The Spekter in the Attic

Well, it's finally happened. My husband, a clever and thoughtful bloke, who did not spend 18 years in scholarship to become an English professor, who has not written several half-novels and who has not spent night after night in the local Jazz club at open mic poetry night burbling into the stagelights, has been writing more than I have.

This is galling.

I'm a writer who hasn't written in months, a scholar who hasn't researched much beyond IPod repair services lately, and am expecting my first child in 20 days, which I assume is only going to make the rest worse. In fact, I may not care at first that nothing else is getting done. I almost hope so. A relief from a lifetime of guilt over not researching enough while I'm teaching, or teaching well and compassionately enough while I'm researching would be welcome at this point.

The real sticking point is, of course, the usual identity crisis that rises when a scholar and a gentleman becomes a mother. I'm sure you notice the term "gentleman." I eschewed lady-hood a long time ago. As a Victorian scholar, trained in gender roles, identity politics and the socio-cultural affects of gender on individual subjects, I've done with all that "lady-ness." But I almost like the space of the "gentleman." It invokes visions of late-night card games, whiskeys drunk neat in panelled rooms full of books, and a healthy respect for the civic rights and virtues of others. I've even focused my studies on Victorian masculinities and their carry-over into our own 20th and 21st century constructions of masculinity. Since I left my first marriage and some of my youth behind, I decided to grant myself the right to live like a man: to make and invest my own money, get whatever education I decided was necessary for the proper support of my family, keep late hours, choose my own lovers, drink spirits, eat red meat and grease when and where I cared without worrying that I was no longer a size 2, and read whatever the hell I wanted.

And it's been a glorious life. I have a great position at a small liberal arts college in the South, a husband whom I dearly love, a great house in a neighborhood known as much for its social life as its intellectual life and a couple of cats who keep me entertained. I have also done some respectable work as a scholar, presented papers at NYU and Princeton, gotten a couple of articles into prestigious journals, submitted a book for publication, and am continuing my investigations in my field both in print and film materials. Life is good and its about to get better -- I'm about to have a baby.

It's been an easy pregnancy. I had a few weeks of light queasiness but if I ate early and continuously in small amounts, a bit of candied ginger was enough to stave off real nausea. I had some sleepiness and giddiness, but it was like being lightly stoned for three months. It fell during the summer break while my husband and I were traveling and visiting family, and didn't interfere with any research schedules (the book being at the publishers) or any teaching commitments. I've been swimming regularly for exercise, which keeps the swelling of hands and feet --and my temper -- down to a minimum, and the band still practices at my house and drinks on the porch afterward. We do have fewer nights where we come back to the house after being out, bearing a bevvy of new friends for after-parties, and quite frankly, I can't spend the time on my feet that I used to. But I did join the Thriller dance downtown for Halloween, was up til 3:30 New Year's Eve, and kept the poker players company (after working til 11) til about 1am last night. Only the strong or insane survive graduate school, and I'm hoping it's good preparation for parenthood.

Famous French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir said "one is not born a woman, one becomes one." What she meant is that we become one thing or another through repeated acts or performances of who or what we think we are. Women learn to become womanly, men to become manly. You're not just born that way, your culture teaches you how to pull it off properly. Occasionally we become aware that we're doing it and mess with the system just for the fun of it. I've had mothers scoff at my ideas of self-hood, I've read others who are desperately trying to redefine or identify social constructions of motherhood. But I've never tried this before and I'm curious about something:

What happens when the bad-ass bitch babe gets a baby?

We don't even have a lot of science fiction or female action films that try this one out. Sure, there's the Gina Davis character in The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Ripley in Aliens who loses one daughter while asleep in hyperspace only to replace her with Newt in the next film. But what would happen if Laura Croft had a little Tomb Raider? When Evelyn Carnahan (Racheal Wiesz) of The Mummy had her son, she learns swordcraft, but only because she's become the new hosting place of Nefertiti. Funny that, I didn't know Nefertiti was good with knives. Of course, this stacks up against the usual action-adventure role of heroines to end the story with marriage and children, or in the case of The Terminator's Sarah Connor, to be first consigned to a trailer in nowhere'sville and later to a lunatic assylum. You see where I'm coming from, right? The story ain't over and I ain't crazy, so I need another way to be than to just retire into the nursury with the little beastie.

So, as I write up my next Faculty Self-Evaluation, monitor a student's final project, write up something Lacanian for my Brit Lit II students and try to get my house ready for D-day, I'll be thinking about the differences between men and women, what will be important to decide about raising my son, and hoping that I'm able to write something of some sense when its all said and done.