Anthropology Parenting

Crumbs Made Her Unhappy

January 4, 2022 by David 185 Comments

Speaking of ladies who write for The Atlantic, here’s senior editor Honor Jones a-gush with expression in the Family section:

I loved my husband; it’s not that I didn’t. But I felt that he was standing between me and the world, between me and myself… I had caused so much upheaval, so much suffering, and for what? He asked me that, at first, again and again: For what? So I could put my face in the wind. So I could see the sun’s glare.

It’s a tale of divorce, you see, and rather sad, and just a little confusing. For instance, exactly why the divorce came about is not immediately obvious. There’s no mention of affairs, or hardship, or emotional cruelty. In fact, and despite 3,000 words, the husband is barely mentioned, except as an unwitting hindrance to some nebulous fantasy of self-exploration, or at least self-dramatization. Indeed, we’re presented with a loving husband and comfortable middle-class life, in which one chats with architects and browses the Instagram accounts of cabinet makers, while weighing the merits of soapstone kitchen counters.

Slowly, I realised, I didn’t want this life. I didn’t want to renovate. I wanted to get divorced… I started imagining other lives. Other homes.

Here, I should point out that Ms Jones also has three small children. Though their wellbeing doesn’t appear to figure too heavily, or much at all, in the extended ramble of the article. However, we do hear a lot about other, more important matters:

the crumbs got me down.

Crumbs are a recurring topic, mentioned seven times, along with a dislike of vacuuming. Truly, a life of unrelenting hell. Albeit with a cleaner to do much of the heavy lifting:

I hired a woman named Luba to clean… I loved talking with her. She was full of sensible advice, like how I should really stop washing the cleaning rags along with the children’s clothes, because the chemicals could irritate their skin.

Not the worst opinion we’ll hear today.

We’re then informed that a comfortable middle-class life, in which time can be spent choosing new kitchens and chatting with the cleaner, is actually an oppressive experience:

I wanted to be thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy. How much of my life—I mean the architecture of my life, but also its essence, my soul, my mind—had I built around my husband? Who could I be if I wasn’t his wife? Maybe I would microdose. Maybe I would have sex with women. Maybe I would write a book.

At which point, I’m tempted to suggest that a more adventurous adolescence and some teenage experimentation might have saved a lot of later heartache. But it seems we’re expected to share Ms Jones’ belief that the only thing preventing her from being exciting and fabulous – from blossoming as a fully switched-on and progressive woman who drops acid and dabbles with lesbianism, which can then be mentioned for effect – is her family and her obligations to them. And obviously, it’s physically impossible for women who are mothers and wives to think about art and sex and politics.

Hence the betrayal, the breaking of vows. And hey, divorce is such an adventure.

The subject of remorse does crop up, briefly:

There were days when the magnitude of what I’d done bore down on me. I kept wondering if I’d feel regret, or remorse. It is hard to admit this—it makes me cold, as cold a woman as my ex-husband sometimes suspects I am—but I didn’t. I felt raw, and I liked it. There was nothing between me and the world.

Oh lucky world.

And then the rewards for this feat of selflessness and bravery:

On my nights alone, I caught up with old friends, frantically made new friends, said way too much about my personal life over drinks with colleagues. Out in the city, I felt solid: a capable woman taking care of her family.

Today’s words are unintended irony.

Update:

In the comments, Jacob asks,

Is her first name ironic?

Well, there’s quite a bit of irony, albeit unintentional. Such that we’re expected to believe that Ms Jones is somehow being robbed of self-expression, presumably by “the patriarchy,” despite her life of minimal drudgery, and despite being a contributor and senior editor at the New York Times and a senior editor at The Atlantic. Resulting in the self-indulgent ramble quoted above.

Needless to say, Ms Jones has dozens of blue-tick Twitter followers, many of whom are her peers in ‘progressive’ institutions of one kind or another, merrily gushing about her “courage” and capacity for introspection, her glorious humanity, her “brilliant soul.” Her tale, we’re told, is “beautiful and moving.” And none of those applauding apparently raised an eyebrow at a self-involved woman shattering the lives of her three small children, and her husband, in order to concentrate on herself even more than before.

Reading Ms Jones’ outpourings, I was reminded of a conversation in which someone was telling me about how a number of her female friends had spent years and large sums of money on a series of activities and retreats in order to “find themselves.” I suggested that if someone is in their fifties, having spent half a century on this Earth, and still can’t find themselves, then maybe, just maybe, there isn’t much there to be found.

It didn’t go down terribly well.

Update 2:

Regarding the gushing mentioned above, Rafi notes,

It’s like a parallel universe.

It is a little odd. And it does, I think, reveal the psychological gulf – and moral gulf – that can exist between we, the unremarkable, and our glorious betters. But then, like so much else, The Atlantic seems increasingly geared to the preoccupations of neurotic middle-class lefties. Which is why you’ll find self-satisfied articles on how we should prioritise the feelings and wellbeing of brazen and habitual thieves over those of the people they prey upon. And on how insufficiently woke crossword puzzles are one of “the systemic forces that threaten women.”

Things of that kind.




Subscribestar
Share: