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Friday, January 19, 2007

An educated wife?

And on to the topic of “the educated wife” and why I’m so glad I’m not involved with arranged-marriage or dowries (contrary to anything that may have come out of my mouth a week and a half ago).

I have this problem of thinking too much.  All the time, my brain keeps overworking itself, questioning too much, looking for patterns, reaching for new information.  Inevitably (err, at minimum once a day), I hit the contradictions.  Easy example last semester.  One day, I decided that it would be fun to find some fiercely wealthy man and then convince him to marry me.  Sounds like a brilliant (albeit a little off-the-rocker) plan.  A perusal of the Forbes list came up with princes, sultans, IT CEOs, and some old money – most unmarried, or at least not entirely poly-married.  I found this a perfectly fine way to spend an hour.  I know that some people fantasize about stuff like that, but for awhile, for me, it seemed a fairly reasonable thing to at least do some groundwork on.  

The contradiction?  It bothers me greatly to have been “on someone’s list”.  Seriously, being on a list is like being chips or a bottle of wine or, god forbid, sandwich meat.  Things you shop for that come packaged nicely with some guarantee of quality and expectations for behavior.  Shopping comes with the baggage (sorry, the puns are right there) of preconception (oh!  Another one!) and expectations and is highly uncomplicated.  And as much as the “it’s complicated” thesis has been bothering me lately, well, “IT’S COMPLICATED.”  All this after lecturing SH on how I find shopping for a wife demeaning, objectifying, and basically dreadful.  

So maybe I’m ok objectifying people who are, in fact, only objects to me.  I think it would be terrifically awkward to objectify, to that extreme, people that I know, at least.  When a person is just a name, image, and a number, how much of a person can I know them to be?

Obviously, I can’t do this list thing.  In fact, the simplicity of “expectations” with only a name, number, and brief message is astounding.  Carry that out to the regular spouse-shopping mechanisms: internet-dating sites are there for you to find what you’re looking for, classified personals are about selling yourself to the highest bidder, matchmaking services are attempting to recreate “chemistry” or finding matching puzzle pieces – but fail to account for true complexity (complexity that comes from observation and knowledge, not self-reporting).  I can honestly say that, were I to have stumbled upon my friends and confidants in one of those media instead of having met them in reality, I would have outright ignored them, immediately considering them “too good” “not good enough” or, and I’m sure this is just me being callous “irritating in description”/ “false sense of cuteness/humor”/ “too good to be true”/ “not my type”.  

And were I married to someone, as such, an “educated wife,” would I be pedestaled and given free reign of servants and my own academic pursuits, as in some literary fiction?  Would I be beaten into submission, compliance, and repression of my thought?  If the expectation of being “smart, funny, good in bed” (which I’ve seen or heard implied in so many spouse-shopping lists) were mapped onto me, how would I comply?  Does labeling an expectation “smart” imply a diploma, does is allow for cheekiness, or does it suggest large income/ability to teach the children?  Is it the more romantic notion of being able to have long discussions and never running out of discursive matter?  I know many wives (well, duh) who fill the role in so many different ways that I feel any written definition of wife-ness would be too simplistic or too broad to have any meaning at all – but what of the wife expectation?  

I don’t like expectations – they make me nervous.  And I don’t think I would like being told that I was more than anyone imagined – I don’t like the concept of being predefined into a dreamed-of role.  And as much as my above ramblings are full of assumptions of male dominance and paternal-centricity, I guess I’m not a fan of the need for gender-centricity at all (as much as I, were I to be at market, would only be shopping for those not of my gender)?  And to top off the contradictions, I think nothing less of those who, like Julia Stiles’s character in Mona Lisa Smile, choose or excel or create the role of housewife (a glance around my apartment shows my incredible lack of abilities in the field of keeping house).  And wouldn’t it be nice to be a pedestal wife (not a trophy, mind you), and get to read all day…but oh, the boredom!  

But, as I read, many “educated wives” have no luxury with education.  Their education wrongs them – they have been thinking too much to comply without contribution to thought.  And what of those to have not the “education”, but still the ability to question, however silently?  It makes me wonder…

And it makes me realize that, as much as I may never marry, I’m also not a packaged deal, complete with dowry.  I’m not to marry for unions of clans or for business (oh Kahn).  Were I to marry, it might be for none of the previous ideas, expectations, roles…might it be for love, not convenience?  Might I, someday, be an “educated wife” with an “educated husband” of my own (already I’m beating myself for using a possessive, but I’m really not feeling like semanticizing it into some other non-ownership turn of phrase)?  I am in a position of tremendous personal freedom, which I value (but do others?), but where am I caught?  In my head, of course.  

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I really liked this mini-essay (and was very happy to see myself included in acronym form!). However, I think the last section is overly stereotyped. I don't think the idealized role of the wife as a quiet subservient being is a true reality. In my own life experience, I honestly can't think of any particular case. Sure, many of the women have been housewives...but I think that they are content with that role as mother. That role also does not preclude being a person apart from their husband. Having said that, I think all the women in my extended family at least up to my grandmother have not been housewives, especially on my mom's side, where the family is more of a matriarchy. The point that I do think you get right is that marriage and family requires some compromise in our life--we have to learn to not be solely independent human beings, but rather people with a shared mutual destiny. In the case of your educated wife, yes, she will not be able to spend her entire time reading and thinking. But the benefit is that she (and the husband) will be required to become less self-absorbed, realizing more intently the importance of others. Hopefully this will make her more human, more in touch with reality, and lead to greater happiness.

7:50 AM

 
Blogger Rebecca said...

True, but look outside of your politio-socio-economic class in the US.

I believe I was pointing at the "educated wife" - whether the M.R.S. degree grantee or the educated, but is socially or familialy required to fulfill the role of "wife."

And I'm already a part of "people with a shared mutual destiny." I guess I'm playing with the idea that, in some cases, marriage/committed relationships may not be an entrance into such a "shared mutual destiny" but an exit from it.

9:47 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well written article.

7:18 AM

 

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