Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "lily-bart"

Pursuing my new career as a basher of James Joyce's so-called masterpiece, I joined the conversation of a group of Linked/In literature lovers, who were discussing the topic: "What is the most overrated novel?" Of course, I knew the answer. "It's ULYSSES, everybody," I confidently declared. "Not only is it the worst novel ever written; it was named the best novel of the 20th century on some phony list." After offering my two cents, I was generally content to read other people's comments without responding, except when someone suggested that the second novel on that phony list, GREAT GATSBY, was also overrated. I defended Fitzgerald's novel by describing it as a book that could be read many ways by different readers and then presenting a brief synopsis of my unique "black" reading. I was quiet again until another person suggested that Salinger's A CATCHER IN THE RYE was overrated because her working class nonwhite students could not relate to Holden. Since I was a working class nonwhite student who had no trouble relating to Holden when I was a junior in high school, I described what is still my most memorable experience reading a book.

I was sitting in a beauty shop in Evanston, Illinois, having my hair fried and reading Salinger's novel for my English class. I was a very quiet teenager, who usually said nothing during my two to three hours in the beauty shop. When I read the passage where Holden says that his teacher was holding his paper like it was a turd, I laughed loudly for several minutes. All of the women in the beauty shop stared at me as if I were crazy. When my beautician nervously asked why I was laughing, I was too embarrassed to quote the passage, so I just said, "This is a really funny book."

The Linked/In group members already knew that I was a black woman, but since I was living in Evanston, they might have thought I was an upper-middle-class black person with educated parents. So I let them know that I had little in common with Holden. Two years before I read CATCHER, I was living with my illiterate grandmother in her rundown house in Henderson, Kentucky. My maternal grandmother's house did not have hot water when I lived there from 1962 to 1964. I also said that I worked as a live-in maid, called a Mother's Helper, when I was fourteen and fifteen. Still, I could relate to Holden.

As I said to the Linked/In group, I don't believe in universal themes and texts. I loved teaching HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but I don't see anything universal about a black man and a white boy going down the river on a raft. But there are universal feelings and emotions. We can all laugh, cry, and feel embarrassed or angry. And no matter who we are and where we come from, we can all hate ULYSEES and love HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Even though I am now old enough to be Holden's grandmother, I still share his distaste for phonies. And I still appreciate his anger at the woman in the movie theater who was crying over something on the screen but wouldn't take her child to the bathroom. In fact, literature teachers could use that passage to teach the students who have trouble relating to Holden about sympathy and empathy.

If I had been able to relate only to characters like me, I would have been very lonely in my English classes. The slave Jim might have been the first black character that I met in literature read in school, and he appeared the same year (1965-66) that I was first introduced to Jay Gatsby and Holden Caulfied. Several times in my graduate seminars, I discussed reading books from the inside versus reading them from the outside. I claimed that I read books by black writers like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison from the inside and those by writers like Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion from the outside. But I now realize that I have more in common with Lily Bart from Edith Wharton's HOUSE OF MIRTH than I do Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas from NATIVE SON. Like Bigger, I am black, was born in the South, and lived in the too cold and snowy Chicago area when I was young. Also like Bigger, I worked for somewhat wealthy white folks when I was very young--in fact, younger than Bigger was when he started working for the Daltons. But Bigger was a thief, rapist, and murderer. He also liked to drink and was a physical bully. Bigger's behavior was so shocking to me, in fact, that at one point I had to leave his consciousness. I couldn't stay with him when he decided to cut off Mary's head so that he could fit her body in the furnace.

While I often found Lily annoying, nothing she did was shocking, and she was sometimes admirable. On the surface, she and I seem to have less in common than Bigger and I do. I am not a beautiful white woman raised to marry a rich white man and be ornamental. However, I identified with Lily when she couldn't stand the idea of having to listen to boring Percy Gryce for a whole weekend just so that he would marry her and bore her for the rest of her life. And I sympathized with her when she was betrayed by her sly, slick, and wicked frenemy Bertha Dorset. I wasn't as appreciative of her decision to protect Selden by not using Bertha's letters to blackmail her as some readers are, but I did admire her in the scene when she used her superior manners to stand up to potential rapist Gus Trenor. I, of course, would have handled the situation differently. I would use my sardonic wit to throw shade and snark at gross Gus, telling him what I would rather do (clean toilets) and whom I would rather do (boring Percy) than have sex with him. And if that didn't make him open the door for me, I'd kick him in the groin. We use the weapons we have; I have a bad attitude and size 11 1/2 feet. But the more fragile Lily didn't have my weapons, and so it took more courage for her to stand her ground. Not only was that scene her bravest moment in the novel, her standoff with Gus was one of the bravest moments by any character in American literature.

Literature teachers should not allow students to get away with the not-relevant-to-me argument. They should use the strategy that the character Bernadette in Maria Semple's current bestseller, WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, uses when her daughter's friend claims to be bored when they go on an outing. She challenges Kennedy, the friend, to stop being bored. She doesn't say what I might have said, "Maybe that's because you're boring," but that's clearly her point. Literature teachers should challenge their students to find the relevance in texts the same way they find the meaning.

And humanities teachers need to focus on teaching empathy. If we allow poor black and brown girls to say that they can't relate to Holden, how can we ask rich white boys to relate to Morrison's Sula or Cisneros' Esperanza?

Obviously, it's hard for even the most empathetic people to walk in other people's shoes as those people. I can't imagine being Lily and don't want to imagine being Bigger, but we can at least imagine walking in their shoes as ourselves. I'm annoyed that Lily didn't at least threaten Bertha with those letters because that's what I would have done in her shoes, but I admired the way she handled Gus Trenor. Her approach was so much classier and braver than mine would have been.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and CATCHER IN THE RYE are not universal texts, but they are relevant to people of all classes and races. That's why they are not overrated.

When I taught the novel of manners, I liked to discuss the difference between morals and manners. Novelists like Henry James and Edith Wharton portray characters who have perfect manners but terrible morals. Manners are, of course, superficial. Saying the right words, wearing the right clothes, and arriving at a party at the right time are easy to learn tricks that don't reveal a person's true character. The rich folks who populate novels of manners usually have good manners, but most of them have bad morals. Of course, there are no black characters in these late 19th and early 20th Century novels. Even the maids and cooks are white. But in my favorite Edith Wharton novel, HOUSE OF MIRTH, a "filthy rich," upwardly mobile Jewish character named Simon Rosedale takes the role of the outsider with bad manners but good morals. Although she's clearly anti-Semitic (she supposedly congratulated Fitzgerald on his portrayal of the comically gross Jewish character Meyer Wolfshiem in GREAT GATSBY), Wharton shows that the rude, crude Rosedale has a bigger heart than Lily Bart's polished, upper class so-called friends. Rosedale is touched by Lily's plight and even visits her after she has fallen out of the upper class.

Despite his obvious faults, I prefer Rosedale to all of the men (including Selden) in HOUSE OF MIRTH, probably because I identify with him. Like my people, he is, of course, a victim of prejudice, but also like many blacks, and certainly this one, he has little patience with the "polite" bullshit thrown around by the snobbish upper class New York society that Wharton portrays in her novels. All of the rich men in this society buy their beautiful wives, but only Rosedale openly discusses the transaction. And when he catches Lily coming out of a building where only bachelors live, he lets her know that he will use that information if she becomes too snobbish and disrespectful of him.

Like Rosedale, I can be rude and occasionally even crude. Several weeks ago, I admitted that I have some "hood rat" in me because I was born in the working class. While I always maintain my composure when debating on social media and like to point out that debaters lose the argument once they start name-calling and spewing crude insults, I can occasionally revert to my "hood rat" roots in a face-to-face debate. When I lose control of my temper in an oral debate, I can also lose control of my rhetoric. Last year, for instance, when the woman who is still the President of the HOA board despite being rejected by the community and being told by me multiple times that she needs to step down, screamed at me while banging on the table, I became enraged. I had been in this younger white woman's presence only twice, and both times she had screamed at me. I had to take deep breaths to even continue talking. But the woman, who comes from a prominent family, was able to return immediately to a polite conversation. She even tried to joke with me. Finally, when I'd had enough of the lies and manipulation of that woman and the white female property manager, I jumped up abruptly and stormed out of the room. As I was leaving, Madam President said sweetly, "Thanks for coming." The "hood rat" responded quietly but probably loud enough for her to hear, "Kiss my ass."

Now that incident was not my proudest moment. I was rushing out of the room because I felt my "hood rat" rising and knew I was about to turn into an Atlanta Housewife. However, nothing I've done or said equals the dirty deeds of Madam President, other board members, and the property manager. I haven't, for instance, tried to force other people to paint homes that do not need painting while not painting my own home. And I can't imagine participating in a scheme to invalidate an election, to prevent the people who were elected from serving on the board while staying on myself, knowing that the community had rejected me.

When I attended the last board meeting (and probably the last ever for me), Madam President complained that I had called her a racist, and my white female next door neighbor, who had initially been an ally but switched sides, accused me of calling Madam President a bitch. I don't remember using the b-word as I was exiting, although I was certainly thinking it. But so what? As I said in an e-mail to the unelected, illegal, all-white board, I prefer being called a racist to being oppressed by racism, and I prefer being called a bitch to being attacked by a bitch. I might have added that calling someone racist should not be as objectionable as being a racist and calling someone a bitch should be considered more polite than being a bitch.

Like Bill Maher and other comedians, I'm sick of all of the fake outrage over every crude comment and every politically incorrect joke. We need to focus on the real problems--racism and bitchery. This working-class "hood rat" might not always use the right words at the right time, but I am infinitely more moral than the three privileged white people who are illegally occupying the HOA board, preventing this elected black woman from serving, so that they can use their power to harass and mistreat our diverse community.

Although he's crude and gross, I'd rather be Rosedale than any of the high society folks that looked down their noses at him and cut Lily Bart when she was no longer in their circle. I'd rather have bad manners than bad morals.

In "Not a Motherless Child," the chapter in my memoir that focuses on the relationship between my mother and me, I pointed out some of the primary differences between us. She filled our house with hats while I filled it with books. She's a southern belle who depends on the kindness of strange men while I'm an independent woman. I suggested that there were two primary reasons for the differences. First, she was born into the middle class, but, when I was born, she had fallen into the working class with her alcoholic husband. Second, she had both a strong, protective father for the first eleven years of her life and a strong maternal grandfather until she was almost an adult. I had no strong father figures in my early life. I made that second point again in an earlier blog post (6/15/14) called "Daddy's Girls." In that blog, I pointed out that my daddy's girl mother chose to move to a town where she had an older male first cousin when she left Kentucky while I didn't even know my older male first cousin who lived in this area when I moved from Illinois to California. Later, after I had met that male first cousin, he had moved to Florida and was visiting my mother and me in California, he highlighted another difference between his two female relatives. Cousin William walked into our house, looked at us, and said, "My pretty aunt and my smart cousin." I corrected him, "You're supposed to say, 'my smart and pretty aunt,' and 'my pretty and smart cousin.'" But I understood what my tactless cousin was saying. My mother, who will be ninety on Friday, is what I now call a rose (like actress Rose McGowan) and I'm a blossom (like actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik).

A rose can be as smart as a blossom, but she doesn't need to use her brain because her beauty is her weapon, her ticket to the top. A blossom isn't necessarily homely or ugly; she's just not pretty enough or doesn't think she's pretty enough to weaponize her beauty. When I was in high school and staying up late studying for an exam, my rose mother told me to put the book under my pillow and go to sleep. Already sarcastic as well as smart, I snorted, "I see why you were married at eighteen and had a child at nineteen." I didn't add because I didn't want my mother to slap me in the mouth, "I see why you're working as a maid and used to work in a factory."

Before the annoying METOO movement that placed Rose McGowan and Mayim Bialik on opposite sides of the sexual harassment issue, I used two fictional characters to contrast the rose and the blossom. The now interestingly named Lily Bart (Daisy Buchanan from GREAT GATSBY is another rose with a flower name), the protagonist in Edith Wharton's 1905 novel THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, is a rose. She was raised to be ornamental, arm candy we would call her now. She must marry a rich man or perish. She perishes because she just can't bring herself to marry a dull rich man, and the interesting man she loves doesn't have enough money. Sara Smolinsky, the protagonist in Anzia Yezierska's BREAD GIVERS, is the blossom. Whereas Lily was raised in upper class New York society, where most people either didn't attend church or treated it like another social engagement, Sara comes from a Jewish immigrant family and lives in a dirty ghetto with a father who is too religious and intellectual to work. She's the youngest of four sisters and clearly the one most likely to succeed. The third youngest sister, Mashah, is the rose, a blonde beauty whom men adore, but her nickname in the family is "Empty-Head." Whereas Mashah, like her two older sisters, marries the wrong man and suffers because of it, Sara goes to college, becomes a teacher, and is rewarded (because the novel was written in the nineteen twenties) with the right man, the principal of her school. I'm self-aware enough to know that I liked comparing the Wharton and Yezierska novels (I usually taught them as a dominant culture/ethnic pair) because the blossom (Sara) survives and thrives while the rose (Lily) dies. Revenge of the Blossoms!

Roses aren't necessarily weak. Lily could be strong as she showed when she faced down a potential rapist, and Rose McGowan seems less intimidated by public criticism than Mayim Bialek, who immediately apologized when she was criticized by the METOO thought police, but blossoms tend to be stronger, not only because they know men are less likely to rescue them, but also because they are often larger. Blossoms come in all sizes, but roses are usually petite. In my second book, THE BRONZE RULE, I pointed out that my second officemate, the whiny white woman mentioned in the 10/15/17 blog, may have needed a posse to help her fight her battles, not only because she was white (and a rose), but also because she was petite. Little women may feel they need men's help. When we were both at our peak heights, I was almost three inches taller than my rose mother.

A conversation that I recently had with a former neighbor, who is exactly one month and one day older than I am, illustrates the differences between a rose and a blossom. The petite rose, who is mixed race (part white, part Latino) and from a higher class, and I teamed to take on the corrupt HOA board. She helped me lead the fight briefly before deciding to move to a new neighborhood. She had told me how disrespectfully she was treated by the property manager, but I initially bought her story that she just wanted to live where she didn't have to obey silly rules. When I continued the battle alone and was bullied by a lawyer, I realized that my former neighbor had probably been intimidated and bullied out of the neighborhood. My response to the bullying was to become more defiant and louder. Of course, in one way, the petite rose was smarter because I'm still battling the HOA while she apparently lives peacefully in her new neighborhood. During a recent telephone conversation about my battle, the following exchange took place:

Rose: You should probably get a lawyer.
Blossom: I don't usually need a lawyer. I got my land back from the plumber without a lawyer. And when we first moved in here, we were told that the post office wouldn't deliver our mail until this community was 50% occupied, which would have taken almost a year. I called that Republican Representative's office and got our mail when there were only three families living here.
Rose: Do you mean David Dreier?
Blossom: Yes.
Rose: I dated his chief of staff. He probably got your mail.
Blossom: No. I talked to a woman.
Rose: X (the chief of staff's name, which I have forgotten) and I dated for around seven years.
Blossom: Oh, really.

So there's the difference. The almost 69-year-old rose was bragging about dating a man who was power adjacent while the almost 69-year-old blossom was bragging about her power, her ability (to paraphrase Trump) alone to fix it. Roses are pretty and often smell sweet, but I'm happy I'm a blossom, a powerful woman, not dependent on men.