Wednesday
NPR has done it again. Ira Glass’s recent This American Life episode about a classic novel coming to someone’s rescue reminds me of Morning Edition’s account of Anna Karenina doing the same for an unjustly imprisoned Somali prisoner. (See my account here.) The radio program reported on how Little Women came to the aid of an American-raised girl who was kidnapped and held by Pakistani relatives.
The program’s theme was “The Weight of Words.” As is apparently sometimes the custom in Pakistan, Shamyla was given by a younger sister to her elder when the latter, living in America, appeared incapable of having children. When the adoptive parents went on to have two sons, however, Shamyla’s birth parents kidnapped her on a 1989 trip to Pakistan when she was 11. As the original arrangement had never been formalized, the adoptive parents could do nothing.
Imagine an early adolescent raised in suburban Maryland suddenly finding herself in an ultra-traditional Pakistani family, with all the expectations about a woman’s subordinate status and a woman’s reputation. Shamyla’s books and cassettes were confiscated, she was kept under virtual house arrest, and she was regularly lectured on what her wifely duties would entail, including her sexual duties. Her hair had to be covered, she couldn’t make eye contact with others, she was not allowed to speak English or Urdu, she had to eat after her brothers (one of whom sexually abused her), she was kept on small portions (so that she would stay slim), and she was occasionally beaten. She reports that, at different times, a squeegee, a cane, a golf club, and cleats were used.
At one point, her father determined that women shouldn’t write and burned her stories in front of her. Books that she smuggled into the house were invariably confiscated.
Through a friend, however, she obtained a copy of Little Women, which she remembered reading while still in America. To hide it, she broke it into eight sections so that it wouldn’t show under the mattress. Whenever the family left the house, she would grab whichever section of the book came to hand and read it. “It was the book of my life, the only book I had to escape,” she says. She had parts of it memorized.
She had multiple responses to Alcott’s novel. Sometimes she saw things that she fantasized about, such as Meg and Jo’s relationship (she didn’t have someone comparable to confide in). At other times, she saw scenes she could relate to. As her own parents would dress her up and show her off to other families in the hope that she would be able to marry up, she identified with the “Meg Goes to Vanity Fair” chapter:
She very soon discovered that there is a charm about fine clothes which attracts a certain class of people and secures their respect. Several young ladies, who had taken no notice of her before, were very affectionate all of a sudden. Several young gentlemen, who had only stared at her at the other party, now not only stared, but asked to be introduced, and said all manner of foolish but agreeable things to her, and several old ladies, who sat on the sofas, and criticized the rest of the party, inquired who she was with an air of interest. She heard Mrs. Moffat reply to one of them…
“Daisy March—father a colonel in the army—one of our first families, but reverses of fortune, you know; intimate friends of the Laurences; sweet creature, I assure you; my Ned is quite wild about her.”
As the interviewer notes, Little Women functioned as both a “how-to” book and a survival guide.
Not surprisingly, Shamyla identified with the ambitious, rule-breaking Jo, which helped her hold on to the identity her family was trying to squash. She mentions the scene where Meg lectures Jo against her unladylike behavior:
You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, Josephine. It didn’t matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady.”
“I’m not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I’ll wear it in two tails till I’m twenty,” cried Jo, pulling off her net, and shaking down a chestnut mane. “I hate to think I’ve got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster! It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy’s games and work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy. And it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!”
Then there’s the passage where Amy is chosen to go to France over Jo, which must have resonated with Shamyla since she saw the difference between who she felt she was and who her birth parents wanted her to be:
When Aunt spoke to me the other day, she regretted your blunt manners and too independent spirit, and here she writes, as if quoting something you had said—’I planned at first to ask Jo, but as ‘favors burden her’, and she ‘hates French’, I think I won’t venture to invite her. Amy is more docile, will make a good companion for Flo, and receive gratefully any help the trip may give her.”
Shamyla even had her own version of Jo writing stories in the attic, although her situation was more severe. When she was forbidden to write, she would go into the bathroom and write secretly before carefully washing the ink off the paper.
Because of her affinity with Jo, she was not fond of the book’s second half, where the March sisters “let go of their wild ways to become good wives.” She remembers thinking, “When Meg gets married, she loses her freedom. I said I don’t want that to be my story–because that’s what was expected of me.”
At a certain point, however, she began to surrender to her new identity. Her capitulation led her to identify with the inevitability of Beth’s death, especially her image of the retreating tide:
I want to [live], oh, so much! I try, but every day I lose a little, and feel more sure that I shall never gain it back. It’s like the tide, Jo, when it turns, it goes slowly, but it can’t be stopped.
Figuring that the only way she could escape her life was to get married, she began a correspondence with a friend’s brother, whom her friend said would treat her well. This only served to panic her parents, who would have been horrified by the relationship between Jo and Laurie. Instead, they settled on a 30-year-old man. Then, to make sure she acquired certain skills that would increase her bride price (like being able to swim and to drive), they sent her back to America to live with her adoptive parents. Shamyla had succeeded so well in convincing them she had turned that they were willing to take the chance.
As she flew away, however, Shamyla knew she would never return. Although she suffered severe culture shock and required much therapy, 30 years later she is now a therapist who specializes in trauma cases. Every year on her birthday, she reads the corresponding chapter number of Little Women to see if has any predictive value.
When I was teaching, I always hoped my students would find a book that would change their lives. Having access to the world’s library, however, doesn’t necessarily lead to intense experiences. Sometimes it just takes the right book under the right conditions.