Sunday Stillpoint: Madwomen in the Attic

At fifty, the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won't be imprisoned any more.
--Erica Jong


Or, as my friend Pam once joked, "It took me forty years to learn to be a bitch, and I LIKE it!"

If you're a guy reading this, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but women--Southern women in particular, and many women of a "certain age"--know exactly what I mean. Furthermore, they're not the least bit bothered about the fact that I used the "b" word in a devotional or inspirational piece. They know that simply no other word will do.

From our earliest days, we Southern women are taught to be the three P's: pretty, polite, and pleasing.

Particularly around men, we are to be somehow…less…than we are, because if we are too competitive or too smart or too independent or too willful, well, supposedly, the tender little male ego can't handle it and they'll run off in search of some other girl that they can control.

We're supposed to play games with them, not let them know how we really feel or what we really think, so that they won't feel threatened, and we're not supposed to make more money than they do or they'll feel diminished.

"I found myself saying to myself…I can't live like I want to…I can't go where I want to. I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to…that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself."
--Georgia O'Keefe, 1923

Believe it or not--I mean REALLY, ask my mom--I was actually enrolled, at the age of twelve, in charm school.

That's right. We had to walk with books on our heads in order to learn good posture, and we had to sit with our ankles crossed demurely (never cross your legs, ladies; it's vulgar), and our hands folded in our laps (a lady's movements are refined and conservative; never wave your hands around, it's rude). We were taught to speak quietly and not laugh too loudly and never chew gum and to gaze adoringly at our future husbands.

And if you think charm school is dead, watch just about any First Lady in history while her husband is giving a speech.

Yeah, I flunked out.

Don't remember exactly why. Could have had something to do with the fact that I'd cross my legs, use my hands animatedly, crack gum, chatter like a machine gun with my girlfriends and guffaw at, well, dirty jokes.

My mother tried, God bless her.

I didn't get the whole game-playing thing. Why make myself look stupid just so some guy could look smart? How about choosing to be with a guy who WAS smart and who had great give-and-take in conversation and debate? I didn't see any point in pretending to be something I wasn't.

If he couldn't handle me, hey, that was his problem.

I liked a quote I found once in a book. Tore it out and stuck it in the pages of my journal, which has long since been lost, but it said, "I like a strong man I can test my strength against."

But still, I was a product of my upbringing, conditioning, and generation just like everybody else. I would ask politely when I should have gotten in somebody's face, endure with a smile when I should have turned my back and walked away, laughed at racist and sexist jokes because I didn't want to be different from everybody else in the room even while my soul shrank in outrage. I would put up with all kinds of crap from people because I didn't want to hurt their feelings or make them mad at me. Even the guy I ALMOST married--I didn't even love him; just thought I SHOULD love him because, hey, everybody else thought he was great, my parents liked him and I wanted to please.

Thank God I came to my senses.

I have not withdrawn into despair,
I did not go mad in gathering honey,
I did not go mad,
I did not go mad,
I did not go mad.
--Hoda al-Namai, early Lebanese poet

I'm not sure when the change began to take place, but I remember I was teaching high school English, and they went around and took orders for name plates to put over the doors and at our desks. Every single other married woman in the school put, "Mrs. Joe Blow So-and-So," and I thought, WHAT? What does my HUSBAND have to do with my JOB?

I had them put my actual name on the plate, and everybody thought I was so revolutionary. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Then, when my first child was born? I'd noticed that all the birth announcements in the newspaper said, "Mr. and Mrs. Joe Blow So-and-So," and I thought, WHAT? The woman carries the baby for nine months and gives birth in agonizing labor and she doesn't even EXIST in the paper as anything but a reflection of HIM?

I remember groggily insisting, as my husband went out the door after my son was born, to MAKE SURE the newspaper printed MY name along with his, and he did, Kent and Deanie Mills, and everybody commented on it like it was so women's lib.

Good lord.

I'd like to take all the credit for my awakening, but I have to give proper creds to my husband, Kent. I was very smart when I picked that man almost 32 years ago. He is the kind of man who is very secure in his manhood, easy in his masculinity, and absolutely not threatened by a strong woman. In fact, from the beginning, he WANTED a strong woman he could RESPECT.

He started teaching me how to think like a man, and how to relate in the business world the way men related to other men. He did things like, sent me to buy a car all by myself and put it in my own name--told me the kinds of things men say to women in car lots and how to brush past that and deal like a man. When I began to be published, he taught me that editors were not my FRIENDS, necessarily. They were BUSINESS COLLEAGUES and I should treat them that way so that I would not be taken advantage of.

He taught me how to stand up for myself with strangers and other people the way I'd always stood up to him. Although he's 6'4" tall (a foot taller than me) and a commanding presence (from his days in the Corps at A&M and later, the Army), he never bullied me or tried to cow me down, not even in an argument, and when I had to get in his face and he was wrong, he always apologized.

He gave me courage.

Gradually, I took over for myself, and I found that, like my friend Pam had said, I liked it. I learned to use a tone of voice that commands respect from strangers, especially men, how to give a firm handshake and look a man or woman in the eye and be straight up with them. How not to be intimidated by people richer or more successful or more abrasive. How not to let the macho-men of the world steamroller over me because that's what they're used to getting away with at home--and how to do it in such a way that they could respect it and not feel threatened by it.

Later, when I wrote thrillers and had to deal with cops and federal agents and law enforcement officers all over the country, most of whom were either men or very tough women, I had to earn their respect in order to get their cooperation and I could never have done that by sitting demurely with my hands folded in my lap.

This is what "women's liberation" IS. It's liberating, absolutely freeing, not to stuff your feelings down, bite your tongue, smile and please and endure being treated like a child by the adult world. It's tough, when it does not come naturally to you. There have been times I've had to be very forceful in business dealings with tough New York publishers, for instance--not put up with any bull--and afterwards, I would literally tremble from head to toe.

But I never once let them see.

It takes a long time for a woman to quit making excuses in order not to hurt somebody's feelings or fear making somebody mad at her.

To say NO from time to time. Period.

Usually, a pleaser-type woman is somewhere around 40 when she first gets the knack of it--the not-pleasing…when she learns to run the risk of making somebody mad or hurting somebody's feelings.

When, finally, she just does not give a damn anymore.

She stops choosing men that hurt her and stops letting herself be taken advantage of by everybody she meets. Stops hanging out with girlfriends she really doesn't like. Stops taking on too many projects, to the point of exhaustion or illness, because she worries that people are depending upon her. Stops running around waiting on her children hand and foot like they are royalty. Stops doing things with her husband that she has always secretly hated and either makes him go alone or makes sure that she gets to do something she really enjoys once in a while.

Even if she has to do it--horrors!--alone.

By the time she is fifty, hey, what you see is what you get, baby! Take it or leave it. You wanna leave it? Don't let the door hit your you-know-what on the way out.

A libertine never gives up a room with a view and can't remember the last time she was patted on the back and thanked for "being a doll." Instead, she's accused of being a "gutsy broad." A libertine is invited everywhere but rarely goes out…freethinkers, women who live by their own conventions, their own sense of what was right and wrong for THEM, what they could live with and what they couldn't live without…living by their own lights and not by the opinions of others.
--Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her book, SOMETHING MORE: Excavating Your Authentic Self

Not every woman has this crucial coming-of-age, of course. Some women are just too afraid, or they've been too cowed down by the overbearing people in their lives--or they've got a touch of the martyr about them and like being the object of girlfriends' pity.

Or they weren't blessed with a husband who not only welcomes the madwoman in the attic, but enjoys the hell out of her because he never knows what to expect, but it will always be interesting and sexy and a little bit exciting.

When my daughter, Jessica, was growing up, I was determined to teach her these things from the get-go, so she wouldn't waste the first half of her life learning them the hard way.

Once, when she was about six and we were visiting my husband's folks, his brother Richard, who is now a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army Special Forces and his wife Charlotte were also visiting, with their twin boys who were nine or ten then. The boys liked to gang up with her older brother, Dustin, and pick on her mercilessly the way big brothers and older cousins do.

I came back to the house from shopping, and Charlotte met me at the door. With just a touch of huffy, she said, "Jessica made Travis and Troy cry."

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. I mean, REALLY.

I said, "Well, I've tried to teach her to stand up for herself."

With a lift of her eyebrows, she replied, "I think you overdid it."

Travis and Troy are both Army captains now--fine young men, the both of them--but they could make her cry pretty quick if they wanted to ha ha. But the point is that she stood up for herself even then, she gave as good as she got, she showed pluck and guts and it stood her in very good stead 20 years later when she had to make her way through the rat's-maze that is New York City theatre, all alone and very far from home.

If she'd been a pleaser, she'd've been crushed like a bug. In the end, it was tuberculosis that got the best of her, not the city, but she's not through yet, not by a long shot.

If you think so, tell it to her face. Go ahead. I DARE you.

It's my sincere hope that all us madwomen can pass our particular brand of madness down to our daughters, and raise our sons to appreciate and respect one when he sees one and to always look forward to the madcap dance with her.

It's soooo much more useful than walking around with a book on your head.

"I've got a different system
And a way of my own.
When my man starts kicking
I let him find another home.
I want to tell you something
I wouldn't tell you no lie.
Wild women are the only kind that really get by."
--quoted by Jerri Nielsen, M.D. in her book: ICEBOUND, A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole.