Taking My Life

by Jane Rule

  Rule describes her mother as gracious and kind, supportive and protective, prone to laughter and storytelling. She enjoyed a reassuring closeness in their relationship, although it was not one always marked by deep confidences. Rule’s perspective in Taking My Life may reflect the proximity between her and her mother, the “loving bond” that existed between them: “We were deeply companionable.” Some existing letters in the archive confirm Rule’s recollections:11. when she moved to take up her university studies, she wrote to her mother with great frequency and discussed a wide range of personal interests. By Rule’s account, it was a relationship that was open, not “requiring” in terms of social decorum, like that of her grandparents, but rather joyfully indulgent. Her mother allowed her children to “run barefoot” and “occasionally forgot to brush [their] teeth.” Her father, too, in his own way, was involved with his children’s development: he was a champion swimmer, who taught his children to swim extremely well and took them to see the New York World’s Fair. In general, her parents fostered traditional representations of masculinity and femininity, and played out roles conventionally associated with men and women respectively. Her father did not “question his masculine idealism” when he enlisted with the U.S. Navy, nor did her mother question hers as she assumed charge of the domestic sphere and of her children. These roles were bolstered by an education system that demanded Rule participate in home economics classes in which she seemed to wash dishes perpetually and, where later, in cooking classes offered by Westinghouse at Castilleja School, she was given lessons in “makeup, wardrobe and deportment.”

  Rule also traces the emotional entanglements of her parents with her grandparents—those of her mother with her grandmother, the strong-willed, spoiled and critical Carlotta Mae Vance Hink Packer and her patriotic, moody stepfather, Colonel Gouvenier Vroom Packer.12. From Carlotta, it would seem, Jane learned how to refuse to submit to demands and expectations imposed on her, or, at the very least, the means of dealing with such demands with irony or humour. As she notes, when Carlotta’s first husband “shouted that the gravy should be dark brown, the colour of his shoe, [Carlotta] put his shoe alongside the gravy the next time it was served.” On her father’s side, she characterizes her grandfather as indulgent, a man who “ate ladyfingers instead of toast every morning,” and who recklessly made business propositions, of which his wife would subsequently and astutely determine the value—or lack thereof. At times seeming to appear as a “naïve crackpot” whose lack of business sense was counterbalanced by the perspicuity of his wife, he regarded Jane as his favourite, much to the chagrin and resentment of her grandmother. Her grandmother, therefore, only became closer to Jane after his death. The relationship that these grandparents maintained was, for Rule, a way of life that “was receding into the past, would not be there for yet another generation of children to play their timeless games in the shadow and warmth of friendly ghosts.”

  Nonetheless, her grandparents insisted on private school for Jane. During her father’s stint with St. Mary’s College, Rule was sent to two all-girls schools, the first being Anna Head’s, a prestigious private school that was designed by architect Soule Edgar Fisher and completed in 1892, then was completely relocated to Oakland Hills in 1964. In 1971, a coordinating school for boys, the Royce School, was established. By 1979, the schools became one. At Anna Head’s, Jane experienced some kind of transformation, although not quite the kind her grandmother, Carlotta Packer, had envisioned: that a private school, as Rule notes perhaps parroting her grandmother, “could take a six-foot-tall, twelve-year-old barbarian in hand” and create a “civilized young woman.” There, she gained greater confidence in her person, her stature:

  The absence of boys from that whole city block the school occupied gave me a sense of giddy freedom and then growing power. Being the tallest girl in the school was a mark of distinction rather than a bad joke … I was welcomed by the older girls, and my classmates were pleased with my distinction because it reflected favourably on them.

  That confidence was strengthened by the protective group of women, who both counterbalanced the “troubled and troubling bond I had with my brother” and “put off the question of how I could ever be a woman loved by a man.” Her growing self-assurance was also fostered by supportive environments and compassionate teachers, such as Mrs. Knapp, who offered positive reinforcement and extra tutorials to allow Jane to cultivate— even to develop her own methods for cultivating—her own intelligence. Mrs. Knapp also seems to be a crucial figure in the development of Rule’s moral understanding and sense of justice. Finding individuals rather than institutions as sources for inspiration, as moral and educative guides, Jane specifically seemed to flourish under her tutelage. Aside from daily comments about principles related to self-discipline and kindness, Mrs. Knapp functioned as a model for the preservation of dignity and kindness, even in the face of injustices—the likes of which Rule was to confront repeatedly. Rule remained in touch with her, even after she left the school, until Mrs. Knapp died of cancer some years later.

  After Anna Head’s, Jane was enrolled in Castilleja School, which was founded in 1907 by Miss Mary Ishbel Lockey at the encouragement of Dr. David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford University. By reputation and proclamation, its mission was to provide a “comprehensive, college preparatory education”; it espoused and promulgated those values associated with courtesy and kindness.13. The all-girls school once again allowed Rule to “put off the question of how I could ever be a woman loved by a man” and even to invent a fictitious paramour named David, a “more desperate order of lying, a defence against future humiliations.” And yet these threatening humiliations were not to be Rule’s, for her initiation into her own developing sexuality is tenderly rendered; these are initially formulated around erotically charged, although not physically consummated, relationships with some of her instructors.

  As is typical to the Künstlerroman, the artist experiences conflict in relation to the socio-political values of the period, as she is simultaneously challenged or guided by various mentor figures. Ann Smith was one such teacher in a series, a complex mentor who helped to usher Rule into maturity and adulthood. An art instructor of some talent, she brusquely corrected Rule’s adolescent refusal to believe that a woman might love another woman: “It isn’t silly,” she informed her sharply. “Women do sometimes fall very deeply in love with each other.” She lent her copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Well of Loneliness, books that were likely formative or instrumental to Rule’s later writing of Lesbian Images. The situation, however, was far from simple: at the same time as she seemingly approved of same-sex relationships and later even had a brief liaison with Rule, Smith also married, had children and encouraged Rule to acquire heterosexual experiences first. By the time she left high school, Rule was becoming “increasingly frightened” by her circumstances. She could neither accommodate nor resign herself to the situation in which Smith found herself: in a heterosexual relationship with children, and increasingly frustrated at the condition of being a woman, which “was simply too degrading.” In view of Smith’s own churning and repressed desires, Rule might well note that she “mistrusted the conventions for loving.” She learned, therefore, to defy Smith’s claim that Rule “didn’t yet live in the real world.” To this remark, Rule replied, “I never intended to.”

  But, at age fourteen, “shaped like a telephone pole,” Rule had not yet found a sense of confidence, intellectually or physically, and certainly not sexually. She describes how sex education was first communicated to her by her father; the relief of getting her first period; the confusion of discovering what it meant to love for the first time; and her first physical experience at fifteen with a blond veteran whose attempts were clumsy and gently humorous, rather than embarrassing. There is no one moment, she notes, when she “confronted [her] own sexuality.” Whatever assumptions were made about her—and Rule later realized that clear assumptions had indeed been made about her—
she was consumed and blinded by a sense of “outraged innocence.” Indeed, by Rule’s account, innocence seemed to characterize many of her interactions and contradicted the “suspicion … so often entertained by so many people, that I was a sexual adventurer.” Whatever later views she espoused related to human sexual relationships or her involvements as a full adult, at this stage, she characterized herself as an observer, the “wardrobe mistress backstage” who was preparing young women for “their parts in a public show which had nothing to do with me.” The toll it took on Rule to live in “restrained intensity” and “increasing anxiety” might be seen to be reflected in the migraine headaches, the bouts of insomnia and the blackouts that increasingly afflicted her.

  If her academic performance improved, as it did, Rule increasingly resisted and challenged systems that purportedly measured her intelligence or that tried to inculcate in her heteronormative conduct for women. One of her teachers described her as merely being “an attention seeker and trouble maker,” but categorizing her behaviour as such did not give justice to the real frustrations Rule encountered, ranging from patently ridiculous IQ tests, to classes on makeup and wardrobe. Her future participation with The Body Politic is anticipated by Rule’s response to this form of “education”; the signs of her writing career manifest themselves in an article she writes that appears in the Castilleja school paper in which she protests against “such blatant nonsense.” Not surprisingly, she was sent home for a week to reconsider these remarks. Upon returning to school, she was horrified to discover she would be obliged to forfeit participation in all extracurricular activities—and report to the principal others who made similar objections. In response to such “intolerable and unjust” restrictions, Rule walked out and enrolled herself in Palo Alto High, where she completed her secondary education.

  Just before her seventeenth birthday, and after a brief stint as a typist in the purchasing department at Stanford University, Rule enrolled at Mills College.14. Initially founded in 1852 as the Young Ladies’ Seminary in Benicia, California, but renamed as Mills College thirteen years later, it was devoted to women’s education until 1990.15. Her attempts to apply to Stanford had already been thwarted, and it seems that her application to Mills College was again being complicated by a former teacher’s letter insinuating that Rule’s “moral character” was questionable. In addition, Rule had not scored well in language and reading skills; as a result, she was given “provisional status,” pending her performance during her first term there.

  It is at this point, during her studies at Mills College, that she approached her writing with great seriousness. She took a creative writing class for which she “wrote obscure, symbolic stories” and in which were featured young men who were “violent and in violent pain.” She also wrote a few “realistic stories” that tended to focus on “troubled relationships between fathers and sons.” She studied under an instructor named Donald Weeks, who was at turns “sharply critical” and supportive. From these classes in which Weeks would read the students’ work out loud, Rule “learned so much more about effectiveness and failure in my own work … than I did from any discussion or written comment.” It is this same instructor, however, who became involved in a relationship with another male instructor with disastrous consequences: he was dismissed from the school. The incident heightened Rule’s personal confusion and erotic constraint: “I seemed to hold two mutually exclusive views, that my love represented what was best in me and that it was a sin. Or more ambiguously and truly put, what was specifically good and generally bad.”

  Also at Mills College, in her first term, Rule was to meet yet another instructor who would be crucial to her formative years, especially to her intellectual and psychological development: Dr. Elizabeth (Libby) Pope, her English professor who specialized in the work of John Milton. It was a relationship that was defined by a mutual sense of esteem for their respective intellects. Pope was stringent with her, but also allowed her great academic freedom, the kind which allowed Rule to flourish intellectually. If her relationship with Smith was erotic, that with Dr. Pope “was chaste and passionate.” Indeed, as Rule notes in her autobiography, Dr. Pope wrote many years later to observe that, on Mother’s Day, when others “bragged about their children, she reminded herself that she’d had about five hundred daughters, ‘Among whom, you are the most beloved.’ ” The proximity between them is suggested by the manner in which Rule and two other students routinely invited themselves over for supper and had long evenings of literary debate and discussions between them about C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers.

  The friendship that developed would eventually result in Rule inviting Pope to travel with her on a second trip to England. Her first trip had been made the previous year, in 1952, when she applied for and was accepted into the summer session at Bishopton Lodge, at the University of Birmingham. She persuaded her mother that “a change of scene, an adventure, would be the right tonic” for her high-strung nature; and, in turn, her mother convinced Jane’s abundantly generous grandmother to fund the trip. That her compulsion to write was strong even then surfaced in her desire to take a small portable typewriter with her, the only item she chose for herself as her parents and grandmother suggested an array of other items. In London, Rule enjoyed elements of both high and popular culture: a theatre production with Laurence Olivier; the wax museum, Madame Tussaud’s; the Tower of London; St. Paul’s; and Westminster Abbey. For the first time, she enjoyed a community of scholars, “a group of people as interested in their work as I was.”

  It is on this first trip that Rule met one of the more important figures to enter her life—Roussel Sargeant. Rule registered her attraction to and fascination with her immediately—the first time she saw her on the train to Leamington Spa. She was to discover that Sargeant was studying in the same program as Rule for the summer. Considerably older by about ten years, Sargeant guided her in terms of social conduct in England: she “taught [her] how to catch a cab,” suggested that “cigarettes were too expensive to offer round without incurring debt,” and noted that “lecturers were not to be casually asked for a drink, only formally invited to dinner.” It is also Sargeant who initiated her into a fully and consistently sexual, adult relationship. When Rule continued on her trip to Edinburgh without her, they corresponded almost daily. The ease and affection with which they communicated with each other and understood each other marks Rule’s assessment of their association.

  Upon her return to America from this trip, Rule came to view the world differently: Smith’s questioning about her relationships abroad began to give rise to Rule’s impatience and restlessness, although Rule credited Smith with teaching her “how to love without being possessive.” In returning to Mills College, she came to realize that the group at Bishopton Lodge in London was much more congenial because it was much less likely to become “snagged on conventional expectations.” She herself made a half-hearted effort to adhere to convention by dating a male student at Mills, which ended in a harrowing attempt on his part to threaten her into submission to his desires. Poignantly, she reflected upon what might have been if she “had been a normal woman”—and humorously concluded that “the choice between being neurotic and spending the rest of my life with such a maniac was no choice at all.”

  One positive aspect of her return to Mills College was her introduction to the creative writing instructor who had replaced Donald Weeks: Mary Jessamyn West, who educated the students in the more practical aspects of being a writer, including the use of “contracts and agents.”16. She enjoined the students to try to publish in popular venues, such as The Ladies’ Home Journal, and not merely to be concerned with “writing great works.” Rule and the other students were suspicious and reluctant about “soiling” themselves by participating in the marketplace, attitudes fostered by many of the other academics; nonetheless, West was regarded congenially by the students. Indeed, Rule’s subsequent understanding of the various markets and the successful submissio
n of her stories to popular venues may have found their roots here.

  Rule made a second trip to England the following year. It was again funded by her grandmother. Upon her return from her first trip to England, Rule had continued to write to Sargeant, with whom she decided that the University of London was the most appropriate place for her studies abroad: “partly out of an appetite for more exposure to contemporary literature, partly for the availability of London, but also it meant I could see Sargeant more often.” They planned on attending the Festival of Britain; spending weekends at Stratford, Oxford, Cambridge and Canterbury; and going to lectures, plays and exhibits. But these plans were initially complicated, first by the inclusion of the fellow student and Rule’s friend Ellen Kay, who would join her on weekends, and then again by Dr. Elizabeth Pope, whom Rule had initially and impetuously invited. Rule’s sensitivity meant that she understood not only how much Dr. Pope wanted, even needed, to go to England—but also recognized that the inclusion of others in her travels would be taxing for Sargeant and for their relationship. When Dr. Pope decided to join Rule, Sargeant was “downhearted”: “Must I share you with all the world, my young Pied Piper?”