Tag: Mary Harrington

Send in the Crones

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

This painting is me in twenty years. I hope. Note my cottage in the background.

Our Friend Mary Harrington

I want to talk about another lovely gift that I have been given by reactionary feminist author Mary Harrington. I reviewed her book, Feminism Against Progress, here.

In the video below, Jordan Peterson interviews Harrington. She gets to talk a lot. I don’t know whether this is because Peterson is mending his monologuing ways, or because Harrington is confident, articulate, and not afraid to take long turns, but in any case, we definitely get to hear her thoughts. They are not the exact same thoughts as the ones she expressed in Feminism Against Progress. You can see that her thinking is still developing, particularly the terms she likes to use to describe things.

It’s a very long video, and well worth the listen if this topic interests you, but for your reading pleasure I have transcribed the section that I want to talk about. Here it is:

At about 46:24, Peterson says, “The thing about women is that their mythological orientation is multidimensional and complex.” He mentions Beauty and the Beast, and Woman and Infant, as two possible hero myths for women, but notes that “our society does not hold sacred the image of Woman and Infant as a fundamental unit of female identity” (so we’re really only left with Beauty and Beast, which gets us into trouble).

Then at about 49:00 he asks Harrington, without asking a direct question, what she thinks is the woman’s Heroic Journey. And she’s got an answer for him!

After a detour into why she felt lonely as a young mother, Harrington answers at 51:45,

“In my observation, there is a hero’s journey for women, it just doesn’t follow the same track as the male one. And in fact, it has three parts, which correspond to a very ancient female archetype, which is the Maiden, the Mother, and the Matriarch. The triple goddess. And anecdotally, it stacks pretty closely to me with actually what a majority of normal women’s lives look like.

“You know, as the Maiden, you’re free, you do have more of a warrior aspect. The Mother is more oriented towards home and the domestic sphere, and probably bluntly just doesn’t care about [outside] work as much.

“But then, later on – and this was something I found very interesting when I did therapy training in the late aughts and early tens, was just how many of the trainees on that course were women in their 50s and 60s. So these were women who had pretty much done the motherhood arc, and they were moving into a new phase of life. They were moving into the Matriarch space. I mean the classic, three-part-goddess term for this is Crone. But they were some way from cronehood. These were lively, vital, energetic, public-spirited women who had some life experience. They had a lot of connections, they had a rich social life, they had met lots of people, and they were ready to give something back.

“And in my observation, there are a huge number of women who reach the end of the Mother part of that journey, and will then re-train. And those women are a huge, rich force for deepening reflection in the culture, for public service, for all manner of incredibly productive, usually quite self-effacing, but incredibly productive, life-giving contributions to the social fabric. And they’re incredibly marginalized. They’re almost completely invisible in terms of the liberal feminist narrative, which really centers the Maiden. And it wants to foreground the Maiden and to tell women that the hero’s journey means essentially being the Maiden for their entire life. At best, if the Mother is noticed, it’s as a problem to be solved. And the Matriarch doesn’t really get a look-in at all, and if she does, it’s only so that she can be denounced for being a TERF, or in some other way spat on for being a dinosaur or obsolete or old-fashioned or out of touch, or in some other way irrelevant or ridiculous.

“And in fact, these [older] women are the backbone of the social fabric. I mean, those are the women who are making weak cups of tea for slightly traumatized new mothers like I was in small-town England. (laughs) And telling me I’m doing fine. And really, that mattered a lot at the time. I mean, those are the women who are running Brownies groups for no money every Wednesday because they can and because they want to give back. Those are the women who are re-training as counselors and helping traumatized people for free. Those are the women who keep things going. (laughs again) And yet, somehow, the liberal feminist version of the hero’s journey just doesn’t see them at all.”

About that word “Crone”

I love what Harrington has to say here. But I must make a note of how she shies away from the word “crone” in favor “matriarch.” Based on the qualifications she puts around even mentioning the word, it’s apparent that Harrington thinks crones are women at the very end of their lives, who are listless and isolated: the opposite of “having a lot of energy” and “lots of connections” and “a rich social life.” The word crone in Harrington’s mind apparently conjures up a bedridden hospice patient who enjoys her only social interaction when the pastor visits once a month.

I got a similar reaction out of my editor when I went to describe Zillah (one of the main characters of my trilogy) as a crone. The word crone, said Editor, reads “old and ugly.” I convinced her to leave it, because I wanted to broaden the meaning of the word, or perhaps recover some of its original meaning.

Zillah, in my series, is in her sixties when we meet her in The Long Guest. I’m cheating a little with having a protagonist in her 60s, however, because my books are set in the immediate post-Flood era, when people lived into their 250s, and a woman in her sixties could still be fertile. Zillah has grown children in The Long Guest, but she still looks like a young woman, and in fact she gets her own romance arc.

In later books, Zillah gets older. By The Great Snake, when I was calling her a crone, she was over one hundred. By the standards of the time, this is only middle-aged, and in fact she is strong enough to hike all day, do dryland farming, and so forth. However, her role in the community is definitely what Harrington describes above as Matriarch. She practices emergency medicine and herbology, innovates in farming maize, counsels her family through crises, and brings potential problems to the attention of the patriarch (who is not her husband but her son). She can’t do everything, and in fact she has had some costly failures. But my trilogy would be much darker without Zillah.

I’m not saying my books anticipated what Harrington is saying, but … my books anticipated what Harrington is saying.

Hats off to Grandma! Or are they?

Of course, she is not the only one saying it (though she may be saying it the most eloquently, and with the biggest platform), and she is not the only one thinking it. Every woman is thinking through these things, whether she realizes it or not, and most women come to some kind of resolution. You have to, if you don’t want to live your life with a pathological fear of aging. This is not an attractive look, and most people figure this out and make some kind of effort to “age gracefully,” that is, to embrace their status as an older person.

This task is made more difficult in modern Western society, where we as a culture don’t value our elders at all and don’t really have any special role for them in the community. This is true of old men, to a lesser degree, but it’s really true of old women. Has anyone heard the phrase, “old women of both sexes”? It’s usually used in the following context: “I want to do bold plan XYZ, but when I said so, it really upset the old women of both sexes.” Old women, we learn, are fragile, risk-averse, set in their ways, and prudish. Probably bureaucrats. Also, they are not athletic or healthy (two other things our culture really values).

Our culture’s disdain for old women traces back to its disdained for motherhood and family life. If you don’t value mothers as such, then you are less disposed to respect your own mother when she is old. Further, if a culture does not have a lot of young moms who need help at home, then there really is no job for the old ladies to do other than go to work in an office, where the hours, tasks, and working conditions are often uncongenial to their nature and where admin would really like to push them out before they develop a bunch of expensive health problems.

On the other hand, if your culture prioritizes a large, thriving household of the kind described in Feminism Against Progress and in Proverbs 31, then there is plenty of useful work for Grandma to do. Furthermore, it’s exactly the kind of work she has spent decades becoming good at. She’s baking her famous dessert, she’s sewing outfits for the little kids, she’s quilting, she is babysitting. She’s answering Mom’s panicked questions about how to garden, get that stain out, and how in the world do I manage everything. This is work that is actually useful and needed (which is the kind of work that keeps people alive and happy). But it’s not like going to work in a shop or office in your fifties. There is more variety, and the schedule is freer. There is room for Grandma to go home and be by herself for a few days. There is room for her to take a nap. And unlike admin at the office, your grown children will not fire you and wash their hands of you when you develop health problems (not ideally, anyway).

Of course, all this is the ideal, and we all know that reality is different. Not every family relationship is a happy one that would allow this kind of close community (especially 60 years after the Sexual Revolution began its relentless campaign to break up families). And even in ideal circumstances, we can get on each other’s nerves. That’s why, in the painting, I am living in a cottage in the woods, where I can garden, paint, and keep a library. Ya gotta’ know your limits. But there is a world of difference between having some tension with your children in a context that values and honors older people for their wisdom and experience, and having to get a 9 to 5 job that really calls for a younger person, just to prove you’ve still “got it” and to justify your existence. This is the difference between Zillah’s world and ours.

Looking forward to being a Crone

I have been fortunate that I was a given a husband and children. I’ve moved through the stages and am now standing on the threshold of matriarchy/cronehood. And I’m liking the view.

Don’t get me wrong … I’m frightened as well. What scares me most is the prospect of chronic pain or disability — my own, or a loved one’s. But I’m not scared of aging itself. I like the idea of less pressure to look beautiful, of a lightening of parenting responsibilities (in exchange for others), and of time to keep getting better at my various crafts.

As a Christian, I am surrounded by a world that despises motherhood, families, and old women … but I have access to a world that honors them. I am in the world but not of it.

Also, I realize that I need to do a better job appreciating the older women who have surrounded me since I was small, my own mother included. I didn’t ever like being taught new things, because of the amount of correction it involved, but now I see how much we must listen to these ladies, honor them, eat the food they cook for us. Send in the crones!

A Gnome Love Story

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

First, I have to explain why we are doing this gimmick with gnomes and not some other creature.

My mom used to have this little pair of porcelain statues that she kept in her china cupboard. You may have seen this type of thing before. They were shaped like a little Dutch boy and girl in stylized traditional costume, and they were both leaning forward adorably with their eyes closed. You were supposed to position them facing each other so that they appeared to be kissing …. which, of course, Mom always did.

I didn’t think much of these figures when I was younger. I took them for granted, as one does. They were readily available in Holland, Michigan, near where we lived.

But this year, as I was reviewing Mary Harrington’s book and thinking about the Prov. 31 woman, it occurred to me that those little figures were teaching us a profound lesson. I thought I would like to photograph them for a blog post.

But alas, the Dutch boy and girl were either in storage, or lost.

The next step was to buy a similar pair of my own. It was around Thanksgiving, so I thought the home decor store might have such a set. Boy and girl Pilgrim? Boy and girl Indian?

Long story short, the closest I could get was football-fan gnomes.

This isn’t a complete disaster. I like gnomes, and Mr. Mugrage and I are now football fans (though these gnomes are not wearing the colors of our sons’ team).

But anyway, if you find kissing boy-and-girl sculptures (especially Dutch ones), please send them to me. In the meantime, Mr. and Mrs. Gnome will do nicely for our illustration of a matching set.

You see … this is not patriarchy. A man by himself cannot be a patriarch.

And this … is not matriarchy. A woman by herself cannot be a matriarch.

You see, term “patriarch” OR “matriarch” implies the existence of a household. It implies that the “-arch” has had children and possibly grandchildren with a member of the opposite sex (hence the patr- or matr- part), to whom they are married, and with whom they are now ruling over this household (hence the -arch part), seeing that it prospers. This situation is simply not possible without either the mom or the dad. If the dad is a patriarch in the true sense of the term, then he has a matriarch beside him, and as the -arch implies, she is receiving just as much honor in her motherly role as is he in his fatherly one.

See, like this:

What those little kissing Dutch figures were trying to tell us is that patriarchs and matriarchs are a matching set.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you gnomes out there!

Reactionary Feminists, Meet Your New Heroine

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

This is Mary Harrington. She has written a book, and here it is:

Mary is an academic. She describes herself as someone who has “liberalled as hard as it is possible to liberal.” She believed all the lies that were told her by the sexual revolution, and though she has no desire to share the details, says her experience of it was comparable to that of Bridget Phetasy, with her famously heartbreaking article, “I Regret Being A Slut.”

Progressivism is no longer in the interests of women

As you can see from the phrase that makes “liberal” into a verb, Mary has quite the way with words. The basic thesis of her book is that the progressive religion, by making personal autonomy the only definition of the good to which everything else must be sacrificed, has gone way past the point of diminishing returns and is now actually harming women rather than helping them. But since Mary is so articulate and fiery, she can put it far better than I can:

We’re increasingly uncertain about what it means to be [sexually] dimorphic. But when we socialise in disembodied ways online, even as biotech promises total mastery of the bodies we’re trying to leave behind, these efforts to abolish sex dimorphism in the name of ‘human’ will end up abolishing what makes us human men and women, leaving something profoundly post-human in its place. In this vision, our bodies cease to be interdependent, sexed and sentient, and are instead re-imagined as a kind of Meat Lego, built of parts that can be reassembled at will. And this vision in turn legitimises a view of men and women alike as raw resource for commodification, by a market that wears women’s political interests as a skin suit but is ever more inimical to those interests in practice.

What we call ‘feminism’ today … should more accurately be called ‘bio-libertarianism,’ [and it is] taking on increasingly pseudo-religious overtones. This doctrine focuses on extending individual freedom as far as possible, into the realm of the body, stripped alike of physical, cultural or reproductive dimorphism in favour of a self-created ‘human’ autonomy. This protean condition is ostensibly in the name of progress. But its realisation is radically at odds with the political interests of all but the wealthiest women — and especially those women who are mothers.

… nothwithstanding the hopes of ‘radical’ progressives and cyborg feminism, a howlingly dystopian scenario can’t in fact be transformed into a dream future just by looking at it differently.

ibid, p. 17, 18, 19

I mean, I couldn’t agree more. The most obvious people to suffer from the real-life application of what Mary elsewhere calls “Meat-Lego Gnosticism,” are children. Babies and children need their moms. In fact, Mary’s thinking began to really change on this topic of progress when she had a child of her own and was shocked by the instant bond.

But even a little bit of thought shows that women are also suffering, because most women, like Mary, actually want to bear and raise their own children, preferably in a household with the child’s father. And, in fact, men are suffering too, not only because half of those motherless children grow up to be men, but because it turns out that humans were made to be embodied, and so living a disembodied life, alienated from our physicality and from human relationships, makes all humans miserable.

Mary calls herself a “reactionary feminist” because she is reacting against “progress” in favor of the interests of women.

Down with Big Romance

Often, when people reject progressive feminism, the only alternative that they hear presented is “traditional marriage,” by which they mean the 1950s sitcom model. But that model is actually not traditional marriage so much as postindustrial marriage.

Harrington spends a lot of space in the book pointing out how, with industrialization, many of the homesteading tasks that were once the responsibility of the housewife got outsourced to the market. She draws on Dorothy Sayers for this, who pointed it out a long time ago in her essay “Are Women Human?” I wanted to quote Sayers directly, but don’t have a copy of the essay on hand. Essentially, she says that before the industrial revolution, women got to do milking, cheesemaking, beer brewing, baking, spinning, weaving, sewing, mending, and a number of other arts and crafts that took quite a lot of skill and are also fun. Sayers’ main point is that, in the wake of all these trades being moved out of the household, it is no wonder that middle- and upper-class women are bored and would like to do something other than sit around the house. Harrington’s application of this point is a little different. She points out that in economic terms, before industrialization a wife contributed really essential labor to the household. A husband could not get along economically without her. Because both spouses were committed to keeping the same ship afloat, the man was less likely to abandon the woman.

Post- Industrial Revolution, the woman (particularly in upper and middle classes) now contributed much less to the household economically. The man was the sole wage earner, which gave him a lot of economic power. He could treat his wife badly, and she’d have no recourse. It is to this shifting dynamic that Harrington attributes the rise of Big Romance. A husband and wife must like each other, must be madly in love, and then he will treat her kindly despite the imbalance of economic power.

I think Harrington’s analysis has merit, though it doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, I would argue that relations between men and women first got badly messed up at the Fall. Wife abuse was certainly possible before the Industrial Revolution. Also, I would argue that Big Romance owes something to the concept of Courtly Love in the Middle Ages, which in turn owes something to Paul’s exhortation to newly Christianized former pagans: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” But all that said, I do think Harrington is on to something here. Obviously, when we are talking in broad strokes about the relationships between men in general and women in general, over centuries or millennia, there are going to be a ton of cultural and historical and literary and religious and yes, economic factors that go into it, even if we confine our survey to just the West.

Mixed-Economy Households

So, if we don’t like Meat-Lego “feminism” and we don’t like 1950s Big Romance, what’s left? At this point, Mary’s book begins to have the feel of re-inventing the wheel. Metaphors abound that compare modern men and women’s situation to rebuilding, using broken tools, in a postapocalyptic wasteland. Mary doesn’t know a lot about what a life that is good for women, children, and men should look like, but she is pretty sure that for the majority of people, it’s going to be in families built on heterosexual marriage. And she’s aware that, to find a good model, we’ll have to go back before the Industrial Revolution.

Here’s what she comes up with.

The weakness of [proposals to go back to 1950s style marriage] isn’t that they’re unworkable, or even that they’re ‘traditional,’ but that they’re not traditional enough. For most of history, men and women worked together, in a productive household, and this is the model reactionary feminism should aim to retrieve.

Remote work, e-commerce and the ‘portfolio career’ are not without risks … But cyborg developments also offer scope for families to carve out lives where both partners blend family obligations, public-facing economic activity and rewarding local community activities in productive mixed-economy households, where both partners are partly or wholly home-based and work collaboratively on the common tasks of the household, whether money-earning, food production, childcare or housekeeping.

ibid, p. 179, 180

She then profiles two young women who are doing just that. Willow, in Canada, is a writer and mom to a small baby who, when childcare allows, also works with her husband on the family woodworking business. (He does the building, she does the finishing, basically.) Ashley and her husband, in Uruguay, have three children and do a mix of homesteading and language teaching.

In [Ashley’s] view, the romance comes not through the ego-fulfillment of a perfectly congenial partner, but working with someone to build something that will outlast them: ‘It’s much more romantic in the end when you realise this home, this life, these children, if they’re thriving it’s a result of our shared ability to create something greater together through our interdependence and cooperation … We’re working towards something bigger than ourselves. We’re building a legacy.’

Isn’t this a rather bleak and utilitarian view of a long-term relationship, though? To this I can only say that in my own experience, in practice the Big Romance focus on maximum emotional intensity and minimum commitment is bleaker. … A commons is, by definition, not available for consumption by anyone with the freedom to contract, or the money to buy, but only to those who share and sustain it.

ibid, pp. 183 – 184

What’s interesting about this vision of the household is that it has been described, not by “conservatives,” but by Reformed Christians, frequently, even within the past few years. Douglas Wilson, whom Mary Harrington has perhaps never heard of, has by now written a small library’s worth of volumes on this very topic. His daughter, Rebekah Merkle, has a book and a documentary about it, both called Eve in Exile.

And here, in his video Theology of the Household, Alistair Roberts lays out a view that is strikingly similar to the one in Harrington’s book:

Not surprisingly, these Christian thinkers are getting their picture of a household that is good for both men and women from … the Bible. And now I’d like you to meet Reactionary Feminism’s poster girl, and surprise! it’s not Mary Harrington.

The Proverbs 31 Woman

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night. In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her household, for all of them are clothed in scarlet. She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple. Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes. She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Proverbs 31:10 – 31, NIV

Wow!

So, this is an older lady, a matriarch. She has children, and she is honored both by her husband, her children, and the public for her role as a matriarch. (Contrast this with Meat Lego feminism, where being a mom means you are dumb and irrelevant.) Perhaps this lady is beautiful, but we are not told that. In any case, she is an older woman, and “beauty is fleeting.” Her beauty has faded. But she has style (clothed in linen, purple, and scarlet). There is a lot of emphasis on her strength and capability. She engages in cottage industry, she has employees (servant girls), and she handles money and gets into real estate. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction, which probably primarily is directed at her children, but this could include her mentoring younger women and nowadays it could include being a writer like Willow. Her husband is a pillar of the community, and this is not to the exclusion of his excellent wife, but because of her and because of the kind of household they have built together. She, too, is known in the community and opens her hands to the poor. They are the people you go to if you need advice or help.

And, finally, this lady is not meant to be an outlier. “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” The idea is that there are a lot of amazing women out there, but every husband should feel this way about his wife, that she is the best. The Prov. 31 woman is an older matriarch, so she has had time to build up an impressive portfolio of skills and accomplishments that for many young moms is years away. But this is where they can end up, if they are given support and honor in their role as moms and are shown what is possible.

In other words – I wouldn’t make this a headline without context as it would be misunderstood, but — the Prov. 31 Woman is the original Girl Boss.