Harman also begins weaving in what will prove to be an important thread in her portrait of Charlotte, which has to do with the novelist’s ingrained sense of herself as resolutely unattractive: “She looks in the mirror and sees, with ruthless clarity, a catalogue of defects; a huge brow, sallow complexion, prominent nose and a mouth that twists up slightly to the right, hiding missing and decayed teeth.” Despite living in less harshly looksist times than our own, and despite being the recipient of two marriage proposals before finally accepting the hand of the enigmatic curate Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte was deeply bothered by her ostensible lack of feminine charms—enough to have caused her publisher, George Smith, to observe that she had “an excessive anxiety about her personal appearance. But I believe that she would have given all her genius and her fame to have been beautiful. Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she, or more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was not pretty.”
.. and her journal fragments of these years” suggest that Charlotte may have used opium (which Branwell became addicted to) to reach her “visions,” despite her denial to Gaskell of ever having touched the drug.
.. The main thrust of Harman’s biography endeavors to show how this most self-doubting yet obdurate of young women turned her emotional vulnerability and anxieties about her place in society as a fiercely passionate but plain Jane into a new kind of literature, one that forged a candid and poignant female voice of unaccountable power, telling of childhood loneliness and adult longing. Charlotte’s thwarted relationship with Heger, which Harman attributes more to a cultural misunderstanding than to deliberate cruelty, would eventually lead to the triumph of Villette, featuring “a disturbing, hypersensitive alter ego, a ticking bomb of emotions called Lucy Snowe.”
Men: Thank God We’re Not Women!
It is in chapter 1 of Tractate Kiddushin that we find the classic formulation of men’s and women’s responsibilities when it comes to mitzvot. As the mishna on Kiddushin 29a says, “With regard to all positive, time-bound mitzvot, men are obligated and women are exempt.” That is to say, anytime God commands us to perform a specific action at a specific time, only men are required to do it. If a mitzvah doesn’t have a time restriction, however, or if it is a negative commandment or prohibition, then men and women are equally obligated. This explains why, as we saw last week, both men and women must honor their parents—this a positive, non-time-bound commandment. Likewise, prohibitions on Shabbat labor or theft are binding on both sexes. But since a Jew only sleeps in a sukkah at the designated time during Sukkot, and only wears tefillin during the day, women do not have to perform these mitzvot.
.. It is in the course of this discussion that we come to the matter of women’s beards. The Bible commands that Jews are not permitted to “destroy the corners of your beard.” Exactly what this means is the subject of dispute in the Talmud—the consensus is that shaving is forbidden, but tweezing and trimming with a scissors is permitted. But there is no doubt that it is a prohibition and therefore should apply to men and women equally. Yet the Gemara says that women are not included in this prohibition. Why not?
The first answer the Gemara gives is the obvious one: “If you wish, propose a logical reason, as ordinarily women do not have a beard.” That is, since women can’t grow beards, the rule doesn’t apply to them at all. But the rabbis go on to point out that, in fact, sometimes women do grow facial hair; there is even a baraita stating that “the beard of a woman … is considered like a beard for all matters.” Shouldn’t it follow that, if a woman grows facial hair, she must not destroy it? Once again, it takes some interpretive dexterity to show why women are not included in this prohibition, this time focusing on the singular Hebrew verb in the commandment. Whenever such arguments are employed, I can’t help feeling that the rabbis are arguing ex post facto—that is, they are finding textual reasons to defend what they already believe in as tradition, or simply as common sense.
Caitlyn Jenner and Our Cognitive Dissonance
While biology shows us gender can be fluid, our brains struggle to see it that way.
The Self-Hating Book Critic
The death of the newspaper review meant the end of the literary authority who would declare that books by straight, white men are always the best of books. That books by the conglomerate publishing houses are the best of books. That literary culture exists only in New York City.
.. And that is what all those people on the picket line fought to save: a sexist, racist, elitist system.
.. I want to tell them: this world is not for you, you are better without it. Outside the gates, not in. This world was in fact, in part, designed specifically to keep you out. It does not want you. It will not nourish you.
.. Nobody really wants to be James Joyce, though. When it comes down to it.
.. Totally inaccessible and publishing poison, forced to self-publish with the help of two (inadequately celebrated) lesbians, thought to be a madman, and still cursed to this day. No one really wants to be James Joyce, living in borderline poverty with an insane daughter and a layabout son, quietly changing the world but very rarely, if at all, acknowledged for it. So completely out on the frontier his books were confiscated and destroyed by multiple governments.
But everyone wants to think they’re James Joyce, in their cozy teaching jobs, in mortgaged homes, writing about the same things that everyone else is writing about.
.. Anxiety’s primary function is to ready the body for action and for change. It is a complicated uprooting process, the gathering together of energy and focus so that when you decide what to do, you are able to do it.
.. Give a person absolute freedom and probably what they will do is just copy the person closest to them. The anxiety of making a decision under absolute freedom is too much to bear.
.. It’s why the Internet culture is just a copy of newspaper culture, but with a few fucks and shits thrown in.
.. Don’t think there weren’t nights where I woke up with the thought “My entire purpose in life is to help people make decisions about which books to buy; I am simply part of someone’s marketing strategy,” chilling me to the bone.