Amputations...of the Woman

The Cinderella Complex
Colleen Dowling

Like most girls, I have always looked to my mother as a role model. I found her way of doing things and living life the norm. My mother was married at the age of thirty-nine to my father and had me at age forty. Many would find this strange and absurd, but to me, it is perfectly normal. While my mother has never encouraged me one way or another to marry young or old, I think of her every time I think about my personal life. The independence my mother has had is something that she holds with great pride. If I marry young, will I loose this? What does this mean? I do NOT want to live like my mother, but I want independence.

I think, perhaps due to my mother (a business woman), I feel pushed to find a job and be independent. Yet, there is something in me that wants to get married, too and be different from my mother. I believe that I can find an intermediary between the two.

(Side Note: When I was in high school, I did theatre. We put on a play by Studs Terkel called Working. There was a character, a housewife, who sang a song, which I find quite pertinent:

All I am is just a housewife
Nothing special, nothing great
What I do is kinda boring
If you'd rather, it can wait
All I am is someone's mother
All I am is someone's wife
All of which seems unimportant
All it is is
Just my life

All I am is just a housewife
Just a housewife, nothing great
What I do is "out of fashion"
What I feel is out of date
All I am is someone's mother
Right away I'm not too bright
What I do is unfulfulling
So the T.V. talk-shows tell me every night

Moving now to the artistic retelling of stories... does art help or counteract ideology?

I'm a little foggy on what I'm saying here, but I'll do my best..! Or at least I'll call this the "Elizabeth Interpretation." When I read Jeanette Winterson's "Weight," I am reminded of a riddle I heard when I was about in the seventh grade that has kind of always stuck with me. I goes like this: A man and his son were in a dreadful car accident in which the man was killed on scene. The son recieved severe brain trauma and damage, but he could have an extremely risky surgery to have a shot at life. The family opts to have the surgery for the boy, but then the surgeon walks in, looks down at the boy and says, "I cannot operate. This is my son." Who is the surgeon?
If you ask the common person, the response is most likely, the grandfather, God, the unlce, the step-father, the brother.... Rarely does someone say the true answer: the mother.
Winterson, I believe, is speaking of how certain art like fairy tales gives one the expectation of how something will play out. The reason the obvious answer to the riddle becomes almost funny is because it is not what is expected in a patriarchial society. Art can counteract the expectations, and I believe that is why it is called art.

Ashputtle: Or, the Mother's Ghost
Angela Carter

The child starts off burned. The lesson in this story is independence. We don't know if she actually learns the lesson or not. She gets the man...then what? It's not happily ever after...but what is it?