Analysis of Landscape for Good Woman by Carolyn Steedman - Book Report/Review Example

 ABSTRACT Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for good woman is supposed to challenge socialist, feminist and psychoanalytic approaches to family and subjectivity. This study explores the truth in that statement and also has made an attempt to understand the psychology of the writer while writing such an embittered book against her mother. It has tried to analyse her frame of mind and has taken help of other two writers to achieve a right perspective. Even though the statement on face value looks completely correct and this study has tried to show that the writer also has a certain closed mind to the problems of woman’s life in a rigid society. This study has tried to probe into the mental frame of the writer while writing the book and has found it rather biased and slightly unkind. The study concludes that Carolyn definitely had causes to complain; but while complaining, she is highly judgemental. INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION Landscape for a good woman is not a conscientiously developed book of conflicting theories; but somehow emerged as a challenge to many existing notions. The author has crafted her book well and it was appreciated by the wide readership. It is an autobiography where some of the gender appropriate behaviour of ordinary childhoods creating areas that are invisible and unspeakable exist. Stories of her mother’s childhood that influenced her own, because of the beliefs held by her mother and by ‘stories that mother carried from her childhood from an earlier family history…to show the unfairness of things’ and reader knows how stories of the past could be told to express one’s own longings in childhood, and what her mother needed was reality and real possessions in her distant childhood. Part of the story is about how ordinary girls dreamt of ‘marrying kings’ while they had to work and scrape for each thing they get. Still the dreams would not go away and definitely must have created a mesmerising world to hope for. In her introduction, the writer says that ‘this is a drama of class’ and shows unhappiness about the working class of her mother because things were unfair as the family belonged to the poorer section of the society. She blames the mother, who according to her told the children that they were unwanted. The writer portrays her mother in a very different way from the usual kind picture of the caring mother. Her mother Edna chose a married man as the provider of property, material goods, status, which looks rather illogical and even after 10 years of cohabitation, she naturally fails to attain the role of his wife. Perhaps the bitterness of her own wrong decisions combined with difficult circumstances drove the mother into being unkind to children. Writer here not only questions her class, but also the social norms, necessity of marriage and the effect on children, who are deprived of such support. It might look a bit strange that the writer is blaming the class for her mother’s decision. Even if Edna had belonged to a higher class, that would not have prevented her from making a wrong decision, the reader would suppose. Or the writer is blaming Edna’s poor decision making skills on necessity and lack of class. She blames her ‘mother’s sense of unfairness, her belief that she had been refused entry to her rightful place in the world" (112), on her working-class status. No doubt, it could be an important factor, but blaming it totally on the lack of class looks rather short-sighted. Also one would wonder at her portrayal of Edna as a vain, mean-spirited, bitter, selfish woman, who can never get her priorities right. It is funny that she does not blame her father so much. Relatives from her mother’s side not visiting the illegitimate family could be possible in a society where marriage is a must to have children and this means, even in her own class, Edna was not accepted as an unwed mother. Hence, the alienation of Edna and her children were because of Edna’s poor choice of man. Carolyn says that when Edna chose the man, he was considered to be a catch and this means, perhaps Edna was thinking of climbing up the class ladder. Under the circumstances, perhaps Edna could do no better! Motherhood for material gain, causing her to severely harm her children presents a bitter picture. To solely blame her mother's pathology on her working-class status unfairly denies that there must have been many nurturing mothers within this category of society who made good life decisions that allowed them to raise happy well- adjusted children in joyful environments. ". . . refusal to reproduce oneself is a refusal to perpetuate what one is, that is, the way one understands oneself to be in the social world." -- pg. 84 There is a hint of continuing bitterness and prejudice towards the perhaps unfortunate mother, when the writer says: ". . . childhood is a kind of history, the continually reworked and re-used personal history that lies at the heart of each present" -- pg. 128 Throughout the book she examines sociological, political, economic and psychoanalytic issues. Even though she does mention biological issues, they are not so visible in the fabric of the book. She tries to analyse herself and her situations. She seems to be having no desire to forget and forgive the past. It looks as though she has created the entire tapestry of childhood with bitterness and very little understanding of the situation which must have been hard on her father and mother both. "We all return to memories and dreams . . . again and again; the story we tell of our own life is reshaped around them. But the point doesn't lie there, back in the past, back in the lost time at which they happened; the only point lies in interpretation." -- pg. 5 Her sister seems to interpret the past in a different way, even though it is not very clear in the book, though her point of view on all the above issues would have been of equal importance. But psychologically speaking, even the siblings who were brought up under same environment could have totally different memories of childhood rooted in their own way of perception and capabilities of interpreting events. There is an interwoven confusion in the entire book because it is difficult not to ponder over the reason of the book having been presented in this way. It is a rather rambling kind of a book which makes it difficult to keep a track of what the writer wants to convey. There is a certain kind of unpleasant resentment against one and all, against the entire society, its class system, against feminist and masculine approaches, etc. throughout the book it is difficult to avoid the compulsive hatred even though masked rather well. "For my mother, the time of my childhood was the place where the fairly tales failed." (47) Loss of her dreams might have led Edna to be bitter and tragic. She herself is a pathetic tragic figure, who makes the children feel the same. There seems to be a lack of feminist approach in Edna where she feels the necessity of a man. But then the times were such. Her bitterness about the lack of marriage prospects again questions feminist approach. Even though children are helpful she would rather live with a man than with her children and makes all of them miserable while inflicting misery on herself. Psychoanalysis here shows that Edna had a difficult time and she transferred her unhappiness onto the children and they were robbed of their childhood. Many parents do this and blame the children for their illogical past and dim future. Perhaps Edna had an opportunity to make a better life with the girls; but unfortunately, she repeatedly refuses to do so, and this tragic failure was being continuously passed onto the daughters. As the writer says it is impossible to forget the childhood and we use it in many ways in later life. The children are made to realise the bitterness surrounding their lives in thousand ways throughout their life with their mother and this is the negative psychology that creates an entirely difficult family life of not only deprivation, but also of psychological madness. Edna’s complete failure (according to Carolyn) in understanding the unhappiness she was imposing on the children is amazing. She neither adheres to the motherly role, nor makes it a success as an individual. She continuously shows that she has not been influenced by the kindly mother role imposed on all middle class women at one time or other. She stands apart from such a role. She also shows very limited feminine traits, because it is the naturally attained female role to be emotionally attached to the children, whatever could be the circumstances. Perhaps her disappointment has affected her psychologically and has erased all other feelings of understanding, kindness and motherhood. Or perhaps she never realised that she was having a highly negative effect on her daughters in the belief that as a single parent in those days, she was being extremely sensible. Fact also remains that the writer must have been more blinded by the difficult childhood she had by being blind to the mother’s emotional, social and economical troubles, though at times she even manages to be proud of Edna. Landscape for a Good woman remains memorable as a challenge to social class system too. Life is never as easy as we perceive from outside and hopelessness makes us our own enemies. The writer is trying hard to make sense of her difficult childhood, a really commendable effort. When parents are not the providing stereotypes, childhood becomes extremely difficult with limited choices. She presents a picture of shifty, irresponsible father and a financially dependable mother in the beginning, till she mentions the weekly payment of seven pounds. The close-knit Lancashire weaving community could be easily shocked by unmarried couple and illegitimate children all living unconventional life in an isolated spot of South London. Writer does not fit into Freud’s emotional and sexual theories because she feels that it is for the rich and comfortable people. “What I take from The Landscape of a Good Woman is the understanding that if your story doesn't fit the universal formulae - whether feminism, Marxism or psychoanalysis - then there's something wrong not with your story, but with those who think they know what it means” says Katherine Hughs, http://www.newstatesman.com/200011270044 If imagination is a critical but repressed faculty in the project of social theory, so too are self-reflections, emotions, and meanings. Though written in plain prose, "Landscape for a Good Woman" somehow soars to the level of lyricism that one might expect from poetry. Says John Lie, http://books.berkeley.edu/2003/socialtheory.shtml Class inequalities are usually in the individual psychology and rarely do they come out into the social arena. Reay (2005) says, “Emotional and psychic responses to class and class inequalities are routinely relegated to the realm of individual psychology if they are addressed at all. All too often in sociological research such psychic responses are individualized, pushed out of the wider social picture” .   Still it is difficult to forget emotional dynamics of social class in childhood. Nancy Chodorow’s book The Reproduction of Mothering is an important step in this direction as it provides psychoanalysis and gender mapping within its framework. It details how women became heterosexual, why do they have the urge to be mothers, what are their personality traits and the changeable prevalent patter of dominance. Her work and Landscaping of women reflect a lot of one another. Nancy’s book reiterates that girls have their mothers as role models and try to emulate them. In Landscaping the writer does not seem to be thinking of her mother as a role model. But the psychoanalysis has a lot to do with Landscaping. “As long as women mother, we can expect that a girl’s pre-oedipal period will be no longer than that of a boy and that women, more than men, will be more open to and preoccupied with those very relational issues that go into mothering – feelings of primary identification, lack of separateness or differentiation, ego and body-ego boundary issues and primary love not under the sway of the reality principle,” (p.110). The psychoanalysis of girls here seems to be in conflict with that of Landscape. The working status of women sometimes had been in sharp contrast with the traditional role of womanhood. Working and living with an unsuitable partner without marriage, which was a social stigma in those days, must have taken a toll on her mental equilibrium, because earlier societies were not particularly kind of working and unmarried mothers. “The ideology of full-time motherhood has been continuously emphasized, albeit with changing stress. Even though many women refused to fit the ideal, the social construction of full-time mothering nevertheless served as a shield for the social neglect of the needs of women as working mothers,” Silva (1996, p.26). According to Silva, lone mothers like Edna are further targeted by the society because of the unconventional way in which they live. “Focusing on women in the case of premature mothers and lone parents reveals the extent to which women are held to be responsible for child welfare in a way in which men are not. In fact, the reported rise in teenage pregnancies in some contexts may indicate that it is the young men who are refusing to marry,” Silva (p.63). Readers cannot escape the fact that even Carolyn continuously blames her mother, but rarely her father. She is part of the larger society. Siblings do not have sympathy for their mother, who had been at least trying to raise them in a rather questionable way. Their father has another family and hardly ever lives with them; but never completely deserts them. Carolyn has been highly traditional in her outlook and it is impossible to say that she had been a feminist anywhere in the book. But she shows the courage to defy the social system by saying that their childhood, actually their existence itself was because of their mother, and had little to do with their father. Talking about the seven pounds they received from their father, given to their mother (‘the weekly seven pounds was payment for us, not a gift to her’) she says in resigned bitterness: “She made us out of her own desire, her own ambition, and everything that came her way in the household was a by-product of our presence and her creation of our presence. We were an insurance, a roof over her head, a minimum income. We were her way of both having him and repudiating him. We were the cake that she both had and ate, before he left (though he never really left), and after” p.57. This is the Para that says it all. Carolyn’s blaming of her mother for their very existence is a highly traditional view. If she had been a feminist, she would have and should have equally blamed her father. Also it does not look fair on her mother when she blames her that she invented the children out of her desire. Those were the days when men or women could not choose between having and not having babies, there was precious little the mother could do. At the same time Edna could have desired the children so that she could get those seven pounds. There was nothing definite about those seven pounds and the father would have stopped giving it any time. Edna hardly had any hold over him. The book shows less of socialist view and also less of feminism. It is no doubt a challenge to psychoanalysis, because of its highly unconventional ways of thinking. Throughout reader feels that the mother perhaps deserved much more understand by the daughter. There is no scope of great understanding in the childhood. But, after Carolyn grew up into womanhood, it is surprising that she did not learn to look back with kindness, understanding and sympathy towards her parents and the surrounding society society has way of knotting itself up and suffers in those knots and feels martyred that it has achieved a lot. People who live within the knotted frame too suffer as a consequence. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Nancy Chodorow (1978), The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, University of California Press. 2. Hughes, Katherine, On Caroline Steedman’s Landscape for a good Woman, New Statesman, 27th November 2000. 3. Reay, Diane (2005), Sociology, Sage Publications, London, p. 912 Sociology Volume 39 n Number 5 n December 2005 4. Steedman, Carolyn (1986), Landscape for a Good Woman, Virgo Press, London. 5. Silva, Elizabeth Bortolaia (1996), Good Enough Mothering, Routledge, London. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://books.berkeley.edu/2003/socialtheory.shtml 2. Read More