Aesthetic
Realism Seminar
How Can I Take Care
of Me and Be Fair to You: A Woman's Urgent
Question
by Nancy Huntting, Women
Are Various
Seminar, Oct. 5, 2006
Pretty early people come to feel
that fairness to others is not what takes care of us. After all, just
thinking
about others takes time away from ourselves. I wanted very much to
believe I
was a “fair” person, but what I went by actually had little to do with
fairness. What I felt is expressed by Ellen Reiss in an issue of The
Right
Of:
“The
way to take care of myself in this world is
not to bother about most of it—but to see 95 percent of reality as
uninteresting or something to fear. The way to take care of myself is
to…manage
and own selected items from a world I scorn…” [TRO#1213:1]
This is a description of contempt, and
the feeling of supremacy it brings is very attractive. I didn’t see it
was
against what really took care of me, which is described by Miss Reiss
in these
sentences:
“This
world not myself is very large, and I have to
do with all of it. I want to use the hours of my life to know and be
fair to
the world—it’s what I was born for.”
It’s made a huge,
happy difference in my life and in the life of every woman I’ve had the
privilege to teach in Aesthetic Realism consultations, to
learn that our
deepest desire is honestly to like the world, be fair to it.
1. Being Fair
to People & Our Own Expression—What’s the
Relation?
In her first consultation we asked
Shelley Wainwright, a young woman who had a sweetness and quiet
assurance in
her manner, a question Mr. Siegel asked in Aesthetic Realism lessons:
“What do
you have most against yourself?” And she told us:
Shelley
Wainwright: I guess, not being more understanding of people. Or
actually I
should say forgiving.
Consultants:
Well, do
you think that if you were more understanding, you might be more
forgiving?
SW: Yes, perhaps I
would.
Ms. Wainwright
told us she’d recently begun seriously dating a man she’d met through
work,
Hugh Keller. She was worried because in a previous relationship she had
found
it difficult to talk about what she felt. She said:
SW: I hope
to overcome my fear of expressing myself. I do have a problem there. I
haven’t
always understood a person’s reaction to what I would say.
We asked her something that surprised her: “Do you think that you see
other people as essentially more like you or more different
from you?”
SW: That’s
a difficult question, because I’ve
tried to see people as more like myself, but whether I do or not, I
don’t know.
Cons:
So, you
tend to feel they’re more different?
SW: Actually,
yes.
We told her that is what we once felt, and
nearly everyone we’d asked this question of. And we asked her:
Cons:
Do you also feel that other people are in some way
not as sensitive as you are?
SW: Yes, I have felt that.
This, we
said, would be a reason
for the difficulty she had described, of expressing herself:
Cons:
Because if
you’re going to express yourself, who are you going to express yourself
to?
It’s going to be to people. But if you don’t think they’re worthy of
talking
to, then you’re stuck. What do you think the answer might be?
SW: To see
people as worthy.
Cons.
To begin
with, to see who people really are. Do you think you feel more
important when you
keep yourself apart from people?
SW:
Yes,
yes I do.
Cons:
And are you
pretty fast to feel somebody didn’t really understand what you were
trying to
say?
SW: Yes, I am.
Cons: Do
you give people enough of a chance?
SW: No, I really
don’t.
Yet, when we
asked
how she saw men, a quick answer came: “I don’t like them!” Then she
qualified
it:
SW:
I don’t like the way they look at
me sometimes.
Cons: Do you think that you, like other women, can
feel that you haven’t ever been seen right by any man—and at the same
time you
don’t feel you’re kind in the depths of your heart to men?
SW: It’s true.
She told us that in grade school, if she
liked a boy, she had been
“determined” to conceal it from even her closest friends, and in her
teens she
had spent a lot of time in her room with the door closed—the most
painful time
of her life. At this point in the consultation we asked Ms. Wainwright
to read
Christina Rossetti’s poem “Who Shall Deliver Me?” which has
these lines:
All
others are outside
myself;
I lock my door and bar them out,
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I
lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall
wall
Self from myself, most loathed of
all?
So Christina Rossetti is
saying she thought she
would take care of herself by barring other people out—they were
tedious and
inferior—but then she found that she loathed herself. “Is that what you
felt?”
we asked.
2. We Can’t
Like Ourselves Unless We Hope
to Like People
Like Shelley Wainwright, I kept my
feelings to myself, thinking other people were not capable of knowing
them.
While at college and afterwards I told myself I was bad at “small
talk,” but
the unsureness I felt meeting people bothered me a lot. I hoped a man
would
solve this, because, I reasoned, if you found one person you liked, who
liked
you, you didn’t need all those millions of other tedious people.
However, after
two years with David Collier, the man of my dreams, I had thought—I got
very
worried. I often felt lethargic and I constantly depended on him to
make plans,
to enliven me. I was angry that he didn’t see it as his job in life to
fill all
my dull and lonely hours with excitement and adoration, and even when
we were
together we’d quarrel. I didn’t like me, so how could he?
In the first
Aesthetic Realism class I attended with him, Eli Siegel asked me: “What
did you
condemn yourself most for at various times?” I thought for a moment and
said,
“For wanting to do nothing.”
Eli Siegel: The
desire not to be bothered is in Keats’ “Ode to Indolence.” Did you also
get
very angry? People who have indolence can also tear up the place.
Was I surprised by this! But yes, I
did “tear up the place.” Though I was mostly quiet and shy in manner, I
often
would suddenly lash out at a person in fury and be very mean. I thought
of my
mother, at whom I had screamed “I don’t care what you think!” and
“You’re so
stupid!”; and of David, who got verbal abuse from me and, once, a book
thrown
at him.
I began to learn
that a wrong idea of taking care of myself had begun very early. As the
youngest and the only girl, I was praised a lot by my mother and I took
it as
my due. I felt she was a push-over, easily fooled, and I increasingly
found
fault with everything she did, and felt quite supreme in the
family. Since I wanted to maintain this
feeling, I
hoped to be superior to everyone else I met, and looked for their flaws
and
failings. This was why I hid my thoughts, why I couldn’t talk to
people—and
why, like Christina Rossetti, I loathed myself.
I told Mr. Siegel
in a class that I felt “a tremendous amount of guilt” about my
mother, and he
said:
ES When
one person looks at another, it’s so much easier to say, “This person
has given
me pain.” If your mother asked you, “Have you been fair to me, Nancy
dear,”
what would you say?
NH
No.
ES
If
you feel you don’t want to like the
person—which means you
don’t have
good will—it can make for guilt. Have you wanted to like your mother?
NH
Only
recently.
ES
I’m
trying to bring that about.
He did.
And after this class something new happened—I consciously wanted
to have a
good effect on my mother: I wanted to know her; I asked her questions,
I
listened with a respect I’d never had before. She was amazed and
grateful. The
guilt began to lift like a heavy weight taken off me. There came to be
real
friendship between us, and a central change in me towards other
people—I
wanted the pleasure I felt from having a purpose I could respect myself
for. I
was really beginning to take care of me!
3.
A 19th Century Novel Comments on Our Subject
“The most beautiful thing a person
can do,” Mr. Siegel wrote:
is
to be interested in
justice so much that his
care is a deep cause of his happiness. However idealistic it may sound,
a
person not caring enough for justice cannot be definitely happy…. [TRO 274 “Justice, Near and
Far]
Little Dorrit, by Charles
Dickens, illustrates these sentences. It is, essentially, the
story of the
Dorrit family—who go through a great deal being poor, then suddenly
inherit
wealth. Dickens is a critic of that in people which feels, in order to
take
care of themselves, they must be superior to others,
and that money
and position are essential to achieve this.
Amy Dorrit, 20
years old as the book begins, is the Little Dorrit of the title, and it
is her
character I’ll be commenting on chiefly. We find she was born in a
prison: Marshalsea
debtors prison, which actually existed in London,
tenement-like houses with
a spiked wall around them. Amy’s father has been imprisoned there for
23 years
due to some complex, failed “investment.” His three children grew
up there,
his wife having died eight years after Amy was born. Little Dorrit
arose
from Dickens’ beautiful anger with economic injustice, and passionate
desire to
be fair to people.
Amy has had a
quiet courage in dealing with this degrading situation. She has an
instinctive
desire to be kind to people and
useful:
that is how she takes care of herself. Dickens tells of how, though
living in a
prison, she tries to take care of her father’s needs, and also wants to
learn.
He writes:
No matter through
what
mistakes and discouragements…through
how much weariness and hopelessnss, and how many secret tears; she
drudged
on….At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts….She had been…to an
evening
school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to
day-school….Once, among
the…crowd of inmates there appeared a dancing-master…
‘If
you please, I was born here, sir.’
‘Oh!
You are the young lady, are you?…And what can
I do for you?’
‘Nothing
for me, sir, thank you…but if, while you stay
here, you could be so kind as to teach my sister cheap—‘
“My
child, I’ll teach her for nothing,’ said the
dancing-master….and he kept his word. [Little
Dorrit p. 80, 81]
Her inquiries—like this one and
when she asks a seamstress for instruction for
herself—have men and women in
the prison who are disheartened and humiliated come to have new life
and more
hope. Amy sees people as enabling her to be more, and to be useful;
she’s not
after superiority.
William Dorrit,
Amy’s father, a broken man, is seemingly unaware of what his
children are
doing, including Amy, who does needlework to make money. Called the
Father of
the Marshalsea, Dorrit greets newcomers, maintaining the
manner of someone of
the upper classes, a “gentleman.” He habitually asks people
for “testimonials,”
meaning money. Amy is troubled by this, and says to Arthur Clennam, the
man she
comes to love:
'I hope you will not
misunderstand my father….He has been there so long! I never saw him
outside,
but I can understand that he must have grown different…'
'My thoughts will
never be unjust or harsh
towards him, believe me.'
‘….He
only
requires to be understood. I only ask for him that his life may be
fairly remembered.’
Amy has a good hope for her father
and for people, which I did not have as I capitalized on what I saw as
my
mother’s and other people’s failings in order to feel superior. Amy is
trying
to be fair to her father—this is the beginning of good will, which Mr.
Siegel
describe as:
a oneness of the
utmost
criticism
and the utmost affection….Good will is an aid to scientific
perception,
because it works against…disproportionate love of self…
[TRO 71 & 121]
4.
Superiority, Anger, & Feeling Bad
Dickens shows in contrast that the
hope to be superior makes a person mean and not able to take care of
herself.
There is Amy’s bad-tempered older
sister, Fanny, who knows Amy is kind and has reason to be thankful to
her. But Fanny doesn’t like owing anything
to her
sister. She lashes out at Amy, is sharp-tongued with her, then feels
horrible,
and crumples on a chair, saying “I wish I were dead. I wish I were
dead.” Then, repentant, Fanny gets sweeter
for
awhile, and is soon mean again.
A young man of a
very rich family, Mr. Sparkler, seeing Fanny at the music-hall where
she
dances, is smitten and pursues her. She pronounces him an “idiot,” and
is
outraged by his mother’s trying to buy her off as unsuitable. Later,
the
Dorrits inherit wealth and Fanny finds herself in the same social
milieu with
Mr. Sparkler, and is enjoying his gazes. Amy asks in alarm:
‘Do you mean to
encourage Mr. Sparkler, Fanny?’
‘Encourage
him, my dear?’ said her
sister, smiling contemptuously, ‘No, I don’t mean to encourage him. But
I’ll
make a slave of him….I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I
shall
make him subject to me. And if I don’t make his mother subject to me,
too, it
shall not be my fault.’
‘Do you
think—dear Fanny—that you can
quite see the end of that course?’
Fanny,
Dickens writes, responds with “supreme indifference.”
I believe Fanny and Amy Dorrit represent two possibilities in every
woman. Perhaps we think we aren’t like Fanny, but what woman hasn’t
enjoyed the
glances of a man, without a thought of being fair to him, thinking
even, he’s a
fool?
“If you can’t feel you’re just,” Mr. Siegel said once in an Aesthetic
Realism class, “you have to feel bad. If this were known and really
seen, how
much torture and agony would not have been.” And he asked:
Can we be just to
ourselves
without being just to
what is not ourselves?... If one does something and doesn’t think well
of
oneself
for doing it, the price paid for the satisfaction is rather high.
Fanny does come to feel
very bad: her sharp tongue is incessantly rebuking;
she’s irritable, bored,
intensely displeased by everything, including herself.
What occurs between Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam
is moving and complex. Near the end of the novel Arthur becomes aware
that he
loves Amy very much. Dickens writes of his realizing how much she’s
“influenced
his better resolutions.” He feels she stands for his best self,
and says:
‘If I, a man, with a
man’s
advantages and means and energies, had
slighted the whisper in my heart…what youthful figure with tender
feet going
almost bare on the damp ground…would have stood before me to put me to
shame?
Little Dorrit’s.’
5. Meeting
Our Own Hopes
Shelley
Wainwright gave her
parents a new chance: her father in particular, with whom she’d been
most
angry. She wrote monologues of both
her parents at the age of 18, before she was born—and she tried to get
within
their thoughts, to see their hopes and fears, what had affected them
that she’d
never thought about before.
She also studied and
commented on Mr. Siegel’s
essay “Care for Self” in which he wrote:
A
girl gets revenge on a man by hoping zealously for untinged
indifference. We get revenge on existence by hoping for uninterfered
with,
unmottled nothingness.
What
she saw through this
was crucial to her whole life, and she wrote:
I got a big triumph
in
keeping people guessing what I really felt. It
would scare me…how silent I could be in a man’s company as a way of
punishing…him….It would also scare me that when I wanted very much to
express
myself I felt I couldn’t….I see the relation between these two
directions in me….this
is changing!…Mr. Siegel says that the self can never be separate….
She wrote about one thing
each day she respected a co-worker for; and a monologue of the man she
cared
for, Hugh Keller. She is coming to see that
taking care of “me” and being fair to “you” are deeply the same. I end
with
part of what she wrote in a letter expressing the changes in her life:
Before
I met Aesthetic Realism….I used the anger I
felt… to shut the world out….I’ve seen [my parents] more deeply and….I
feel
kinder trying to see how my sister sees herself. I feel proud when I
try to be
just to her….All relationships would be sane if people could study
what we are
learning!...It is thrilling to me that love can be
education.
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