Olivia Somerset does not join her peers at Cornell as students flood the campus in the fall. The opportunity to take the next step toward adulthood unleashed a nervous breakdown. For weeks she lies bedridden. Eventually her older sister Miranda and their feminist anthropology professor mother coax Olivia back into the real world. But she remains psychologically broken.
Miranda has the solution: she books a room at a hostel in Barcelona for two. An opportunity to take in the unique architecture and cuisine would help Olivia “find herself” and emerge from her shell. And Big Sister would be along to protect her and guide her from site to site. By the time the trip was over she’d be more than ready to start up again at college, as was expected of her.
Once the travelers arrive in Spain, the plan begins to unwind. Miranda reserved a private room for two but a mix-up drops them into a crowded group room. Then Mr. Brown and his teenage son Greg introduce themselves and volunteer to switch with them.
While the gesture is appreciated, the Browns are met with suspicion by cynical Big Sister Miranda. What kind of person would be so friendly and altruistic? They must be planning something. Also staying at the hostel is a hard-drinking travel writer named Lenny (a woman with the real name Eleanor) who fuels the rejection of the vacationing minister and his brooding son.
Meanwhile, Olivia listens to the warnings from these older women but remains intrigued by Greg… a potential kindred spirit? Somewhat scarred and discouraged but eager to reveal the person inside to someone who cares enough to listen?
****
PJ Lifestyle contributor Hannah Sternberg’s debut novel Queens of All the Earth (the title comes from the E. E. Cummings poem “Orientale”) reinvents E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Like the classic modernist novel, nothing really “happens” over the course of Hannah’s story. A few people meet while traveling overseas and they interact. All the action is on the internal level, as characters wrestle with their self-doubt, process their conflicting emotions, and struggle to chart a new path forward. And does it ever make for a gripping read.
I’ve already praised Hannah for her novel’s gorgeous prose. On the aesthetic and entertainment levels the novel is a success. (I finished it in only a few sittings.) So today I want to highlight some of the thematic content in Queens of all the Earth and invite readers to consider Hannah’s work in the context of the literary future: now is about the time when Generation Y (those of us under 30, born in 1982 and after) are beginning to articulate our own visions of how we perceive the world and what we will contribute.
In Queens of all the Earth two women have most shaped the Millennial Olivia: her Generation X older sister Miranda and their Baby Boomer mother, the career-oriented, second-wave feminist academic.
From her Boomer mother, Olivia inherits the expectation that she will develop herself into an independent woman with a satisfying, meaningful job apart from homemaking. From her X-er Big Sister (and their hipster traveling friend Lenny) she knows the dangers of the male liberated by the sexual revolution. Beware of men: we will crush your heart and lie to you. (In their most concentrated, unforgiving form, these sentiments manifest in films like Bridesmaids which reject the possibility of men and women finding happiness together in marriage.)
Throughout their lives these have been the two dominant female influences on the women of Generation Y: Boomer moms who raised their daughters to achieve and Xer big sisters who warned them about the lies teenage boys tell to make you feel loved and the regret and self-loathing that come afterward.
Categories: Books and Magazines, Family, Relationships
Tags: Feminism, Generation X, Hannah Sternberg, Literature, Millennials, Novel, Queens of All the Earth, Spain, Young Adult Fiction
I think that the biggest lesson that I learned, and passed on to my 30-ish daughter is “Don’t whine. Get on with it.”
As a Boomer (born Dec. 1955), my experience was of being caught between two roles. While most of our mothers were stay at home moms, we were being taught that “You’ve come a long way, Baby.” We were being set free. We were taught that you could have it all, but as many found out, that juggling act didn’t work out as smoothly advertised. Women also had to deal with husbands who enjoyed the second income but also expected “the wife” to take care of all the things their stay at home moms had done. We were to be June Cleaver and Gloria Steinem rolled into one.
At the same time, on two incomes, Americans grew used to the lifestyle that two incomes brought and grew hooked on it. Although many would prefer to stay home with the kids, it is no longer that wonderful “choice” promoted back then. It’s become a necessity now. By accident? That would be something to look into further.
I am classified as a Gen Xer. However I was raised by a mother of the “Silent generation” who was born in Ireland in 1931. My Dad was born a year before the Great Depression. I had the blessing of being raised by a Mom who stayed home and a Dad (A Navy Veteran) who worked hard including overtime but he was (and is) a very loving, affectionate and encouraging Dad. There were clear boundaries and expectations. My Mom suffered from Bipolar disorder but she did well on medication. My Mom and Dad have been married for 56 years and have been through many hard times. But they are surviving and showing me the meaning of commitment. I wanted my parents to approve of the man I married because I trusted their judgement (after all they were my go-to marriage experts). I wanted to be like my parents in that I wanted to be home with my kids and I wanted my husband to be the main provider. I did go to college with the full support of my parents. They believed I could do anything! I became a nurse something I always wanted to do but I believe I knew in the back of my mind that it was a career that would allow me to work weekends or nights so at least one parent would be home with the kids. I met a fantastic man in college. We dated for four years before we got married. His parents are still married. My husband was born in 1970 but the idea of Mom being home with the kids was very important to him. However he did support my desire to work 1-2 days/nights per week. He is definitely a hands on Dad who changed the first diapers, gave slippery newborns their baths, played sword fights and tea parties and after 16 years of marriage leaves me love notes in my lunch box. I don’t see anyone like me mentioned in your article and I know there are a lot of us out there. I will never warn my daughters how “bad” men are. I will educate them on the consequences of any and all choices they make. I hope the way their Dad and I live our married life within our family provides a living example of how the “we” is more important than the “me.”
“When you are in a relationship with a woman — particularly once you marry them — your job is to first clean up all the years’ worth of psychological garbage she’s collected from the previous so-called men in her life.”
Is this a serious sentiment? If so, I can only boggle at the mental universe of a man who apparently assumes that 1) women are all going to be filled with “years’ worth of psychological garbage she’s collected from the previous so-called men in her life” and 2) it’s his job to rescue them from it.
This is just so patronizing (“Don’t worry! I will save you from all of your male-casued disappointments!”) that I simply don’t know what to say.
And what is this “so-called men” nonsense? Are we to assume that all women are inevitably scarred by the men in their lives because they’re not really men, they’re “so-called” men? What does this even mean?
Frankly, this strikes me as nothing more or less than a version of the old line men used to use to get into womens’ pants: “You know, I’m a feminist myself”. (Score!!!)
Sucking up is always pathetic, but this is really contemptible. Not only does the author assume that all men are going to treat all women badly (talk about drinking the victim feminism Kool Aid), but he assumes they won’t be able to take it and will be so scarred that they need a knight on a white horse (a man, of course) to rescue them from it.
“You’ve come a long way, baby” indeed.
Thank you Ephraim, I was anticipating and hoping that one of you would show up to say something like this.
Actually, I was just counseling my 32 yo brother on this earlier today. I’m a Gen X woman who has spent time fixing myself and trying to help the Millennials. Swindle is largely correct. Feminism taught women that they were the same as men, that their sex drives were the same and any domestic or nurturing drives they had were socialized. That construct holds up pretty well through most of a woman’s 20′s. She acts like a guy and guys treat her like a guy. That’s Swindle’s “not a guy” bit because they don’t realize that women do need to be treated with care. Swindle might be a little harsh because in this modern day, what guy would dare treat a woman as anything but a man with a uterus? Anyway, it isn’t so much that a good husband has to spend time undoing what horrible men have done–that may be the case depending on the details–but that around 29-30 many women start to have domestic inclinations and baby hunger. This terrifies them. They worry that they are turning into some sort of Stepford being. Worse, after a lifetime of being told to look out for themselves, be what they want to be, do anything, a marriage requires a partnership. Basically a modern woman has to turn on a dime, from looking out for number 1 to placing the needs of a marriage first. (Note, I didn’t say ‘needs of a husband.’) A man has to do this too, but he has more likely expected it. A woman is more likely shocked by the change. Reactions to this shock vary greatly, from rationalization of past issues to anger to depression to revenge. Some leave their husbands or avoid having children. They starve their domestic hunger with denial.
To Swindle, I have been in the helping game since my mentor asked me to write a letter to her college bound daughter about 8 years ago. I’ve found that the women who will learn, learn quickly, as in overnight. The initial leap of faith from “Me, me, me” to “It’s not about me” is terrifying when you make it, but things instantly get better and the terror fades quickly. A final note, if you are in need of help, part of what got me over this terror: Danielle Crittenden’s What our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us and, if you can find it, Advice to a Young Wife from an Old Mistress. The intro to Cheryl Mendolsen’s Home Comforts is worth reading too.
“One of you?”
If you were hoping “one of us” would show up (whoever “we” are), it seems to me that you should have prepared a better response than “oh, here ‘they’ are again. How tiresome.”.
Seriously, is that the best you can do? Any chance you’ll respond to my contention that what you have said is incredibly patronizing to women, cleverly disguised as it is as some sort of celebration of their “hidden power”?
For the record, I have been married for almost 40 years, and if I had said to my wife that my job was “first to clean up all the years’ worth of psychological garbage you have collected from the previous so-called men in your life” she would have just laughed in my face.
She has too much self-respect and self-reliance to think she needs rescuing by anyone. I think you need to start hanging out with a higher class of woman.
Like Sgt. Mom, for instance. Sounds to me like she’s raising her daughter properly.
What are a husband’s responsibilities to his wife?
I’ve asked you some questions; I think it’s only fair that you answer them first before we continue.
However, since you have asked, I will say that as far as responsibilities a husband has to his wife are concerned, it seems to me his first duty is not to patronize her. Of course, if she actually is damaged or has problems, then of course the husband should help her through them. I don’t believe I said otherwise.
What I resent about what you said is the assumption that he wife will, indeed, have been damaged by “so-called men” (I still would like to what you mean by that); I assume if I wrote an article about “so-called women” I would be crucified as the worst kind of make chauvinist.
The other thing that irks me is the pomposity and self-congratulation of how you denigrate “so-called men” and set yourself up as the savior. It just seems ridiculously self-important, and, again, assumes that the woman needs to be helped by the superior man who has the capacity, nay, the DUTY to fix her self-esteem. Such thinking seems archaic.
Your wife may indeed have been damaged by “so-called men”. If you helped her through it, you did a good thing. What I resent is the implication that what may have been true for you will be true for everyone.
All I can say is my wife was not damaged and she didn’t need me to rescue her.
Your rude tone doesn’t inspire me to want to take the time to explain the many, many assumptions and misinterpretations you’ve made about what I argue in my post. You accuse me of pomposity and self-congratulation yet assume the exact condescending tone I allegedly have. When people approach me in a reasonable way then that inspires me to try and reason with them. When people hide behind aliases in the comments section and show up to spout insults that inspires me to dismiss them as a troll, delete their comments when they start to get especially rude and get boring, and move on with the next piece I’m writing or editing today. But if you feel the need to continue venting and attacking strawmen arguments that you imagine to be in my article then by all means, you’re welcome to have the last word.
As you wish.
Ephraim is not an alias; it is just my Hebrew name.
Yes, I suppose that you were miffed; but what you wrote seemed silly, and I said so. It seems to me that people calling themselves journalists should have thicker skins.
I didn’t say your tone was condescending, I said that what you said patronized women in that it seemed to say that women will inevitably be damaged and that it is up to a man to save them from the damage inflicted by other “so-called” men.
If you don’t believe that, fine; but since you have elected to exeunt stage right in high dudgeon, I suppose I will never know.
You use the word “seems” three times in your comment. As in you seem to have brought your own assumptions about what I’m secretly arguing and have assigned to me dumb ideas that I haven’t argued. I have not said that all women will inevitably be damaged and that all women must be saved by their husbands. Not all women will be damaged. A woman with a good father and good brothers who gets through her adolescence without some kind of sexual abuse and gets into a stable relationship early on can avoid a lot of psychological damage that many middle-aged boys and adolescents (and a promiscuous lifestyle) inflict. (When I say “so-called men” I am referring to adult males who act sexually like teenage boys, not men who have matured.) Further, women who have been traumatized by dead beat dads and abusive, violent boyfriends won’t be saved by some magic husband. They are the ones that have to do the real work to heal themselves. But husbands play an important role in that.
You’re a baby boomer aren’t you?
Well said, Mary Beth. We were really young when we married, so we had to deal with immaturity, near poverty (military pay in the early ’60s) and infant children. Maybe life forced our focus on others, so we didn’t have time to be too self centered. We had some great help from our families, too. Parents, aunts and uncles all contributed to our growing sense of our own family. One of the most eye-popping conversations that brought amazing insight into my life occured while drinking a beer, leaning on a corral fence with my uncle after a long day of hard, hot work. Twenty or so years later, he and I were having dinner together and I thanked him for that day. He was stunned, he couldn’t remember it, but said something else that made lots of sense to me. He said “…that’s how you know we love each other.” Somehow, our families, without all the educated angst that prevades the world today, did a damn good job with us and I hope we did as good a job with our own children and nieces and nephews. We are beginning to see fine young grandchildren growing up, now. Maybe we did OK too!
If you don’t mean what you wrote, or mean it in the way I interpreted it, fine. However, as a journalist, it seems to me that if that’s not what you meant, you should have been more clear about what you actually did mean. If you don’t want to be misunderstood, anyway. I assume that you are aware that this is a hazard of the profession.
Of course it is the husband’s responsibility to help his wife if she does indeed have “years’ worth of psychological garbage she’s collected from the previous so-called men in her life.” However, it sounded as though you were making the assumption that women are more likely than not to be damaged in this way and that it was the man’s job to rescue her from that (I assume that women can be just as damaged by their mother, sisters and frenemies as by men, but that is perhaps another book review). It is this to which I objected.
As for whether I’m a Boomer or not, I don’t see how it is relevant, but since I told you how long I have been married, I assume that you can do the math.
First, I’m not a journalist. I can do journalism and have in the past but ever since high school I’ve always preferred the editor and commentator/critic/blogger hats. To see a real journalist, check out the work of our new Washington D.C. editor Bridget Johnson: http://pjmedia.com/blog/bridget-johnson-named-pj-media-washington-d-c-editor/ But that everything I write will be misinterpreted by someone out there is something that I’ve long ago accepted.
Second, this kind of misinterpretation (which you’re the only one who’s spoken up to raise) reminds me of the kinds of misinterpretations and disagreements that often arise between boomers and millennials. You judge motives that might be had instead of the plain words and actual actions. (Hence all your “seems” comments.) Boomers are often so ideologically-driven and ideologically focused. (I critiqued arch-boomer Michael Medved for this not long ago in his ideology-driven analysis of the GOP primary: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/11/29/six-dead-ideas-walking-in-michael-medveds-romney-zombie-wall-street-journal-oped/ All too often Boomers assume that people make their decisions and hold their ideas for ideological reasons, instead of practical ones. Thus you recognized similar practical themes in the paragraph (many women are emotionally damaged by men) and then decided to associate me with ideological themes from your generation which we both disagree with. (The political-theological Marxist lies that ALL women are hopelessly broken, weak, or oppressed and ALL men are evil and will oppress them.)