feminine-genius

Stumbled on this

I didn't realise that New Oxford Review had some kind words for the book.

Here is a much-needed book -- a beautiful meditation on "authentic femininity" for our times. Genevieve Kineke sees women today as the chief victims of a culture steeped in "sexual heresies." Yet women also have the power to change things: they can offer the world "authentic femininity and take charge of transforming the culture." For a woman's love, her "primordial intimacy with the human person," is far more important in the scheme of things than worldly power.

Thank you, sweet Anne, for the generous review. For those interested in reading it with a group of women, a study guide is available upon request.

Bridge to fatherhood

Kathryn Lopez offers a review of a book that looks like a splendid read. Save the Males, by Kathleen Parker, shows how present day law and culture rips men from their fatherly duty and undermines this component of their vocation to the detriment of all.

Now Kathryn's review offers insights of its own, and I haven't read the book, but she pulls out an excellent quote after a dark scenario:

Parker cites one father’s post-abortion testimony. With no foreknowledge of the abortion, one man writing on a website writes of “nauseating feelings of helplessness and dereliction of duty. . . . ” He displays a deep compassion for the child he will never father and the mother of his child. And even while feeling guilt over being party to “the thoughtless and criminally careless conception of a child” and anger for having no choice over what happened next, he expresses a profound sense of regret that he could not protect his girlfriend from the “violent procedure. . . . Such a cold, soulless, and brutal experience.”

His empathy and decency and depth are a wakeup call to a culture hostile to fatherhood. Parker praises a glorious gift and warns a culture that’s in danger of losing something so strong and good:

Given that men can’t experience pregnancy or the bonding that women experience during those nine months, their emotional involvement in a fetus — Latin for “child,” incidentally — is always a choice of spirit. I’ve long marveled that men can become as involved as they do with something of which they are not physically a part. Or aren’t they? Is it just fanciful for a man to say, “Our child is a part you, part me?” The woman again, decides how men are allowed to feel about their own babies. That men more often than not charge forth to be fathers to their offspring is a gigantic miracle of heart, mind, and spirit that exposes our minimizing of fatherhood for the travesty — and the lie — that it is.

This is where Mulieris Dignitatem comes in:

Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the woman's womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and "understands" with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the "beginning", the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings - not only towards her own child, but every human being - which profoundly marks the woman's personality. It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person, and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more. The man - even with all his sharing in parenthood - always remains "outside" the process of pregnancy and the baby's birth; in many ways he has to learn his own "fatherhood" from the mother. One can say that this is part of the normal human dimension of parenthood, including the stages that follow the birth of the baby, especially the initial period. The child's upbringing, taken as a whole, should include the contribution of both parents: the maternal and paternal contribution. In any event, the mother's contribution is decisive in laying the foundation for a new human personality.

I would submit that the problem isn't the fact that the woman is bridge between father and child, but that she is often a poor bridge, or worse -- an obstacle. To recognise the essential collaborative work between parents, joined by mutual affection in a life-long union, is to give the family the only stability that will serve all of its members.

Also, given the "decisiveness" of the mother's contribution, any man should choose his companions carefully -- especially those with whom the very creation of new life is possible.

"Hormonal hobbits"

I have never seen Sex and the City. I've never seen Desperate Housewives. (Nor Sopranos, Scrubs, etc., though I've finally seen my first ten minutes of The Office.) Not much good as a reviewer of pop culture, I admit, but I do know hilarious writing when I see it.

What followed was not strictly a movie. It was more like a TV show on steroids. The televised episodes, which ran from 1998 to 2004, lasted for no more than half an hour each. So, spare a thought for the director of the film, Michael Patrick King, who also wrote the screenplay. Faced with the flimsiest of concepts, he had to take it by both ends and pull until he stretched it out to two and a quarter hours. Two and a quarter! When Garbo made “Anna Karenina,” in 1935, she got happy, unhappy, loved, left, and under the train in less than a hundred minutes, so how the hell are her successors supposed to fill the time?

To be fair, there are four of them—banded together, like hormonal hobbits, and all obsessed with a ring.

The review is priceless. Who needs to watch this stuff when paid [highly-talented] lackeys will do it for you?

Kind words

I found a very kind and generous review of The Book at Chez Ouiz (how did I miss it before?) Nice to know that the book translates well, having been written by a Northern convert and read by a Southern belle. She's also an accountant (!) where I'm a financial numbskull; she has great success with plants while me not have way...  That somewhat proves my point that there's a broad spectrum to the "feminine genius" and the applicability of Church as Feminine Paradigm. Many thanks!

Around the bend, and back

Speaking of turning a corner, there's no testimony like that of the prodigal, and this woman took more than the nickel tour of zeitgeist:

Trish Ryan was the quintessential successful thirtysomething woman -- she had a career as an attorney, a nice car, and a succession of men clamoring for her affection. But despite all her accomplishments, the things by which she defined her life continually left her disappointed, especially when it came to dating. Like the heroines of chick-lit novels and Sex and the City, she couldn't escape her bad luck with men: men who cheated, who left her, who made her a lesser version of herself. After years of trying everything out there to make love work -- new age philosophy, feminist empowerment, myriad of self-help programs -- she finally, hesitantly, decided to give God a try. This is Ryan's story of how her search for the right guy turned into the search for the right God, and (spoiler alert!) how she ended up with the happily-ever-after ending.

Available at the end of April.

Two great things

This book will be released in April and looks to me marvelous. Spread the word!

And this soul was espoused to Christ for all eternity. She chose as her motto is "In Him My Heart Trusts." Rejoice in hope!

Looking for a good read?

I'm delighted to see that David Frum takes as much pleasure in George Eliot (Mary Ann Evan) as I do.

She is a thoroughly 19th century person, earnest above all things: earnest in her topics, earnest in her sentiments, and earnest in her style. This earnestness is what the Victorians valued in her, and precisely what makes her so difficult of approach by the distracted, ironic, skeptical modern reader, especially the younger reader. Neither does it help that Eliot begins her stories in such a slow, deliberate way - nor that she pauses often to memorialize the memorialize the rural lives of her character. Eliot does not engage in the lyrical outbursts of nature worship that so weary Thomas Hardy's undergraduate readers. She prefers to describe instead the more practical facts of early 19th century life: cheesemaking and harvesting, ale-making and pre-industrial weaving... She is one of the profoundest minds ever to write an English novel, one of the deepest students of human nature. DH Lawrence paid her a great compliment: He said she was the first to realize that the action of the novel happens on the inside. I don't know if that is literally true, but it does describe Eliot's enduring appeal.

While Victorians may have valued her, I think she exposed the emptyness of convention more than they could grasp. She saw the person behind the pretence, the pain behind the facades. Try The Mill on the Floss, and see if she's not on par with Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell.

Chick flicks

While reading an excellent review of The Jane Austen Book Club, I came across a man's thoughts on "chick flicks." After taking his daughter to the movie (which he loved), he writes:

I secretly enjoy them so long as there are no green tomatoes or Debra Winger stricken with an incurable disease. Chick flicks are always more satisfying to me than car-over-cliff-exploding-on-impact films, or general mayhem revenge films. Chick flicks are about character, the labyrinth (and land mines) of family dynamics, nuanced dreams and doubts, and about soul-mating rather than sexual opportunism.

That's why we men don't like them. If nobody gets punched out in a fistfight, if nobody wakes up with a perfect stranger, we men regard chick flicks as an unfair test of devotion rather than entertainment.

And his thoughts on his mid-western town deserve notice as well.

[W]e drove for an hour all the way across town to one of those giant, flawlessly clean metroplexes set on the edge of a faux town square thrown up over night in the middle of nowhere, with a campanile clock tower in the middle of the "village green," ticking out the message, "shop, shop, shop, eat, drink and open a Macy's card, for tomorrow you shall die." At one end was a Red Robin and at the other a Macaroni Grill, and there were high-end scrapbooking and designer bread shops on every faux street.

Context, m'dears. We must give our lives context and the stamp of individual affections. I know these Plastic-villes, and they have the capacity to suck the life out of our souls. I'm all for efficiency and economy, but not at the price of authenticity, which we need for meaningful lives. Good work here, and yet there is much inherent in the feminine genius that can personalise even the "strip-mall" existence in which we may be trapped. Pray on it!

She's killing me!

One last post on Charlotte Bronte, since I've finished the book and will move on to a more substantial article on her. For now, I offer you a quote from her letters and then the words of the biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell. Charlotte, the last remaining child (of six) has selflessly, heroically tended her aging father (a dedicated clergyman) at the expense of her own freedoms, without complaint for most of her adult life and has received various requests for her hand in marriage, which she has brushed aside. Now she has accepted a proposal from a curate who will not only cherish the daughter but serve the father in his work at the parish church.

Letter of CB to friend: ... I must tell you then, that since I wrote last, papa's mind has gradually come round to a view very different to that which he once took; and that after some correspondence, and as the result of a visit Mr Nicholls paid here about a week ago, it was agreed that he was to resume the curacy of Haworth [her father's parish], as soon as papa's present assistant is provided with a situation...It gives me unspeakable content to see that now my father has once admitted this new view of the case, he dwells on it very complacently. In all arrangements, his convenience and seclusion will be scrupulously respected. Mr Nicholls seems deeply to feel the wish to comfort and sustain his declining years...

The nuptials are about to take place, though, not as one would presume the observance of a public sacrament over which the couple -- and the community at large -- should celebrate.

Next letter of CB to same friend: Mr Nicholls is a kind, considerate fellow. With all his masculine faults, he enters into my wishes about having the thing done quietly, in a way that makes me grateful; and if nobody interferes and spoils his arrangements, he will manage it so that not a soul in Haworth shall be aware of the day.

Imagine. The daughter of the resident parson, who has lived her entire life (except for occasional tasks that took her away) in this same place -- hiding her marriage from those who love her and consider her their very own.

EG relates the event: It was fixed that the marriage was to take place on the 29th of June. Her two friends arrived at Haworth Parsonage the day before; and the long summer afternoon and evening were spent by Charlotte in thoughtful arrangements for the morrow, and for her father's comfort during her absence from home. When all was finished -- the trunk packed, the morning's breakfast arranged, the wedding-dress laid out, -- just at bedtime, Mr Bronte announced his intention of stopping at home while the others went to church. What was to be done? Who was to give the bride away? There were only to be the officiating clergymen, the bride and bridegroom, the bridesmaid, and Miss Wooler to be present. The Prayer-book was referred to; and there it was seen that the Rubric enjoins that the Minister shall receive 'the woman from her father's or friend's hands,' and that nothing is specified as to the sex of the 'friend.' So Miss Wooler, ever kind in emergency, volunteered to give her old pupil away.

One has to read between the lines of the biography to realise how the dear father of CB -- who commissioned the work by EG to give testament to his daughter -- was a subtle tyrant. Kudos to her feminine-genius which never betrayed CB's honour for her own father, nor openly undermined him with the work he asked of her. Thankfully, word leaked out and "many old and humble friends" waited outside the church afterwards to greet the wedded pair on that beautiful day. But what sort of faith could scorn such a sacrament (when the church had jettisoned most of the other sacraments already) and what sort of icon of fatherly love did he offer to his family and parish? So very, very odd.

[Btw, have begun EG's Wives and Daughters, which is lovely so far.]

New and improved mythology

Whenever one doesn't use the right framework for an argument, he is bound to get into trouble. The use of stereotypes and statistics are both incomplete. There's a new book which debunks the foundation of the men Mars/women Venus juggernaut (which has sold  27m books in 37 languages, by the way!) The new book is The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? by Deborah Cameron, and a review in the TImes notes:

The literature of Mars and Venus is remarkably patronising towards men, who feature as bullies, toddlers or Neanderthals sulking in their caves. One (male) author even calls his book If Men Could Talk. A book called If Women Could Think would be instantly denounced: why do men put up with books that set them on a par with Lassie or Skippy the Bush Kangeroo.

Of course the knee-jerk response to a book that relies on inadequate anecdotes to make the case for sex differences would deny (heavens, not the paradigm!) but the differences themselves. The author relies on the evidence provided by psychologist Janet Hyde:

Hyde’s number-crunching suggests that the difference in language use between men and women is statistically negligible. Women don’t interrupt more than men, nor are they more talkative or empathetic in conversation, less prone to assertive conversation, or any better or worse at verbal reasoning. The headline for Hyde’s discovery could read “Men and Women pretty similar, research finds”.

Well, folks -- back to the drawing board. Unless you want to break down and consider the theology of the body. Safe premise, accurate paradigm, positive outcome: i. e. not necessarily a better breakdown of household chores, but real complementarity.