For all the dinners are cooked, the plates and cups washed; the children set to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, invariably lie. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929
Virginia Woolf was a quirky person and a “difficult” writer. She read the above essay to a group of college women. She was making the point that to be a successful writer, a woman needed privacy and a little money of her own — something that very few females had.
One of the best parties I ever hosted was when I invited a group of kindred, independent-minded women friends to watch the video of an actress reenacting Woolf’s reading. It was an evening of munchies and champagne accompanying effervescent ideas on the part of Woolf and the guests. (Hmm . . . Perhaps I should do a repeat!)
My mother might have disapproved of Woolf’s bisexuality and eventual suicide. However, good writers — and Woolf was very good indeed — have a clear vision that few achieve. The paragraph quoted above sums up in a few deft words my mother’s life and the lives of millions and millions and millions of other women all over the world.
A few women throughout history achieved recognition on their own merits. Queen Elizabeth I, Joan of Arc, Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony, Oprah, and Rachel Carson come to mind. However, you won’t find the housewives of the world in history books. They are invisible. And don’t forget that it is “his” story, rather than “her” story!
I am the last of Mother’s children, and my nephews, nieces, some of their children, my cousins and the children whom she babysat are growing older. When we have passed on no one will be left who knew my mother.
Mother’s story was typical of that of women of her generation. Born at the turn of the 20th Century, she left school after the 8th grade and married my father when she was 16. She raised five children through the dreadful years of hunger and poverty of the Depression. After my father lost his sight when I was in high school, she became a floral designer at the greenhouse. To supplement her meager pay, she babysat. After Daddy’s death, she married my stepfather and never wanted for money again even though she lived in expectation of another Depression. Not much of a story is it? And surely not the stuff of which history books are made.
How many plates and cups did she wash? How many Sunday dinners did she cook? How many pies and loaves of bread did she bake? How many quarts of vegetables did she can? How many washes did she hang out to dry? During the Depression my brother had one shirt, and each of my sisters had one dress for school that she washed and ironed every night. It’s impossible to quantify my mother’s life and those of women like her.
You may have tangible
wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and
coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be —
I had a mother who read to me. Strickland Gillilan
That was one of Mother’s legacies to me. She loved learning and regretted deeply that my skinflint grandfather — himself a teacher! — made her quit school and go to work as a maid to support herself. Her vision of Heaven was to sit at the feet of wise philosophers who would give her the education she never had on Earth. She was determined that I would go to college and scrimped and worked to help me. As Lincoln said, “Everything I am, I owe to my angel mother.”
The Old Testament, Proverbs: “And her children shall rise up and call her blessed.” Amen. wclarke@comcast.net