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Friday
This is the latest post in my on-going series on “My Life in Literature,” which appears every Friday. Because an informal autobiography written by my great grandmother Eliza Scott means so much to me—she discusses the novels that were important to her as she grew up in Victorian England—I figured I should do something similar for family members who come after me. Of course, the subject is also consistent with the mission of this blog, which is to explore the many ways that literature enhances and sometimes changes our lives.
Having focused last Friday on my graduate school experience, I look today at the rest of our life during that time. Julia had difficulty finding a public-school post when we moved to Atlanta so had to settle first for a small private school and then, when that went under, a school dedicated to individual tutorials. Not until the fourth year did she land the kind of position she wanted, which was teaching English at Decatur’s Renfroe Middle School.
Atlanta during the late 1970s was an exciting place for a young married couple. Although we didn’t have a lot of money, there was a superb movie theater ten minutes away—the Ansley Mall Film Forum—which every week would show one of the exciting new foreign films. Because we trusted the theater, we didn’t even both to check what was on offer and so saw films without knowing what to expect, which is the best way to see a movie. Thus we were introduced to new films from Italy, Japan, France, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and especially Germany (Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder).
For a special treat, once a month we would dress up (Julia in a short dress and knee-high boots, I in a suit and tie) and go out for dinner. On Sunday mornings we played softball at Chandler Park.
We also started a supper club with our best friends, Norman Finkelstein and Kathy Wexelman, where we would gather every Sunday and talk about literature, movies, art, the state of the world, and other such topics. Later others would join us, including my law student cousin Larry Bates, childhood friend Cathy Degen Andreen, and a colleague and his wife from Julia’s school.
Life wasn’t always smooth sailing. In some ways, Julia wanted me to be her father and I wanted her to be my mother, and we were frustrated that neither of us could fulfill those roles: I couldn’t fix things like a farmer and she wasn’t prepared to be a Sewanee society hostess. My excessive rationality, including my apparent failure to take her religious beliefs seriously, irked her, and she also felt out of place at graduate school parties. To prove she belonged, she once decided to read the entire opus of 19th century novelist Booth Tarkenton (his works include Penrod and The Magnificent Ambersons). Once, when I failed to include her in a grad student social event, I returned home to find angry poems plastered all over the apartment. (They were numbered so that I would read them in the right order, Julia herself having gone to bed by that time.)
For my part, I would sometimes bridle at how forceful she could be, even though that was one of the qualities that had drawn me to her. In short, we experienced the kinds of tensions that are typical of two virtual strangers learning how to share an apartment, a bed, a bank account, and everything else that comes with a marriage.
These tensions, however, were more than offset by the new world that was opening up. Julia’s exuberance and her enjoyment of hugs and massages were an exciting change from my emotionally buttoned-down upbringing. For her part, she relished entering a world where reading and intellectual discussion were prized above almost anything else. On her farm, reading had meant that you weren’t working.
We had gotten married at the height of the feminist movement, which both of us embraced. Indeed, Julia’s Moravian minister–who had given us questionnaires to fill out prior to the wedding—told us he’d never met a couple with a more egalitarian view of marriage. Although, as a man, I sometimes felt guilty for my sense of entitlement, I also felt freed by a number of feminism’s central tenants, especially its critique of hypermasculinity. Julia, meanwhile, appreciated that I was fully committed to her career aspirations. So although Julia occasionally regarded me as a wimpy and waffling and although I occasionally saw her as stubborn and abrasive, we were committed to changing traditional marriage. We shared household chores equally and made mutual respect our highest priority.
In Care of the Soul, psychotherapist Thomas Moore says that we fall in love with attributes in the other person that we wish to develop in ourselves. I wanted more of Julia’s enthusiasm and physicality and she wanted more of my intellectual passion. We developed accordingly.
Once one is in a committed relationship, however, Moore says we face the discomfort of growing into this new self and may find ourselves retreating back to what is familiar. After all, true growth is difficult, which is why some marriages fall apart. Indeed, there were times when I would retreat into my mind and when Julia would lash out at the academic life.
In a good marriage, however, each partner accepts the challenges and a new entity emerges. I think this is why Julia and I are still married, and still growing, after 52 years.
To illustrate Moore’s insights with a literary example, the awkward and arrogant Fitzwilliam Darcy falls in love with the witty and effervescent Elizabeth Bennett. Meanwhile she, who like her father sometimes uses her satiric view of the world as a protective shield, is impressed by Darcy’s serious commitment to community, exemplified by his mature stewardship of his estate. For them to grow into the potential their marriage represents, he will have to learn how “to laugh at himself” while she will need to become more serious (“mistress of Pemberley”). When tensions arise, he will be tempted to retreat into his pride and she into her prejudice, which are their default settings. The hard work of marriage requires resisting these impulses.
Despite Tolstoy’s famous dictum in Anna Karenina that all happy families are alike while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, my experience from my happy relationship with Julia is that each marriage contains such a wide variety of growth opportunities that all marriages are unique. For that matter, I find the happy marriage between Levin and Kitty more interesting than Anna’s unhappy marriage and her failed love affair. A critical moment in Levin’s marriage is when, not knowing how to respond to his dying brother, he discovers that Kitty is up to the occasion, possessing a strength and sensitivity he never imagined. Marriage to Julia has led to similar discoveries. Whereas I, like Levin, spend a lot of time in my head, Julia has periodically astounded me with unanticipated depth.
In some ways, in my marriage I have felt like Eza Pound’s river merchant’s wife. Although we were confused by our relationship at 22 when we said our vows, I have seen us grow into something permanent and solid. As the speaker in Pound’s poem puts it,
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
The “look out” here can be seen as a way out, a search for other possibilities, or perhaps a longing look back to childhood. Even when our marriage hit a rough spot, which it did when we reached our forties, I never seriously climbed that look out. Our marriage, I figured, was forever and forever and forever.
I will mention one final literary experience that Julia and I shared during these years. In 1978, after I passed my Ph.D. orals, we celebrated by taking a trip to Paris, London, and Scotland. While in London we saw two plays, and though Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour didn’t do much for me, a National Theater production of William Wycherley’s Country Wife is one of my most memorable theater experiences.
As someone specializing in Restoration and 18th Century British literature, this bawdy Restoration comedy was right up my alley. Better yet, it starred Albert Finney of Tom Jones fame. Finney played the role of Horner, a rake who gets around the defenses of jealous husbands by pretending that venereal disease has rendered him impotent. It’s a crazy premise but Wycherley’s wit is dazzling, albeit cynical in the extreme.
Because the theater wasn’t full, Julia and I were able to upgrade our student tickets for the front row, which led to something special. To appreciate what happened, it helps to know that maids in Restoration comedy are assumed to be sexually loose. So when Lucy the maid, who is orchestrating the action, said, “By my honor,” Julia guffawed.
The actress heard her and, without missing a beat, strode over to where we were sitting. Looking straight down as Julia, she repeated slowly and distinctly, as if affronted, “BY MY HONOR!” The audience erupted.
The night was memorable for another reason. On our way to the theatre, Julia was feeling a little off and we had to stop to get her some water. Later we realized that she was pregnant. We had disposed of her diaphragm in a Paris hotel, figuring it was the time to start trying, and now we had the result: our eldest child was conceived in the City of Light. More on Justin’s emergence into the world next week.
Additional note: Being socially clumsy at 20 when it came to women, my first interaction with Julia was as gauche as Darcy’s first interaction with Elizabeth. I was sick in the top bunk and listening to my roommate try to persuade Julia to join a group in a co-ed nude sauna. As she resisted, I leaned over and said, “You’re not as dumb as some people think you are.” For some reason, I thought I was being funny.
Darcy first response to Elizabeth, of course, is “She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”
Since Pride and Prejudice, it has become common in romance novels for the hero to insult the heroine early in their relationship. Perhaps deep down, like Darcy, I sensed that this woman would turn my life upside down and I was trying to push her away. Julia was bemused by my comment, but a few months later we were going steady.
