Motherhood As Death
“Don’t scold me any more,” said Lady Slane, looking up and smiling; “I assure you that if I did wrong , I paid for it. But you mustn’t blame my husband.”
“I don’t. According to his lights, he gave you all you could desire. He merely killed you, that’s all. Men do kill women. Most women enjoy being killed; so I am told.”
In Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent, the Lady Slane is a new widow who retires to the country to spend her days in introspection. She looks back on a long marriage to the man she loved, a diplomat and former viceroy to India, and she begins to rediscover regrets that she has never admitted to anyone.
Gradually, through long interior monologues, we learn that Lady Slane wanted to be an artist, but gave up her dreams and a large part of herself to become the wife and mother that her husband wanted. Now, at eighty-five, she is widowed and able to find the lost part of herself again.
Sackville-West portrays marriage and motherhood as a kind of death. Not a physical death, but the death of a person’s dreams and ambitions and most private self. The demands and expectations of motherhood crowd out everything else, and a woman sacrifices herself for the benefit or convenience of those around her.
Christian authors have been saying the same thing for centuries, but with exactly the opposite interpretation. One of the most outspoken advocates for motherhood as a kind of sacrificial death is Elisabeth Elliot, who sees the many daily losses of self in motherhood as a way of imitating Christ. The demands of children are a thousand small crosses we carry, which serve to refine our character and make us holy.
Elliot and Sackville-West differ over the nature of the self. Sackville-West viewed our true selves as something inside us that we must recognize and release, and fiercely defend against all threats. Elliot sees our selves as wild, unruly things in need of pruning, even, in the mystery of Christian faith, need of death and resurrection. The many ways that a mother denies herself and her own desires and the frustrations and dissatisfactions of motherhood remind us to recognize our dependency on and find our fulfillment in God.
At first glance, Sackville-West and Elliot could not be more different. Elisabeth Eliot certainly has a low opinion of women like Sackville-West. But underneath the differences they share a dedication to the notion of vocation, the calling each of us feels for our special purpose in life and work. Elliot believes that a woman’s calling is always to be a housewife (something that puzzles me, given the decades she herself has spent as a professional writer and public speaker), while Sackville-West believed that our callings are more varied, but both believe in an unswerving obedience to that vocation, whatever it may be.
A few months ago I read this article at Leadership Journal, where the two ideas are found together. The author discusses the liberty that some people receive with widowhood. He tells this story:
I once stood near enough to overhear a conversation between a woman and two of her adult children soon after the funeral and burial services for her husband (and their father) had concluded. Apparently, either the son or the daughter, thinking they were offering a kind of protective love to the mother, tried to take charge and tell her something that she should or shouldn’t do.
The mother (freshly a widow, remember!) reacted with words wrapped in anger. “Now let’s get something straight right this minute. No one! No one is going to tell me what to do any longer. I’ve been doing what everyone else wanted (alluding no doubt to her deceased husband) for fifty years. Now it’s my turn. I’ll make my own decisions from here on out. Is this understood?”
He quietly laments the way some marriages require one person to hide their true self. After considering his own marriage, he asks himself the difficult question:
[I]s this woman whom I dearly love everything she is capable of being partly through my encouragement and affirmation? Or—and this is hard to write—would my departure be that “person’s” liberation?
I don’t worry much that Az the Husband squelches my personality. I’m hard to squelch, and early in our marriage I decided that whatever arguments it might cause I had to be forthright about who I really am. I am in this marriage for the long haul.
Kimberly
Oh goody, I get to be first!
Great post! I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of the people that think the way that the author of the Leadership Journal article think, are from a different generation.
Frankly, it took me a long time to grow out of the belief that I needed to change myself in order to have a good relationship. Probably because I was raised (unsurprisingly by a mom who really at heart believes that the 1950s were perfection and that the 1960s ushered in the downfall of civilization) to believe that there were “ways to behave” and ways “not to behave”. And because I frequently fell into the “not to behave” category, though never was outwardly rebellious, I always felt there was something wrong with me.
And so when I, also unsurprisingly, met man after man who ALSO thought that there was something wrong with me, I assumed _I_ needed to change.
It took a great relationship that ended tragically to teach me that I was loved for WHO I was, not who I could be. That prepared me to have the confidence to really be myself and then when I met my husband, I was able to bring the “real me” to our marriage, with no apology.
Long way to say, I think the beliefs you reference may have a lot to do with the culture in which we were raised. And hopefully, I will do better with my children, teaching them that their uniqueness is just the way God made them (obviously we do have sanctification issues to discuss, but that may wait until later.)
I love your posts, they always make me think.
Sherri E.
The demands of children are a thousand small crosses we carry, which serve to refine our character and make us holy.
Just so. I do think in some ways taking on parenthood is akin to taking on monastic orders. Only I fancy in a monastic order I’d probably get to read more.
I have actually been giving some thought to these things recently in the context of men undergoing confusion about their sexual identity. In films like “Almost Heaven” and “Brokeback Mountain,” there’s this idea that we can’t be happy unless all our deeply held desires are fulfilled, and our own personal happiness is all that matters, and it is of such paramount importance that we are permitted to do everything in pursuit of it. So it doesn’t matter that you have made marriage vows, or brought into the world children for whom you are now responsible– those obligations are somehow waived if you abandon them in pursuit of self-fulfillment.
We’ve been hit pretty hard by this personally in recent days, as it plays out in the lives of some dear friends. They are a couple about our ages, with two small children, and the husband has decided that he is undergoing some kind of sexual identity crisis and must be off to figure out what he wants. When his wife dared mention that whole “marriage vow” thing, his response was, “What? I’m supposed to be miserable my whole life to make you happy?”
That really made me want to track him down and explain that nobody cares about his feelings. The people who really love him? Want him to fulfill his obligations. Because that is what makes for long-term happiness, not the fulfillment of desire.
This kind of pathological selfishness, in men or women and for whatever specific reason, is just so destructive and hurtful. And it’s so foolish, because it’s in dying to self that we become more fully whom we have been created to be.
Wow, sorry for the novella here. This one hit close to home.
Veronica Mitchell
Wow! Such fascinating comments! All the more impressive because I notice that I somehow published the unfinished draft of this post. So thank you for making this a better post through your responses.
Kimberly, I think that is a painful but necessary lesson many women learn at some point. Being “true to ourselves” can on the one hand be a pathetic justification for extraordinary selfishness, but there is also a sense in which it is a necessary element for a lasting marriage. There is a difference between presenting the real me and accepting the trials and changes of marriage, and presenting a fake me to earn his love. One works, the other doesn’t.
Sherri, I share your frustration on this. I think that’s one of the reasons that Tamar has always made such an impression on me: her commitment to a marriage that could not possibly have been fulfilling, and it’s ultimate reward in the line of Judah and the birth of Jesus.
Minnesotamom
I was going to bring up a similar point that Sherri did, but she already said it so eloquently that I needn’t. One addition: my pastor is known for his theology of “Christian hedonism,” which, as you can imagine, gets misunderstood more than it doesn’t. But I think the premise stands here: If you are finding your happiness in glorifying Christ, then the product of your life will be God-glorifying as well.
I think far too many Christian women are guilted into thinking that the only thing they can do for the Lord is be a wife and mother, when really, as long as they are living within God’s will (laid out in the Word and not to be confused with “God’s will for my life,” which is the foundation of way, way too many “Christian” books), He may use their bent in a variety of ways. Granted, if they DO become mothers, the Bible gives some clear instruction on parental authority, but the thought that loving Christ can only be manifested in one occupation for women is, um, scary.
Minnesotamom
Oh, and by the way, I’m an Elisabeth Elliot fan! But I choose to take that legalist penchant in her writing with a grain (or shaker) of salt.
Veronica Mitchell
Minnesotamom, legalist penchant is right. There is so much to admire and learn from in what she writes, but sometimes her rigidity weakens her point rather than strengthens it. I admire her commitment and erudition, but when I read her stuff I am intensely aware of the many, many people she disapproves of, which would include me, if we ever had a conversation.
JulieC
Thinking of motherhood as a form of “dying to self” was helpful to me. It gives a sense of long-term purpose to the constant struggle against selfishness–my kids’ needs often run smack up against my preferences.
I’ve never read anything by Elisabeth Elliot (well, other than “Through Gates of Splendor” ). When I was in Bible college, all of the women who raved about her books made me want to run in the opposite direction. It was nice to hear about her from women I don’t think I would run from.
brother
Love is humble. It is a choice to put the needs of others ahead of yourself because of the joy you see in them. In my marriage and as a parent I am reminded daily how hard loving others is and how selfish I really am. Everyday in marriage and parenting I am able to make a choice to demonstrate love.
My wife and I invited a family over to the house for Thanksgiving dinner because my friend’s wife was attending a family funeral. The husband refused insisting that his 16 year old daughter was capable of preparing a Thanksgiving Dinner for his family. When I protested his decision he said, “I’m teaching her to serve.” At the time I found that a rather shocking statement. Now, having a 7 year old daughter of my own, I consider it a very wise statement because my daughter does need to learn how to serve if she is going to become what Christ wants her to be.
Christ came to serve and not to be served. We need to train our children (boys and girls) to serve, and the only way to do it is to set an example of them in our relationship with our spouses and with our children.
Marriage is about two people becoming a team together and morphing into something that is more than the sum of the parts.
Veronica, it’s ironic that I have to hit the “submit” button to have this posted
Kimberly
I can’t help but comment, AGAIN, on this post. I was thinking more of Sherri’s comment and my thoughts on “being real”. One of the positive, though perhaps not “fun”, things about a good marriage is the “iron sharpening iron” thing.
If both partners are trying to live rightly, and are actually able to submit to each other in love, they will become better partners and parents.
I always wonder, when the whole “sexual identity” issue arises (which it did recently in some friends of ours who have six children for Pete’s sake) what would happen if the woman, for a change, said, “you know, I am tired of this whole mom thing. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, so I am going to go off so that I can be true to me.” I suspect that people would mostly think she was horridly selfish. But those same people applaud the sexually conflicted man for being true to himself.
That is probably food for a whole other post (which I am not going to write as my blog is mostly defunct.)
edj
Very interesting post and comments!
One thing I think we lose sight of is that Jesus commended Mary, not Martha, as having chosen the better way…yet Martha was fulfilling a typical womenly role. He is always more concerned with our relationship to him first; after that come other relationships.
Pieces
Fabulous. Very thought provoking. I can honestly say that (so far) the Loved hasn’t squelched any part of my dreams or personality. I can’t say the same for him. He jokes that I am the dream crusher. Mostly because he dreams about doing things that are financially impossible. He knows it but he stills blames me.
I know older women that would be totally set free to do what they desire if their husbands died. So is it generational? Or will we all get there when we are older?
Alice
I love All Passion Spent (beautiful movie version w/ Dame Wendy Hiller too!) Sackville-West recognizes the complexity of the role of wife/mother. There is much joy and love in it, yet great sacrifice. It would have been easy for her to create a dissatisfied character in Lady Slane, but she is not. Merely wistful (and willing, at 85! to make courageous life changes).
There is a joy in sacrifice and service, but I find it is not enough and quickly becomes dissatisfying when focused on my family members, much as I love them. However, if I am doing them for Christ Himself–it becomes much easier.
I struggle with Elisabeth’s Elliot’s writing/views, frankly (esp. Passion & Purity). I always seem to see contradictions there. I’m interested–have you ever read the book “Stepping Heavenward” by Elizabeth Prentiss? It is so dear to me (E. Elliot wrote the forward); I’d love to hear your take on it if you have…
Veronica Mitchell
Alice, I haven’t read Stepping Heavenward. And my dissertation-that-will-never-be-finished was on issues surrounding women’s aggressive sexuality in the Hebrew Bible, so i completely disagree with Elliot’s stance in Passion and Purity that women’s sexuality should be strictly receptive.
And I watched that Wendy Hiller movie too and loved it - that’s actually what made me read the book.
Heidi
Thank you. That was what I needed to read today–even if the answers are different for everyone, I needed to think about how I feel about the issues of sacrifice and “death” in marriage and motherhood.
Even though I chose to stay home with our children and worked for several years outside of the home before I did choose to stay at home, I still feel like sometimes my life’s main purpose is to make other people’s lives possible.
I think it’s a real dilemma that most mothers (working or stay-at-home) deal with at different times. So, thank you for your thoughtful and fairly non-judgmental approach to the issue.
Heidi
And I meant”fairly non-judgemental” in a nice way, not in a needly, nasty way. I can guess how you feel about the topic, but you didn’t smack me over the head with it.
Just clarifying.
Alice
Whew. I was a little trepidatious about speaking ill of Passion & Purity. That book was highly revered when I was in college, yet when I read it I thought, “Wha…huh?!”
I highly recommend Stepping Heavenward — other than the Bible, it is the book that has influenced me most. (sample quote: “I would like to know if there is any reason on earth why a woman should learn self-forgetfulness which does not also apply to a man?”) It was written by the same woman who wrote the hymn “More Love to Thee.”
Anyway, enjoying this discussion! (and thanks for the comment on my blog!)
edj
I actually didn’t like Stepping Heavenward. The woman just bugged me.
bea
This is the second post I’ve read on this subject this week. The first one cited a study on widowhood that showed that men and women have different reasons for remaining single after widowhood - the men tended to cite health problems as the main reason, while the women associated remarriage with a loss of freedom. Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” dramatizes much the same concept.
I don’t personally feel I’m exceptionally subject to that pattern of excessive service to others. I’m pretty unsquelchable too.