by Joanna Russ
THIRD WOMAN: Neither of you is as happy as I am. I'm fantastically happy. My husband hasn't looked at another woman in the fifteen years we've been married, he helps around the house whenever I ask it, and he wouldn't mind in the least if I were to go out and get a job. But I'm happiest in fulfilling my responsibilities to him and the children. We have four children.
FOURTH WOMAN: We have six children. (This is too many. A long silence.) I have a part-time job as a clerk in Bloomingdale's to pay for the children's skiing lessons, but I really feel I'm expressing myself best when I make a custard or a meringue or decorate the basement.
ME: You miserable nits, I have a Nobel Peace Prize, fourteen published novels, six lovers, a town house, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, I fly a plane, I fix my own car, and I can do eighteen push-ups before breakfast, that is, if you're interested in numbers.
ALL THE WOMEN: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
OR, FOR STARTERS
HE: I can't stand stupid, vulgar women who read Love Comix and have no intellectual interests.
ME: Oh my, neither can I.
HE: I really admire refined, cultivated, charming women who have careers.
ME: Oh my, so do I.
HE: Why do you think those awful, stupid, vulgar, commonplace women get so awful?
ME: Well, probably, not wishing to give any offense and after considered judgment and all that, and very tentatively, with the hope that you won't jump on meI think it's at least partly your fault.
(Long silence)
HE: You know, on second thought, I think bitchy, castrating, unattractive, neurotic women are even worse. Besides, you're showing your age. And your figure's going.
OR
HE: Darling, why must you work part-time as a rug salesman?
SHE: Because I wish to enter the marketplace and prove that in spite of my sex I can take a fruitful part in the life of the community and earn what our culture proposes as the sign and symbol of adult independencenamely money.
HE: But darling, by the time we deduct the cost of a baby-sitter and nursery school, a higher tax bracket, and your box lunches from your pay, it actually costs us money for you to work. So you see, you aren't making money at all. You can't make money. Only I can make money. Stop working.
SHE: I won't. And I hate you.
HE: But darling, why be irrational? It doesn't matter that you can't make money because I can make money. And after I've made it, I give it to you, because I love you. So you don't have to make money. Aren't you glad?
SHE: No. Why can't you stay home and take care of the baby? Why can't we deduct all those things from your pay? Why should I be glad because I can't earn a living? Why
HE (with dignity): This argument is becoming degraded and ridiculous. I will leave you alone until loneliness, dependence, and a consciousness that I am very much displeased once again turn you into the sweet girl I married. There is no use in arguing with a woman.
OR, LAST OF ALL
HE: Is your dog drinking cold fountain water?
SHE: I guess so.
HE: If your dog drinks cold water, he'll get colic.
SHE: It's a she. And I don't care about the colic. You know, what I really worry about is bringing her out in public when she's in heat like this. I'm not afraid she'll get colic, but that she might get pregnant.
HE: They're the same thing, aren't they? Har har har.
SHE: Maybe for your mother they were.
(At this point Joanna the Grate swoops down on bat's wings, lays He low with one mighty swatt, and elevates She and Dog to the constellation of Victoria Femina, where they sparkle forever.)
I know that somewhere, just to give me the lie, lives a beautiful (got to be beautiful), intellectual, gracious, cultivated, charming woman who has eight children, bakes her own bread, cakes, and pies, takes care of her own house, does her own cooking, brings up her own children, holds down a demanding nine-to-five job at the top decision-making level in a man's field, and is adored by her equally successful husband because although a hard-driving, aggressive business executive with eye of eagle, heart of lion, tongue of adder, and muscles of gorilla (she looks just like Kirk Douglas), she comes home at night, slips into a filmy negligee and a wig, and turns instanter into a Playboy dimwit, thus laughingly dispelling the canard that you cannot be eight people simultaneously with two different sets of values. She has not lost her femininity . And I'm Marie of Rumania.
VI
Jeannine is going to put on her Mommy's shoes. That caretaker of childhood and feminine companion of men is waiting for her at the end of the road we all must travel. She swam, went for walks, went to dances, had a picnic with another girl; she got books from town; newspapers for her brother, murder mysteries for Mrs. Dadier, and nothing for herself. At twenty-nine you can't waste your time reading. Either they're too young or they're married or they're bad-looking or there's something awful about them. Rejects. Jeannine went out a couple of times with the son of a friend of her mother's and tried to make conversation with him; she decided that he wasn't really so bad-looking, if only he'd talk more. They went canoeing in the middle of the lake one day and he said:
"I have to tell you something, Jeannine."
She thought: This is it, and her stomach knotted up.
"I'm married," he said, taking off his glasses, "but my wife and I are separated. She's living with her mother in California. She's emotionally disturbed."
"Oh," Jeannine said, flustered and not knowing what to say. She hadn't liked him particularly, but the disappointment was very bad. There is some barrier between Jeannine and real life which can be removed only by a man or by marriage; somehow Jeannine is not in touch with what everybody knows to be real life. He blinked at her with his naked eyes and oh lord, he was fat and plain; but Jeannine managed to smile. She didn't want to hurt his feelings.
"I knew you'd understand," he said in a choked voice, nearly crying. He pressed her hand. "I knew you'd understand, Jeannie." She began reckoning him up again, that swift calculation that was quite automatic by now: the looks, the job, whether he was "romantic," did he read poetry? whether he could be made to dress better or diet or put on weight (whichever it was), whether his hair could be cut better. She could make herself feel something about him, yes. She could rely on him. After all, his wife might divorce him. He was intelligent. He was promising. "I understand," she said, against the grain. After all, there wasn't anything wrong with him exactly; from shore it must really look quite good, the canoe, the pretty girl, the puffy summer clouds, Jeannine's sun-shade (borrowed from the girl friend she'd had the picnic with). There couldn't be that much wrong with it. She smiled a little. His contribution is Make me feel good; her contribution is Make me exist . The sun came out over the water and it really was quite nice. And there was this painful stirring of feeling in her, this terrible tenderness or need, so perhaps she was beginning to love him, in her own way.
"Are you busy tonight?" Poor man. She wet her lips and didn't answer, feeling the sun strike her on all sides, deliciously aware of her bare arms and neck, the picture she made. "Mm?" she said.
"I thoughtI thought you might want to go to the play." He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face with it. He put his glasses back on.
"You ought to wear sunglasses," said Jeannine, imagining how he might look that way. "Yes, Bud and Eileen were going. Would you like to join us?" The surprised gratitude of a man reprieved. I really do like him . He bent closerthis alarmed her for the canoe, as well as disgusted her (Freud says disgust is a prominent expression of the sexual life in civilized people) and she cried out, "Don't! We'll fall in!" He righted himself. By degrees. You've got to get to know people. She was frightened, almost, by the access of being that came to her from him, frightened at the richness of the whole scene, at how much she felt without feeling it for him, terrified lest the sun might go behind a cloud and withdraw everything from her again.
"What time shall I pick you up?" he said.
That night Jeannine fell in love with an actor. The theatre was a squat, low building finished pink stucco like a summertime movie palace and built in the middle of a grove of pine trees. The audience sat on hard wooden chairs and watched a college group play "Charley's Aunt." Jeannine didn't get up or go out during the intermission but only sat, stupefied, fanning herself with her program and wishing that she had the courage to make some sort of change in her life. She couldn't take her eyes off the stage. The presence of her brother and sister-in-law irked her unbearably and every time she became aware of her date by her elbow, she wanted to turn in on herself and disappear, or run outside, or scream. It didn't matter which actor or which character she fell in love with; even Jeannine knew that; it was the unreality of the scene onstage that made her long to be in it or on it or two-dimensional, anything to quiet her unstable heart; I'm not fit to live, she said. There was more pain in it than pleasure; it had been getting worse for some years, until Jeannine now dreaded doing it; I can't help it, she said. She added, I'm not fit to exist.
I'll feel better tomorrow. She thought of Bud taking his little girl fishing (that had happened that morning, over Eileen's protests) and tears rose in her eyes. The pain of it. The painful pleasure. She saw, through a haze of distress, the one figure on stage who mattered to her. She willed it so. Roses and raptures in the dark. She was terrified of the moment when the curtain would fallin love as in pain, in misery, in trouble. If only you could stay half-dead. Eventually the curtain (a gray velvet one, much worn) did close, and opened again on the troupe's curtain calls; Jeannine mumbled something about it being too hot and ran outside, shaking with terror; who am I, what am I, what do I want, where do I go, what world is this? One of the neighborhood children was selling lemonade, with a table and chairs pitched on the carpet of dead pine needles under the trees. Jeannine bought some, to color her loneliness; I did, too, and it was awful stuff. (If anybody finds me, I'll say it was too warm and I wanted a drink.) She walked blindly into the woods and stood a little way from the theatre, leaning her forehead against a tree-trunk. I said Jeannine, why are you unhappy?
I'm not unhappy.
You have everything (I said). What is there that you want and haven't got?
I want to die.
Do you want to be an airline pilot? Is that it? And they won't let you? Did you have a talent for mathematics, which they squelched? Did they refuse to let you be a truck driver? What is it?
I want to live.
I will leave you and your imaginary distresses (said I) and go converse with somebody who makes more sense; really, one would think you'd been balked of some vital necessity. Money? You've got a job. Love? You've been going out with boys since you were thirteen.
I know.
You can't expect romance to last your life long, Jeannine: candlelight dinners and dances and pretty clothes are nice but they aren't the whole of life. There comes a time when one has to live the ordinary side of life and romance is a very small part of that. No matter how nice it is to be courted and taken out, eventually you say "I do" and that's that. It may be a great adventure, but there are fifty or sixty years to fill up afterwards. You can't do that with romance alone, you know. Think, Jeanninefifty or sixty years!
I know.
Well?
(Silence)
Well, what do you want?
(She didn't answer)
I'm trying to talk to you sensibly, Jeannine. You say you don't want a profession and you don't want a manin fact, you just fell in love but you condemn that as sillyso what is it that you want? Well?
Nothing.
That's not true, dear. Tell me what you want. Come on.
I want love. (She dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with her hands.)
Go ahead. The world's full of people.
I can't.
Can't? Why not? You've got a date here tonight, haven't you? You've never had trouble attracting men's interest before. So go to it.
Not that way.
"What way?" (said I).
Not the real way.
"What!" (said I).
I want something else, she repeated, something else.
"Well, Jeannine," said I, "if you don't like reality and human nature, I don't know what else you can have," and I quit her and left her standing on the pine needles in the shadow cast by the trees, away from the crowd and the flood-lights fastened to the outside of the theatre building. Jeannine is very romantic. She's building a whole philosophy from the cry of the crickets and her heart's anguish. But that won't last. She will slowly come back to herself. She'll return to Bud and Eileen and her job of fascinating the latest X. Jeannine, back in the theatre building with Bud and Eileen, looked in the mirror set up over the ticket window so lady spectators could put on their lipstick, and jumped"Who's that!"
"Stop it, Jeannie," said Bud. "What's the matter with you?" We all looked and it was Jeannine herself, sure enough, the same graceful slouch and thin figure, the same nervous, oblique glance.
"Why, it's you, darling," said Eileen, laughing. Jeannine had been shocked right out of her sorrow. She turned to her sister-in-law and said, with unwonted energy, between her teeth: "What do you want out of life, Eileen? Tell me!"
"Oh honey," said Eileen, "what should I want? I want just what I've got." X came out of the men's room. Poor fellow. Poor lay figure.
"Jeannie wants to know what life is all about," said Bud. "What do you think, Frank? Do you have any words of wisdom for us?"
"I think that you are all awful," said Jeannine vehemently. X laughed nervously. "Well now, I don't know," he said.
That's my trouble, too. My knowledge was taken away from me.
(She remembered the actor in the play and her throat constricted. It hurt, it hurt. Nobody saw, though.)
"Do you think," she said very low, to X, "that you could know what you wanted, only after a whileI mean, they don't mean to do it, but lifepeoplepeople could confuse things?"
"I know what I want," said Eileen brightly. "I want to go home and take the baby from Mama. Okay, honey?"
"I don't mean" Jeannine began.
"Oh, Jeannie!" said Eileen affectionately, possibly more for X's benefit than her sister-in-law's; "Oh, Jeannie!" and kissed her. Bud gave her a peck on the cheek.
Don't you touch me!
"Want a drink?" said X, when Bud and Eileen had gone.
"I want to know," said Jeannine, almost under her breath, "what you want out of life and I'm not moving until you tell me." He stared.
"Come on," she said. He smiled nervously.
"Well, I'm going to night school. I'm going to finish my B.A. this winter." (He's going to night school. He's going to finish his B.A. Wowie zowie. I'm not impressed.)
"Really?" said Jeannine, in real awe.
"Really," he said. Score one. That radiant look of gratitude. Maybe she'll react the same way when he tells her he can ski. In this loveliest and neatest of social interactions, she admires him, he's pleased with her admiration, this pleasure lends him warmth and style, he relaxes, he genuinely likes Jeannine; Jeannine sees this and something stirs, something hopes afresh. Is he The One? Can he Change Her Life? (Do you know what you want? No. Then don't complain.) Fleeing from the unspeakableness of her own wishesfor what happens when you find out you want something that doesn't exist?Jeannine lands in the lap of the possible. A drowning woman, she takes X's willing, merman hands; maybe it's wanting to get married, maybe she's just waited too long. There's love; there's joyin marriage, and you must take your chances as they come. They say life without love does strange things to you; maybe you begin to doubt love's existence.
I shouted at her and beat her on the back and on the head; oh I was an enraged and evil spirit there in the theatre lobby, but she continued holding poor X by the handslittle did he know what hopes hung on him as she continued (I say) to hold on to his hands and look into his flattered eyes. Little did she know th
at he was a water-dweller and would drown her. Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father's mannerisms. Somewhere is The One. The solution. Fulfillment. Fulfilled women. Filled full. My Prince. Come. Come away, Death. She stumbles into her Mommy's shoes, little girl playing house. I could kick her. And X thinks, poor, deceived bastard, that it's a tribute to him, of all peopleas if he had anything to do with it! (I still don't know whom she saw or thought she saw in the mirror. Was it Janet? Me?) I want to get married.
VIII
Men succeed. Women get married.
Men fail. Women get married.
Men enter monasteries. Women get married.
Men start wars. Women get married.
Men stop them. Women get married.
Dull, dull. (see below)
IX
Jeannine came around to her brother's house the next morning, just for fun. She had set her hair and was wearing a swanky scarf over the curlers. Both Mrs. Dadier and Jeannine know that there's nothing in a breakfast nook to make it intrinsically interesting for thirty years; nonetheless Jeannine giggles and twirls the drinking straw in her breakfast cocoa fancifully this way and that. It's the kind of straw that has a pleated section in the middle like the bellows of a concertina.
"I always liked these when I was a little girl," Jeannine says.
"Oh my yes, didn't you," says Mrs. Dadier, who is sitting with her second cup of coffee before attacking the dishes.
Jeannine gives way to a fit of hysterics.
"Do you remember?" she cries. "And do you remember!"
"Heavens, yes," says Mrs. Dadier. "Don't I, though."
They sit, saying nothing.
"Did Frank call?" This is Mrs. Dadier, carefully keeping her voice neutral because she knows how Jeannine hates interference in her own affairs. Jeannine makes a face and then laughs again. "Oh, give him time, Mother," she says. "It's only ten o'clock." She seems to see the funny side of it more than Mrs. Dadier does. "Bro," says the latter, "was up at five and Eileen and I got up at eight. I know this is your vacation, Jeannine, but in the country"