Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within

by Elif Shafak

  Waging a passionate war against bourgeois norms, she questioned the institutions of marriage and motherhood at great length. She said many women longed to rediscover themselves in their children—a “psychological need” she clearly did not share. She and Sartre were a committed but free couple—independent, self-reliant and sufficient for each other. Bourgeois marital life was full of lies, deceptions and unrealistic pledges of fidelity. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, they had made a pact: They would tell each other everything. They were both open to the idea of “experiencing contingent love affairs.” Besides, she believed that maternity was incompatible with the life she had chosen as a writer and intellectual. She needed time, concentration and freedom to pursue her ideals.

  In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir reiterates Hegel’s famous dictum that the birth of children often goes hand in hand with the death of parents. Yet, despite her strong feelings on marriage and motherhood, de Beauvoir’s writings bear traces of another truth underneath: that if Sartre had wanted to have children, in her desire to please him she could have become a mother. She adored him. To her the sun of a new society rose from the depths of his eyes. He was the only man she respected more than she desired—the man whose time, work and ideas she had had to share with hundreds of other people, some of whom were women far more beautiful and ambitious than she was. And yet she knew how special she was in his eyes. Since the day their paths intersected in 1929 when they were both students at the École Normale Supérieure, he had been many things to her—a comrade, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a tutor, a best friend and an impossible dream.

  One should not be fooled by the terms of endearment she uses in her letters to him: “my little man,” or “my dear little being.” He was a giant to her—a man she addressed with the formal vous all the time. If he had wanted to start a family, she would have probably gone ahead, even though she clearly thought that motherhood was not meant for the likes of her. Though she was hurt by Sartre’s infidelities, she continued to defend the pact they had made. Simone de Beauvoir was a woman of impeccable analyses and unexpected conflicts.

  If the broader society was not ready to address motherhood in a critical light, the intellectual circles—by definition progressive and open-minded—were just as unprepared, not to mention disproportionately male. There was a widespread silence in the world of books when it came to issues such as premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression or menopause. Likewise, hardly anyone wrote about the Bermuda triangle of “ideal wife–diligent housekeeper–selfless mother” whereby so many women’s creative talents disappeared into the vortex. In a milieu such as this de Beauvoir faced deeply rooted prejudices and clichés. She wrote and spoke fervently on how women were being “forced to choose” between the brain and the body.

  She was equally critical of those women who had willingly internalized gender inequalities, seeing themselves as inferior to their male counterparts. “Even the lowliest of men sees himself a demi-God when faced with a woman,” she remarked. Her mind was corrosive, her pen was sharp and her personality was highly contentious. Once she said she found it quite normal that many people among the middle class hated her. “If it were any other way, I would begin to doubt myself.”

  It wasn’t only Western feminists who questioned the romanticized sacredness of motherhood. In the East, too, there were heated debates. The Japanese feminist movement opened up the term bosei—the natural motherly instinct—for discussion. They put forth the claim that maternal roles were more cultural than natural and biological.

  Female writers in Japan brought new blood to these debates, questioning gender stereotypes through their fiction. In 1983 Yuko Tsushima published Child of Fortune, which features a remarkable female protagonist—a headstrong, nonconformist divorcée—torn between the realities of her heart and the ideal of womanhood taught by society. Although she doesn’t necessarily consider herself a feminist writer, Tsushima has critically explored themes of gender and sexuality in her works. Perhaps she is spiritually connected with another Japanese author of the past century, Toshiko Tamura—one of the country’s earliest, most outspoken female writers—whose royalties, after her sudden death in 1945, were used to establish a literary prize for women writers. In a story titled “A Woman Writer,” Tamura describes a scene where an angry husband, himself a writer, reprimands his wife, who is struggling to write a passage. The husband believes women are not good writers. They are indecisive and insecure, wasting a hundred pages to write only ten. His words reiterate the belief that men write for more serious and sublime reasons, and are therefore earnest writers, whereas for women writing is merely a hobby.

  There is a similarly influential woman writer in Turkish literature whose unique voice continues to echo today, long after her passing. In the antagonistic environment of the 1970s, when the country was divided between leftists and rightists, Sevgi Soysal questioned, in clever, flowing prose, patriarchal precedents on all sides.

  She was the writer of women dangling on the threshold—between sanity and insanity, society and the individual, setting the table and walking away, endless self-sacrifice and impromptu selfishness. . . . She created female characters who straddled the divide between living for others and following their hearts. One of her unforgettable fictional characters is Tante Rosa:Tante Rosa left a letter behind. She left three children, one of them still on the bottle, a recipe for roasted goose and apple pie, and instructions on how to clean the table cloth for the maid whom she had also taught the art of arranging shelves. She left a little garden with marigolds, a house with a wooden staircase, high ceilings, and a grandfather clock; a husband who went to church every Sunday morning, and crawled into her bed every Sunday afternoon; neighbors who had big, bright hats, snot-nosed children, their own husbands and roasted goose. . . . She left her left breast behind, the breast that covered her heart. And walked away.

  Soysal’s female characters are, for all intents and purposes, the exact opposite of the “ideal women” of Turkish society. Hers are women who make mistakes, stumble on their path and hurt their knees, and yet, each time, somehow manage to pull themselves together.

  In another novel, she writes about a woman named Oya, who is deeply fragmented in her desires and obligations.

  “I’ll go to the sea. Any sea shore at all.” The beautiful scenery along the shore road that begins in Alanya and curves its way up to the Aegean Sea flashes before her eyes. Blue. Wide. Sea. Rocks. Forest. And what of her husband? What of her house? What of her children? And her other responsibilities? At the moment there is no blue, no freedom, no forest. There is only more duties creeping ever closer.

  In my mind I organize a banquet in heaven. A long table with a snow-white tablecloth, elegant cutlery and silver candleholders. A huge glittering crystal chandelier hangs over the center of the table. There is roasted goose, rice with saffron and mouthwatering desserts on vast plates. Simone de Beauvoir sits in a high chair at one end of the table. Though she gives the impression of sulking, she is actually happy. On her right is Toshiko Tamura with her elegant eyeglasses, eating fried rice with chopsticks, putting thought into each grain. On her left is Sevgi Soysal, who doesn’t have much of an appetite, but she, too, is in a good mood. Humming a slow tune, she takes a sip from her wineglass.

  A French woman, a Japanese woman and a Turkish woman—three determined writers, three autonomous individuals, who lived worlds apart but spoke the same language—could they be dining together in heaven now? I’d like to think so.

  In Search of the Mother Goddess

  On the second day of September, I descend from a bus that has PETER PAN written in gaudy, capital letters on both sides. The name suits my mood. I, too, feel like “a boy who wouldn’t grow up,” and this place with its unfamiliar landscape and fickle weather could very well be Neverland. I drag a big, blue suitcase on wheels, and carry a cat box—except there is no cat inside, but four finger-women. Though they had raised no complaints during the eleven-h
our flight from Istanbul, in the one-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Boston they have been constantly whining or puking.

  As soon as I step down onto the sidewalk, the silence on the campus is like a slap on the face. My ears are so used to the constant chaos and crazy rhythm of Istanbul that I fear I may go deaf here. I see people, but nobody is shouting, yelling or whistling. Even the squirrels seem to tiptoe so as not to make noise. I find the stillness unsettling.

  But the campus is lovely. It is vast and green as far as the eye can see. There are tall, thick trees everywhere, speaking in gnarled mystery. There are dozens of other languages being spoken here—the college being home to more than two thousand students from almost seventy countries. One out of every three students is a foreigner like me.

  This impressive, cosmopolitan college is the outcome of one woman’s vision. In 1837, an idealistic teacher named Mary Lyon began to advocate for the right of female students to be given the same level of education as male students. At a time when women did not yet have the right to vote, her views were quite radical. But Mary Lyon persevered, and after much struggle and several setbacks, she managed to collect the necessary funds to found the college. Since then, thousands have graduated from Mount Holyoke, and perhaps with each new graduate, Mary Lyon’s spirit has been rejoicing.

  Mount Holyoke and neighboring Smith College were nerve centers of the 1960s and 1970s American feminist movement. When I set foot here, the tradition is still visibly alive. In addition to feminists, postfeminists and half-and-half feminists (those who appreciate feminism but do not necessarily like feminists), there are also plenty of Wiccans in search of spiritual union with Mother Goddess, and quite a number of bisexual and lesbian activists.

  All this—squirrels and lesbians—I write about in a column for a widely circulated Turkish newspaper known for its conservative readership. Understandably, the feedback to my columns is mixed. Overall, my readers in Turkey seem to be more surprised by the fact that nobody catches the squirrels and cooks them (not that we have a national squirrel dish; I don’t know where they get this idea from) than by the sight of lesbian couples walking hand in hand. I take this as a progressive sign.

  There is one poster that grabs my attention from day one—that of a female worker wearing blue overalls, a red and white bandana on her head and a shirt with one sleeve rolled up to reveal a tensed and muscled bicep like that of Popeye the Sailor Man. She adorns the walls around campus. “You can succeed, you can stand tall and be strong in this male-driven world” is the slogan everywhere.

  On my second day, I discover the building that will become my favorite place during my entire stay: the gigantic, gaudy, gothic library. It’s love at first sight. From handwritten books to modern literature, political philosophy to botanical science, I roam the aisles touching the books, smelling them.

  But no one appreciates the library more than Miss Highbrowed Cynic. The second she spots the building, which resembles Rapunzel’s castle from a distance, she jumps with joy and yells so loudly, she damages her vocal cords.

  Fall goes by and the trees shed their first leaves, painting the entire campus in amber, red and brown. In the mornings, Little Miss Practical and I go jogging. One day on the way back we stop by the library.

  We find Miss Highbrowed Cynic sitting on a shelf, hunched over an open book. Using a sharpened pencil as a pole, she vaults from one stack of books to the next. She also has a string ladder to climb to higher shelves. Every time she moves, the peace-sign earrings on her lobes and the bangles on her arms jingle. The black T-shirt she is wearing over her jeans has this message written across: “ANTI-WAR / ANTI-RACISM / ANTI-HATE.”

  “Hi, Sister,” she says to me, and slightly frowns at Little Miss Practical. Since we have come to America the conflicts among the finger-women have surfaced again, their temporary coalition dissolving fast.

  “What are you reading?” I ask.

  “The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt,” she says.

  Little Miss Practical casts a confused glance over my shoulder. “Another fisherman’s story?”

  “A book by the French critic Julia Kristeva, who happens to be one of the leading thinkers of our times,” says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

  “Smart cookie, huh?” asks Little Miss Practical.

  “She sees the Oedipus complex as a key to understanding women,” continues Miss Highbrowed Cynic, her tone not so much annoyed as haughty. “A young girl adores her mother, copying everything she does. But then she finds out that she does not have a penis, and feels flawed and incomplete, like a eunuch. To compensate for this deficiency, she attaches herself to her father. The mother who was loved and admired until then is now pushed aside, seen as a competitor. There are girls who from this stage onward develop a hatred for their mothers.”

  Little Miss Practical and I listen, without a word, without a breath.

  “Women writers are affected by the Oedipus complex more than you may think. Did you know, for instance, why Sevgi Soysal became a novelist? She began to write at age eight because she was jealous of her father’s affection for her mother. She saw her mother as a rival, and through her writing and imagination she wanted to win her father’s favor.”

  “Oh, really?” I say.

  “Oh, yes, she writes about this in her memoirs,” Miss Highbrowed Cynic says, with her know-it-all attitude. “Every child wants to rejoin her mother’s body. This is an impossible wish, of course. That ‘oneness’ is long gone, severed forever, but the child cannot help longing for it. The ‘symbolic order’ represented by the father awaits the individual who cannot rejoin his mother’s body.”

  “Come again?” says Little Miss Practical.

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic volleys on. “In order to survive in this order, we suppress our imagination, temper our desires and learn to be ‘normalized.’ No matter how hard we try, however, our imagination can never be stifled. In the most inopportune places and at the oddest times, it surfaces. The mother’s semiotic rises up against the father’s symbolic order.”

  “Such confusing things!” says Little Miss Practical. “What’s the point of making life so complicated? These French thinkers are not practical in the least. No wonder French movies are so depressing.”

  Miss Highbrowed Cynic stares at the other finger-woman with an air of condescension but says nothing. Instead she turns to me. “Kristeva talks about three ways for a child to create her identity. First, to identify with the father and the symbolic. Second, to identify with the mother and the semiotic. Third, to find a shaky balance in between.”

  I pretend to follow what she is saying, but Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn’t fall for it: “Don’t you get it? If you pursue the third option, you could use the father’s symbolic order and the mother’s semiotic in your work.”

  “Hmm . . . Is there a writer who has ever done that?” I ask.

  “Yes, Sis. Take a closer look at Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. She was writing precisely in that precarious balance.”

  I don’t object. It might or might not be true. Writing fiction is a tidal river with strong currents. While flowing with it, one doesn’t think, “Let me now add a splash of symbolic order and a dash of the mother’s semiotic.” You don’t chew on such things when developing a novel. You are too busy falling in love with your characters.

  That is what Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn’t understand. Novelists write without thinking. It is afterward, when literary critics and scholars weigh writers’ every sentence that theories are applied. And then when people read those theories, they get the impression that novelists were purposefully creating their stories in such a way—which is not true.

  “There’s something I don’t get,” Little Miss Practical says.

  “Why am I not surprised?” scoffs Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

  “You’re so into the theory of motherhood. All this semiotic, symbolic, bucolic . . . But when it comes to the practicalities, I am sure you’d fall flat on your face.”

  “My knowledge wo
uld guide me,” says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

  “Whoa, come on, Sister, you couldn’t even change a diaper. I may not know anything about your theories, but I can get the hang of motherhood faster than Speedy Gonzalez runs.”

  The shape of her eyebrows indicates that Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn’t appreciate the remark. I leave them quarreling, and walk out of the library.

  I wander around the campus. Being rid of the finger-women—if only for a short while—lightens my heart and my mood. Like a walking sponge, I soak up every detail I see, every sound I hear, every smell I sniff, and store it all away inside me. That is what happens when you are a foreigner; you collect details as if they were seashells on a shore.

  In the cafeteria, I get in line and end up standing in front of a lesbian couple. One of the women is short and has spiky, carroty hair. The other is quite tall and heavily pregnant. We move forward, pushing our trays along inch by inch. Just when we reach the dessert display, the short woman chirps up.

  “Ah, would you mind if we take that, since there is only one left?” There on top of a glass shelf, where the woman is pointing, is one lone piece of raspberry cake. I move back.

  “Of course, go ahead.”

  “Thank you, thank you! Shirley has been craving raspberries since this morning,” says the woman, giving me a wink.

  “Oh,” I say. “You’re expecting a baby, how wonderful.”