A Cautionary Tale
By Anne Leigh Parrish
First, a conservative, Republican leaning Supreme Court rules that the federal government will not guarantee a woman’s access to safe, legal abortion, then the Supreme Court of Alabama decides that frozen embryos are children. Next, women will be declared incubators, or potential incubators, all agency and autonomy forfeit. This is what the Christian fascists want and have always wanted, a world where women are livestock who can also cook and clean.
Old men sing an old song.
Before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the introduction of birth control pills, women were indeed compromised. Any sexual encounter could result in an unplanned pregnancy, and without legal abortion, a woman took her chances. Most men were okay with this. It kept women honest and discouraged promiscuity. Men could be promiscuous, because men were entitled to do anything they wanted. They were masters of the universe. The problem with this narrative is that these same men need women to take care of them. People who rule are assumed to be able to take care of themselves. This is only one glaring failure of the patriarchy’s logic. There are many more.
As a writer, I believe in cautionary tales.
Edith Sloan, the hero of An Open Door and The Hedgerow comes of age during the Second World War when women, because they were needed, weren’t thought of simply as servants and breeders. They could hold necessary and sometimes interesting jobs. Edith was a mapmaker in Washington while her fiancé, Walter, worked in Naval Intelligence breaking codes. Edith is a free spirit and enjoys sex without having to feel love for the man giving her pleasure. Walter is a dud in bed, but she marries him anyway, because she’s expected to, because she has to marry someone, according to the world she lives in.
Edith wants to attend graduate school and study American poetry; Walter sees himself in the law. They apply to Harvard and are admitted. All is well – for a time. Edith earns her master’s and decides a PhD would suit. Harvard agrees and offers her a spot so she can continue studying. Walter tells her she can’t. He’s been spotted as a rising star, one who requires a certain kind of wife. Edith must stay in the kitchen now with a clean apron on, preparing dinner and drinks for important guests.
Edith won’t have it and runs away to New York City to live with Walter’s Aunt Margaret. Her freedom is wonderful. While she feels no guilt at having left Walter behind, her libertine tendencies cause her to worry that she’s going to get herself in trouble. Then there are Walter’s begging letters which become too much. She goes home. It’s too late to resume her academic work, and she struggles with intense boredom.
Soon an opportunity comes her way that makes use of her passion for literature, and she jumps at the chance. Walter objects, but she persists.
In The Hedgerow, An Open Door’s sequel, Edith is still controlled by men. The world seems to be losing ground, moving backward, becoming more scared and conservative. Behavior is monitored, judgments are harsh.
How is Edith going to remain free against all the forces that conspire to define and limit her? How are we, today?
The 1950s brought a new foreign war and a revolting assault on freedom in the form of McCarthyism. Today, the United States might not be officially involved in a war, but things aren’t going too well in the Middle East. As to an assault on freedom, listen to any Republican speech about what the country needs, listen to Donald Trump talk about forcibly removing millions of undocumented immigrants, listen to the Supreme Court in Alabama tell us, with straight faces, that embryos are children. Listen to the book-banners and anyone against freedom of thought. Look at the state of Texas denying medical care to pregnant women, bringing them perilously close to death, and for what? An ideology that says women are less important than the life they carry, less important than men, on a par with cattle on the ranch and chickens in the coop.
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Anne Leigh Parrish’s new novel, The Hedgerow, appears in July 2024 from Unsolicited Press. If The Sky Won’t Have Me, her latest poetry collection, was published in April 2023, also by Unsolicited Press. She lives in Olympia, Washington. Explore her writing at www.anneleighparrish.com
THE HEDGEROW
In the long-awaited sequel to Anne Leigh Parrish’s An Open Door, Edith Sloan navigates life after leaving her dull, demanding husband, Walter, for Henry, a well-off British peer. The bookstore she owns on Harvard Square, The Turned Page, thrives under her management, and prospects for a publishing venture take shape. As 1949 comes to an end, and with her sights trained on a new decade, Edith struggles with stifling social conventions, unreliable men, and an unforeseen circumstance that might ruin everything.
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Category: On Writing
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