By Gina Barreca
Sometimes when they go to parties and she sees him speaking to his colleagues, she hates him. His hands move through the air like small birds; he grins and laughs like a boy. She can’t stop herself from going over and proving her worth, talking about the graduate degree she didn’t quite finish. She flirts with the men and offers flattery to the women, rubbing circles on her husband’s back and keeping her eyes on everyone else.
She’s attractive, still; she tells herself she has other choices. On the way home from these parties, she makes lively conversation but her heart is a clenched fist. She grinds her teeth at night, sleeps poorly, and writes in her journal the next day.
When she cries too much he walks out on her, goes for a ride on his bike or takes the car and goes further away—where? She’s left with herself, stuck in a room with no one to talk to but herself. She would walk out on herself if only she could. There are times he’s looked at her, said “That’s enough” and left. At those moments, she’s envied him.
He tells her that he doesn’t mind that she doesn’t bring in much money with her writing, that she should see the salary he makes and what they spend on their lives as a gift, accept it from him, and enjoy it the way she would if he gave her a ring or a nightgown. It seems generous, this reprieve, but it also seems to her that she’s taking the bait from a trap, and she doesn’t want the bait. She suspects he would like it if she worked more and earned more money and knows that her suspicion is not born of paranoia, but of insight.
The rest of the article...
So. . . the Chronicle is turning into the New Yorker. Will be more entertaining at least.
ReplyDeleteCreepy. (Much longer comment consciously suppressed.)
ReplyDeleteHow many of my friends from Grad School did this very thing? Gave up on their degree to follow a sweetheart when said sweetheart got a T/T job? It's a reminder to let your grad school loves be flexible enough that you won't sacrifice everything for them, but strong enough that you'll try to keep things together after degrees are earned...
ReplyDeleteI'm with Merely Academic here.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Barreca before, so don't know if this is fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut I found the piece awfully good. I recognize the characters from my academic world.
With both AM and MA...yes, creepy. Also, the grad school love and I are discussing this more intensely now, the choices we will be making, etc. It's interesting to see how "romance" is portrayed, and even how my non-school friends enxperience it, and then to see the two of us in earnest conversation about what we should do.
ReplyDeleteI've cried over him once, owing to an event he later apologized for. I suspect that this lack of drama in our relationship is directly related to our earnest conversations.
And my friends say that I am a cold-hearted bitch.
ps: Very little can compel me to listen to more than about three minutes of physicists talking to each other, but we all talk about the rugby. Also, if I was touching Smasher that much in public, he would think I was seriously insane.
ReplyDelete@ Eating Low Salt
ReplyDeleteIt's a character study, and a pretty short one at that. I'm guessing this is CHE's crack at "new journalism", a form that is now forty-something years old.
Gina Barreca is (I find with a little googling) a professor of English & feminist theory, and a humorist. Her list of "books I can do without reading" from last summer is pretty funny:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-barreca/books-i-can-do-without-es_b_597943.html
I particularly like the one on "Motherhood".
re: the character study, the only thing keeping that couple together is the children. This is precisely the sort of cautionary tale that will keep one in grad school, as AM says. In the same vein, when my will slackened I would listen to "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" over and over to remind myself of what I was desperate to avoid. Sometimes the only carrot is a stick.
Creepy's the word. Thank god I wrecked every relationship I had in grad school. But I find it hard to believe a woman can be that abject these days.
ReplyDeleteI like the Huffington Post piece a lot better.
Oh my god. Barf. Overwritten, self-indulgent crap. Puke.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know I was not the only one creeped out by this article.
ReplyDeleteMathsquatch out.
I hope I've missed the point.
ReplyDelete@ Stew: I'm not sure there was one.
ReplyDeleteHe's cold-hearted, she's depressed, what a miserable pair. That woman needs to go back to work if she thinks being supported by the hubby is a trap, and maybe ditch the husband, if she's always crying and he's not being sympathetic. Or if she hates the sight of him at parties while she's flirting or ogling the neighbor or whatever. She sounds miserable, why stay in that marriage, unless it's for the kids, but they seem old enough to withstand divorce. But crappy marriages aren't unique to academic wives, and I think it's unfair of the writer to portray this woman's problems as entirely due to being married to a professor.
ReplyDelete