Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Gottfried, Mrs Schischka, and me


This impressive-looking matron is my great-great-grandmother, Rosalie Schischka. She was one of a small group of immigrants from Bohemia in the Austrian Empire (now part of the Czech Republic) to the small village of Puhoi, north of Auckland, New Zealand. Along with the French settlement of Akaroa in the South Island, Puhoi is one of only a few distinctively European communities in New Zealand.

She appears here in a portrait painted of her by the world-famous-in-New Zealand nineteenth-century artist, Gottfried Lindauer. Like Mrs Schischka, Gottfried was a Bohemian immigrant to New Zealand, coming from the same area, Plzen (Pilsen). Both Gottfried and Rosalie, like their fellow travellers, were attracted by dreams of a better life, and, as it turned out, the tall tales of others who had already settled here. Like the similarly well-known paintings of Charles Frederick Goldie, Lindauer’s paintings are appreciated in the New Zealand art circles more for their historical and ethnographic value - though even that is apparently sketchy - than their artistic merit.

I only learned of the existence of this painting this past Christmas.  My father told me that his great grandmother had been painted by Lindauer - apparently news to him also - and that she had recently been sold for an undisclosed sum. The date of sale was 10 November 2011, my daughter’s first birthday. Intrigued, I Googled her as soon as I got home. Now in the Fletcher Trust Collection, Rosalie features on their website. Having never seen a photograph of her, I was curious to see what she looked like. Not to mention find out more about how a humble Bohemian immigrant was transformed into a semi-famous artwork.

With a click of a mouse button, there she was. My great-great-grandmother. Rosalie Schischka (née Schindlerova. Given that this is the feminine form of Schindler, are we, I wonder, any relation?). 

It’s hard to put into words what coming face to face with an unknown, and unseen, ancestress is like. It’s certainly not the same feeling as dispassionately appraising the work of a ‘journeyman painter’ who specialised in ‘romanticised images’, particularly of Mãori subjects, and portraits of people of substance (as Lindauer has been described).  It’s an uncanny sensation, of someone walking over your grave ... or out of theirs.  

Noting her age at the time of the painting - 73, and already widowed for 16 years - my first thought was the rather inconsequential ‘she must have had a good brand of hair-dye.’  Her tresses are still so improbably dark brown that they blend into the dim background. She wears mourning, adorned with two intricate pieces of gold jewellery, with dancing sparkles scattered around the top. Seed pearls, I guessed.

I searched her faces for traces of my own, but aside from the dark hair and eyes, I can’t see it. Putting my head to one side, and closing one eye, she maybe looks a bit like my dad, her great-grandson. Her face is fleshy and lined, but, for all that, she looks a youthful 73. While there are hints of impatience and not-suffering-fools around her mouth and eyes - perhaps there is a resemblance after all - there is also a slightly-raised left eyebrow. It’s as if she’s not at her ease, simultaneously thinking ‘hurry up and paint the picture already,’ and feeling tickled that she’s having her picture painted at all.

The blurb on the website - a little snidely, I think - says ‘this is a portrait of a woman of substance who went to some pains to ensure that her painted image reflected her status in the community.’ Hmmm, because it’s kind of crazy to get dressed up if someone’s going to paint your picture, right? Nor do the use of the tentative ‘probably’ and ‘probable’ suggest much knowledge of Rosalie’s life, nor of the community in which she lived. Most of the male immigrants from Bohemia were farm labourers, coal miners or town-labourers. Their wives cared for large families, while the single women were domestic servants and lace makers. And there are a couple of basic incorrect facts: the Schischkas arrived in Auckland in 1866, for example, not 1864, as stated. 

I don’t have a huge amount of knowledge of Rosalie’s life, or that of the Puhoi community’s either. But I can try and imagine the life of the living, breathing woman represented in the painting. Rosalie travelled with her husband and seven children to the other side of the world, leaving familiarity, family and friends, on the strength of a handful of rosy-tinted letters. These letters glossed over the difficulty of the terrain, the lack of any facilities beyond what the earliest settlers had built themselves, the isolation of the community, and its almost exclusive initial dependence on the local Ngãti Rongo people. 

Rosalie’s youngest child was two when she arrived in Auckland. I find a long car-trip with one toddler stressful enough. I can only imagine how difficult it must’ve been to cope with a large family, limited space and food, and the threat of typhus and typhoid fever, which killed four people on board. On arrival in New Zealand, her husband was held in debtor’s prison for three weeks as a result of various ‘misunderstandings’ over an early land purchase. I imagine Rosalie wondered what on earth she’d let herself in for ... and why on earth she’d let Lorenz talk her into this in the first place. I imagined her worst fears were confirmed when, on arrival in Puhoi, the first Bohemian immigrants there asked them, ‘what has brought you to this terrible place?’ Quick with his wits, her husband is said to have retorted, ‘Your letters.’  

Like most early European immigrants to New Zealand, the Bohemians benefitted from the policies of settlement and alienation of Mãori land pursued by the Crown. The Schischkas received 220 acres - more land than they could ever have dreamed of owning in Bohemia - and established themselves as farmers. I suspect Rosalie’s later ‘status in the community’ was due to the hard work she and her family put in to making their farm a going concern, and, with others, helping to feed and provision the new community. Not long after they arrived, Rosalie had an eighth child. In addition to feeding, clothing, and educating her existing children, she now had to cope with pregnancy, birth and infancy in a new and unfamiliar place. 

If she is not entitled to a little pride and self-satisfaction at the end of a hard life, then when would she be?

As you can tell, I had a somewhat defensive reaction to the way this picture is described on the Fletcher Trust Collection's website. My response is to the person in the picture as the subject of the painting, rather than its object. She is not just some old woman in a gloomy picture, indicative of the limitations of early New Zealand art, she is my great-great-grandmother. I found myself not only fascinated by her, but also feeling protective of her and wanting to shield her from the the distancing analysis of art critics. At moments, I even entertained thoughts of buying the picture myself - like Claire Huxtable in this episode of the Cosby Show - but the rumoured price-tag stretching into the thousands quickly extinguished those plans. Also, I don’t think it would match the carpet.

Why am I posting this ‘meditation on an artwork’ in a blog about feminism and motherhood?  Because the unusual reaction I had to this painting reminded me of the marginalised histories of motherhood that various feminist writers have tried to uncover. It reminded me of the history of settlement in this country, where my ancestors and me are located in it and how we have benefitted from it. And it reminded me that portraiture, even the sentimentalised Victorian kind, can be a powerful means of engaging with the past, especially with our foremothers, without whom none of us would be here. 


Monday, January 21, 2013

review: Cinderella Ate My Daughter




My gender-myth-busting holiday reading this year was the entertaining Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Line of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (2011) by US author Peggy Orenstein. Orenstein not only questions the narrow, gendered nature of products aimed at young girls, but also the commodification of their nascent sexuality.

Perfect Christmas reading.

With a rapidly growing and increasingly independent daughter to guide, Orenstein navigates her way through literally thousands of gendered products that peddle narrow and confining definitions of girlhood. They seem to offer the pursuit of physical perfection (for later pursuit of a perfect prince) as virtually the only route to female empowerment. Mass commercialisation has spread that message faster and younger than ever before (or so I’m told in the book’s dust-jacket). Knowing all this - or, at least, fearing it - what do you do when you’re confronted with the reality of young daughters who want princess dresses, glittery make-up, Bratz dolls and Hannah Montana CDs?  

This book is Peggy Orenstein’s attempt to answer that question.

Orenstein’s mode of address is intriguing in its mix of the confessional and investigative. She opens by confiding to the reader ‘why she wanted a boy’. As a noted public commentator on raising girls in a number of earlier works, she was suddenly stricken at the thought of having to put her money where her mouth was. Or, as she puts it, ‘What if, after all, I was not up to the challenge myself? What if I couldn’t raise the ideal daughter? With a boy, I figured, I would be off the hook (pp 1-2).’ In an earlier post, I blogged  about how I had had similar, if temporary, misgivings.

The more personal parts of this book are tales of her ‘trial-and-error’ approach and rueful admissions of what appears to be failure (e.g. finding out that her three-year- old daughter was fully conversant with the story of Snow White - when Orenstein herself had never told her the story - and was able to use it to manipulate other kids to find her ‘the right princes’ among the little boys present pp 11-12). As the review in the New York Times noted, she argues with herself, questions her assumptions, attempts a answer and then has second thoughts. It’s as if you’re right there in the consciousness of a another parent, not a detached ‘expert’ of the kind I’ve discussed in a previous post.

Orenstein traverses a number of topics in this book: 
  • the pinkification of a little girl’s world as represented in an annual industry toy fair displaying thousands of pink products (‘why has girlhood become so monochromatic?’ p 35); 
  • the craze for princess-everything (considered by a number of parents to be a ‘safe’ outlet that ‘fends off premature sexualisation’ p 24); 
  • the development of Disney Princesses from 2000 onwards (ever noticed how they never look at each other when they’re pictured together? Disney Princesses are emphatically not about friendship and female solidarity p 23); 
  • fairy tales (including the ways in which their narrative tropes recur - particularly, as the title makes clear, that of Cinderella, who is swept off her feet by a handsome prince. Twilight, anyone?)
  • child beauty pageants - admittedly well-trodden ground but Orenstein takes a different angle: reality programmes like Toddlers and Tiaras offer audiences a voyeuristic experience: ‘They also reassure parents of their own comparative superiority by smugly ignoring the harder questions: even if you agree that pageant moms are over the line in their sexualisation of little girls - way  over the line - where, exactly, is the line, and who draws it and how? (p 76)
  • and, bringing the book right up to date, electronic media including the gendered use of virtual worlds and social media (which can lead to increased bullying - and studies have shown that girls are more subject to online victimisation than boys)

Adding up all these things, Orenstein (and the reader) can’t help but conclude that conventional cultural scripts concerning femininity for girls are ambivalent at best, and an impediment to healthy development at worst.

But, having identified all that, what is a parent to do? Lock her daughter up like a latter-day Rapunzel? Be the parent who says ‘no’ to everything? Or makes her daughter into a figure of fun - or, worse, a target for bullies - amongst her peers?  Orenstein doesn’t offer firm or glib answers, but a narrative of her own attempts to answer those questions.

One example of Orenstein’s confusion is when she learns of a friend’s 14-year old son’s nonchalant response to a topless photo from one of his female classmates (and not even one he knew well). Orenstein was initially torn between amazement at the girl’s bravado and apparent body confidence but also a nagging suspicion that ‘something didn’t sit right’ and that this might be old-fashioned sexual objectification dressed up in the more modern guise of Facebook and (pseudo-)empowerment. An expert in human sexuality studies helped her articulate what was behind her mixed feelings:

Girls like the one I have described are not connected more deeply to their feelings, needs or desires. Instead, sexual entitlement itself has become objectified; like identity, like femininity too, it, too, has become a performance, something to ‘do’ rather than to ‘experience.’ Teasing and turning boys on might give girls a certain thrill, even a fleeting sense of power, but it will not help them understand their own pleasure ... [or] allow them to assert themselves in intimate (let along casual) relationships. (pp 170-171)

I enjoyed this book a lot, although it had some limits. It sometimes spoke a little too much of its own bubble - a privileged, Californian, liberal enclave - to be totally relatable. It also focussed almost exclusively on the gendered experience of girls, something Orenstein acknowledges at the outset. This is largely because she has a daughter and not a son, so the issues are more personally pressing for her in a way that those affecting boys aren’t. I’d be interested to read a similar account that focussed on boys. 

When it comes to talking about the construction of gender, however, focussing on girls is not an intrinsic weakness. The process of gendering girls and boys is linked. In her landmark 1990 book Gender Trouble, theorist Judith Butler describes gender not only as performative but also as productive: it forms part of a heterosexual matrix, which juxtaposes ‘approved’ heterosexuality with ‘subversive’ homosexuality. In the normative view of the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality, conventionally masculine males are meant to desire conventionally feminine females. Masculinity and femininity - which comprise the 'gender ' part of the matrix - are most heavily policed as the visible signifiers of sexuality. A feminine male therefore becomes suspect, as does a masculine female. This is called the shaming and policing of gender, and it affects boys and men as much as girls and women. Orenstein’s book might focus on the gendered world of little girls, but this also impacts little boys, not least in how they will perceive their female family members and friends, and, later, potential partners (well, if they’ve got the script ‘right’, that is ...)

On the plus side, I appreciated Orenstein’s wit and self-awareness: in ‘It’s All About the Cape,’ she lamented the dearth of female super-heroes who could provide alternatives to the mania for princesses. Looking back with nostalgia on her own Wonder Woman phase, Orenstein wanted her daughter to experience a similar sense of invincibility, freedom and power. A little later, however, she admits: ‘I did a little digging about Wonder Woman. It turns out her real name was Diana, daughter of Hera, queen of the Amazons. That makes her, of all things ... a princess.’ (p 158)

What I most appreciated about this book, however, is that Orenstein put herself out there: her ideals, her rude awakenings, her daughter’s (sometimes unwitting) challenges to her deeply-held beliefs. She doesn’t advocate total abstinence from a gendered, consumerist culture - as if that were possible - but rather taking an informed and aware approach (advertisers are not your friend). She closes by sharing the insight she has gained along the way:

Our role is not to keep the world at bay but to prepare our daughters so that they can thrive within it. That involves staying close but not crowding them, standing firm in one’s values, while remaining flexible ... I’m not saying we can and will do everything ‘right’, only that there is power - magic - in awareness. If we start with that, with wanting girls to see themselves from the inside out rather than the outside in, we will go a long way toward helping them find their own happily-ever-afters. (p 192)

Let's see how it works out ....

Monday, January 14, 2013

on conspiracy theories

Happy New Year 2013 - according to the Gregorian calendar at least! I’ve been struggling to think of a suitably innovative post that would reflect ‘new year’s resolutions’ or ‘turning over a new leaf’ in some way to kick off the blog for the year, but it’s just not happening. So, in a new twist on the new leaf cliché I’m going to leave it un-turned and jump right back into blogging as usual.

Which brings me to conspiracy theories.

‘Gosh, that was a big jump,’ you might think. Or, if you were less charitable (and also well-read), ‘that was a complete non sequitur.’

Why conspiracy theories?

Well ... it all started when I was eating my lunch at work last week. One of my colleagues is seven months’ pregnant, so, naturally, the subject turned to babies, bibs and ... giving birth. Luckily, my colleague had attended births before - something she described as the best form of contraception there is - and had some idea what to expect. In good spirits, she was pretty clear that she would have an epidural as there was no way she wanted to go through the kind of pain that her sister experienced (and she witnessed). She did, however, ask me the dreaded question ‘what was it like for you?’

Now, as I’ve blogged previously, my birth experience is not really something you’d want to share to rally and support an expectant mother. While a traumatic birth is certainly a possibility, what I experienced was far from routine. I have therefore struggled on a number of occasions to think of what the best response would be to someone about to give birth who asked me this very question.

It's tricky. You don’t want to to sugar-coat, but you don’t want to scare the bejesus out of someone either - especially, as in this case, at seven months pregnant, the die is pretty much cast. Not to mention the fact that women are different, their babies are different, and their experiences will be different. ‘Telling the truth’ about childbirth might be the catch-cry of any number of books on motherhood from Kate Figes to Eleanor Black, but it’s also a lot harder than it seems. One woman’s truth is another woman’s fiction.

I 'ummed' and 'aahed' a bit before saying something ineffectual like 'it's good you've been to births before - that should give you an idea of what to expect'. This searing insight was followed up with something like ‘mine didn’t go so well, so it’s probably not a good guide as to what might happen.’ 

The understatement of the century.

But what is the thing to say?  It’s harder than you might think. One friend did have a straightforward natural birth that went pretty much as she wanted it. If I’d had that experience, I’d gladly tell anyone who asked. Other times, I’ve more obviously dodged the subject and said little to nothing at all. The so-called conspiracy of silence is less ‘government cover-up’ and more ‘if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’

The double bind I found myself in at lunch the other day reminded me of the scene in The Deer Hunter (1978), where Michael, Steven and Nick encounter a Green Beret at the wedding reception. The three friends are just about to leave for Vietnam and they encounter the returned Green Beret drinking quietly - and heavily - by himself in the bar, as everyone else carouses in the main hall. In high spirits - both literally and metaphorically - Michael, Steven and Nick try to connect with the returned soldier. They tell him that they too are soon to 'go airborne' and ask ‘what’s it like over there?’ He tries to ignore them, preferring to deal with his demons privately. The more he does so, the more they want him to answer. Eventually, surrounded, he turns to them, raises his glass, and toasts them with a wry ‘f*** it.’

Caught between the desire to warn and be helpful, and the desire not to scare someone and potentially impact the positive frame of mind they’ll need to get through the experience, mothers have been accused of perpetuating a conspiracy of silence, particularly in relation to childbirth and the relentlessness of parenting. 

In 1997, Australian researcher Carol McVeigh published the results of a study of 79 first-time mothers, many of whom spoke about the conspiracy of silence, bewailing the fact that no-one told them what to expect, (as I myself did in an earlier post). Since McVeigh published her research, there has been an explosion of mummy-literature - books and blogs, academic research and novels - that not only exhort us to ‘tell the truth’ about motherhood, but also proceed to ‘tell the truth’ about the author’s own experiences. With all the truth-telling going on, it’s a wonder that the idea of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ still persists. 

Perhaps it's as my midwife said, that ‘women just don’t want to hear it.’ I know when I sat down to read Kate Figes’ Life After Birth while I was still pregnant, I quickly abandoned it after reading the back cover, as it just seemed too depressing. I also know that recommending her book to me was one way that a mother I knew had tried to break the conspiracy of silence for me. 

This blog is, I guess, my way. 

Next time, a bright-eyed mum-to-be asks me what my experience was like, I’ll know what to do. Instead of trying to capture the highs and the lows, the joys and the pain - while simultaneously trying not put them off all together - I’ll say, ‘It’s hard to sum up in just a few sentences. Here, read my blog instead. It’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Oh, and 70, 000 words and counting ...’

Or perhaps I should just offer the Green Beret’s toast instead?