, and I remember the thrilling discovery that this is one service that most men are happy to provide for women – and most of the men I knew were more generous and considerate in bed than anywhere else. Unfortunately, every live person has to get out of bed some time, and that was when the double-binds began closing in. If I didn’t keep a clean-enough apartment (or I wasn’t willing to clean the digs of the guy who had invited me in), I was considered a slob. If I immediately began cooking and cleaning, I was apparently trying to manipulate him into a suffocating domestic arrangement. If I was attending university, I was pretentious. And in any case, I was a girl, so in the eyes of a male observer, my plumbing gave me a kind of biological stupidity which I could never overcome.

If I had just had mind-blowing sex with my current partner, I was a pathological slut. And when the criticism began driving me away, I was told that I was fickle, unstable, prudish, frigid. And an ugly dog on whom the guy should never have wasted his time.

Like Susan Sarandon, I think I have developed some common sense re other people since I was young and unreasonably hopeful. I no longer expect to get along well with people who have nothing in common with me, and especially with those who express a grudge against my “type,” however they define it, and expect me to agree with them.

In the past few years, I have been overwhelmed by the compliments I get from anonymous students on the evaluation forms that are always handed out at the end of a semester. I am overwhelmed because – no matter how many compliments I’ve had from students before – I always find them irrational to some degree. Most of the courses I teach are mandatory for most students, and many of them have learned (are learning) English as adults. Many students dread the class, and with reason. I teach grammar and poetry, both of which are unpopular with undergraduates in general. Yet I have been told, over and over, that I am hugely popular with students. At the same time, I never feel a cool breeze from any of my colleagues, who sometimes invite me to lunch and ask for my advice. It seems I was born to be a star in a small corner of the sky.
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