“Have you practiced so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?” (23-24)



This is not me.  But it could have been.



I chose this quote for the Whitman facilitation activity because of the way it spoke to me.  I learned how to read when I was about four or five years old, and have always loved it.  I remember being so proud in elementary school because I was reading books several grade levels above my peers.  Even now, I voraciously consume literature across several genres. 

That is why this quote has so much meaning for me.  I easily learned how to read, but not how to get the meaning of what I read.  So when I do, yeah.  I’m pretty damn pleased with myself.

“I play not a march for victors only….I play great marches for conquered and slain persons” (Whitman 366).  When I read this quote, I think about war, and I think about how many people die in war.  And I think that with as many casualties as war brings, how can anybody win?  How can there possibly be a victor?  And when history is written by the so-called “victors,” the “losers” (those who lost even more than the “victors”) are often painted in a bad light.  So I find it hard to trust that the “victors” are deserving of all of the accolades they receive.  I like that Whitman recognizes that that the “conquered and slain” deserve respect and honor as well.

As we watched A Home at the End of the World, I wrote down a few quotes that stood out to me.

A Home at the End of the World Quotes

“It’s just love, man.  Nothin’ to fear.”  I refer you here to a previous post, “What is love?” in which I discussed how there is something to fear in love.  There’s loss, betrayal, heartbreak.  But the context of this quote does not refer to putting one’s heart on the line for romance.  It refers to sex.  I could argue that there’s quite a lot to be feared in sex, namely a big chunk of manmeat getting shoved up somewhere it has no business being.  But I digress. If sex is entered as an aspect of love, then one could assume that trust would be present, and if you trust your partner and his manmeat, then I suppose there would be not nearly as much to fear. 

“There’s nothing to be afraid of in the whole world.  I’m here.”  Trust.  Safety.  Protection.  Siblings.  While I cannot say that my sister and I get along particularly well, I can say that I know she would do her utmost to keep me from getting hurt. 

“Sometimes it’s good to do a simple, useful thing.”  There’s just something soothing about doing mindless things, don’t you think?  Like there isn’t any possible way to get frustrated or upset when all you have to do is fold a towel or scrub some soap and hot water over a plate. And you can just think aimlessly.

“Whoever expects to end up living anywhere?”  I do.  I expect to live in the United Kingdom somewhere; probably London.  I expect to live in a small flat by myself.  I expect that I will be able to make my dreams come true if I fight hard enough for them.  I don’t know yet if I will fulfill my expectations, but until I don’t, I will tell myself I can.

“I don’t suppose anyone knows what they’re getting into ‘til they’re into it.” 

“Is there anything you couldn’t do?” “I couldn’t be alone.” 

“To You—The Bride

“Soon you will reach that day for which you have planned and dreamed since you were a little girl….Your Wedding Day!!  What wonderful dreams you have had….about the home you would share…about the children you will have some day….Now, all of those wonderful dreams are about to come true.  And you are about to assume the most important role of your life….The composite role of sweetheart, wife and mother.  May you bring to this new role the great tolerance and understanding that will make your marriage a success….May you take your fragile, young love and mold it into a sturdy, ever deeper affection.  May you go through your whole life with shining eyes and singing heart…never relinquishing your dreams but striving, ever harder, to make them come true….

“These are our wishes for you…May they all come true and may your life follow the pattern of the old story books in which “they all lived happily ever after.”

The Editors”  (Hurst I).

            Thus begins the worst cookbook I have ever encountered.  I call it a cookbook because the majority of the contents are recipes, although there’s a significant amount of text dedicated to “how to make your man happy because that’s all that you are good for.”  This patriarchal monstrosity was a gift to my sister at her bridal shower the other day.  As I ranted and raged about how oppressive and offensive the text is, several people reminded me to “look at the copyright date, then look at a calendar.”  Okay, yeah.  So it was published in 1956.  And yeah, we’ve made great strides in gender equality since then.  But that patriarchy has lasted in such a strong way for so long? Not cool.  And that is what I was protesting as I flipped through the book, finding each idea forced upon young women worse than the last.

Initially, I wanted to include this text to have another forum in which to bash it.  The connections to fairy tales, of course, carried some merit as well.  But I thought about it some more, and realized that it connects pretty directly to Anne Sexton’s life.  She married in 1948, was married eight years when this book was published.  So she likely would have been held to the standards of matrimony touted in To the Bride.  The editors paint a rosy picture of Happily Ever After, but Sexton describes the same concept as “a kind of coffin, / a kind of blue funk” in “The White Snake” (15).  These societal standards and Sexton’s scornful opinion of them may have influenced some of her discontent with her life.  “Many are the deceivers:” Sexton states in “Red Riding Hood” (73).  She lists some of these deceivers:  “The suburban matron … Two seemingly respectable women … And I.  I too” (Sexton 73-74).  Sexton does not believe the images projected to the world, not even her own.  She describes herself as being “Quite collected at cocktail parties,” and claims the housewife yearns to fly away from her life to have an affair (74).

  Although they are expected to simper and serve their husbands and take joy in their subservience, Sexton claims that women are not truly happy with these archaic roles.  She uses “Red Riding Hood” to call out society on its false fronts.

Ed. Dorothy Hurst. Milwaukee: Wisconsin Cuneo Press, 1956. Print.