Comments on: Anne Brent, Helpmate — part 2

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:50:10 +0000

Yeah, I should edit my earlier “whether the routine roles of mother and wife just naturally include these elements” to continue with “in the apparent expectations of that generation.”

By: SilverRain

SilverRain — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:20:38 +0000

And I'll say, too, that I don't think that good roles of wife and mother have to include these elements, but that many people assume they must, and label anything else as selfish.

By: SilverRain

SilverRain — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:18:51 +0000

I’m a big advocate of fiction and even fantasy. I think it allows us to express our subconscious where we wouldn’t feel safe to do so otherwise, and in some ways can be even more real than nonfiction (which always has bias.)

I think you’re right, Ardis. I doubt very much that those elements are intended to be injected into the story. Which is why I find them interesting. It seems to me to shine a window on a dissatisfaction that might have been so ubiquitous that it was considered normal.

But it could as easily be my own spin on otherwise innocuous writing.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:25:14 +0000

Thank you, Moniker, and all others who are reading these stories, whether or not you have commented.

By: Moniker Challenged

Moniker Challenged — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:59:42 +0000

I once met a fellow who refused to sully his magnificent brain with fiction because nothing could be learned from it. However, when I read Grimm’s Fairy Tales for the first time it struck me that the hopes and fears and daily habits of my ancestors were all wrapped up with the fantastical bits. I definitely think that fiction can give us a hint about the sorts of things nonfiction forgot to take note of. Thanks, Ardis.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:59:09 +0000

: )

One of the things I hope to do eventually — after I’ve posted lots and lots of raw material to draw from and link to — is to write some posts about the fiction from church magazines and what it can tell us about Mormons of the past. I’m hoping for participation from readers who like to look at literature that way.

By: Carol

Carol — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:49:40 +0000

I am now assigning my literature class to read this series and all the comments. This is wonderful!

If I only taught psychology or family therapy . . .

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:26:20 +0000

Thanks, SR. Although Elsie Chamberlain Carroll was one of the better (and most regular) writers of Relief Society Magazine fiction, I don’t suppose either she or the editorial staff were sophisticated enough to deliberately inject this into the story. So to the extent that your perceptions hold true throughout the serial, I wonder whether they reflect something from the author herself, or whether the routine roles of mother and wife just naturally include these elements. After all, the binds Anne’s family members find themselves in seem realistic, and her concern for them would be natural, as well as her sense of responsibility to help “fix” the problems. We might not suggest exactly the same method Anne suggests to Phyllis, but her diagnosis of the problem seems realistic, and any of us might try to suggest something Phyllis could do (unless we were ideologically committed to a complete hands-off policy of mother-in-lawhood).

Maybe it seems strange to wonder about the interior lives of fictional characters this way — at least strange for a historian who supposedly should focus more on actual historical happenings — but as I type these stories I keep considering what they would have meant to LDS women of the day, what questions and problems and ways of facing life were reflected in these stories that made them as popular as they evidently were. I really appreciate your insight in this particular case, SR.

By: SilverRain

SilverRain — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:47:27 +0000

I think perhaps I am hypersensitive to it.

So far, I would say that her husband’s absence forebodes that perhaps it is she, and not (or as well as) her daughter-in-law who should fear infidelity, and she probably already does. Particularly because of the way she reacted to Phyllis’ fears: by bundling her off to “improve herself”. I suspect she reads a lot of her own subconscious perception of her own marital relationship into her son’s marriage. Everything she says about Phyllis, I suspect she feels about herself.

Her selflessness in not waking her husband is salted with her negative self-talk as early as the very first paragraph. She then follows this self-directed negativity immediately with a long worry about her 16-year-old and a criticism of her husband’s parenting. Then, almost as if to reprimand herself for even thinking bad things about her husband, she continues with more negative language regarding herself. She even turns her husband’s criticism onto herself by saying “she never had been able to acquire” the quality she had just been criticizing. She is constantly, in a myriad tiny ways, picking apart other people and then directing the shame and guilt towards herself.

That is an ugly cycle I recognize all too well.

And that’s just in the first half of the first installment. I could go on, but I don’t want to make TOO long of a comment!

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:37:09 +0000

It would be interesting if you could pin down what gives you that sense, SilverRain, or keep track of the points where you feel that as the story unfolds. (I don’t want to spoil anything that’s coming by saying more, but your feeling that so early in the story is intriguing.)