"... and drown in it, and then floundering to get back to the surface—this is the real trouble with women. Women are often embarrassed that they have this problem and pretend they have no cares at all and are free and full of energy, and they walk with bold steps down the street with large hats and beautiful dresses and painted lips and a contemptuous and strong-willed air about them...."
Wrote Natalia Ginzburg in 1948, quoted in a new New York Review of Books piece, "On Women: An Exchange Natalia Ginzburg and Alba de Céspedes, introduction by Ann Goldstein."
"Women begin in adolescence to suffer and cry in secret, in their rooms—they cry because of their nose or their mouth or some part of their bodies that’s not right or they cry because they think no one will ever love them or they cry because they’re afraid they’re stupid or because they’re afraid they’ll get bored on vacation or because they don’t have the right clothes. These are the reasons they tell themselves, but these are all just pretexts, and they’re really crying because they’ve fallen into the well and they understand that they will often fall into it all their lives and this will make it hard for them to accomplish anything worthwhile. Women think a lot about themselves and they do so in a painful and feverish way that is unknown to men. It’s very difficult for them to identify with the work they do, it’s difficult for them to rise out of the dark and painful waters of their melancholy and forget themselves. Women have children, and when they have their first child a new kind of sadness begins, made of fatigue and fear, and it’s always there, even in the healthiest and calmest women..... Women are of an unfortunate and unhappy stock with many centuries of servitude on their backs, and what they need to do is defend themselves tooth and nail from their unhealthy habit of falling into the well now and then, because free beings hardly ever fall into a well and don’t always think about themselves but are occupied with important, serious things in the world and occupied with themselves only in an effort to be more free every day...."
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35 comments:
I have read many of Natalia Ginzburg's wonderful stories so it is not surprising to me to read those words from her. They are both sad and inspiring.
We're Sending love down a well
Every analysis of male versus female characteristics will fail without a solid grounding in biology. Women are different than men. Full stop. Even as small children, little girls are girly and little boys are boyish. Full stop. (Intersex people are (1) rare, and (2) often resemble one or the other fertile reproductive sexes. Mules can live happy lives, but infertile mules they remain.)
All discussion of female melancholy and despair follows directly from (1) hormones and other in-born characteristics as coupled with (2) an emotional system tuned to successfully raise children. Female anxiety, sadness, and sense of burden follows from the evolved value of keeping babies alive. Women are masters of growing successful adults in the next generation. If not, the species / subgroups die out. Darwin 101.
Any deviation from this reflects a challenge against millions of years of evolution -- many female animals beyond mammals behave like females still. If this is considered sexist...then we are all doomed to a dysfunctional, dystopian world where people deny basic requirements because of a naïve and wishful utopian ideology.
New Jack Ryan 2022 offering on Amazon Prime, man to Czech woman president:
M: Before he was made Russian minister of defense, Dmitry Popov served in Ukraine and Afghanistan. Held the position of Marshall of the Russian Federation.
W: I know his resume. What about the man?
M: Old-school Russian hardliner, soaked in vodka, and a black belt chauvinist. He's not a man comfortable with powerful women.
W: What man is?
Seems to consist mostly of chases and shootings and hero generally not appreciated by bosses, with no powerful woman stuff yet.
Very sure we cry in secret over greater things than the wrong nose.
I’ve been sanguine and smiling for all of my life: until a few months ago. I’d say we stuff the pain down into the well- deep down. Negative events, people and losses… When the well can’t handle any more- maybe we do fall in. All I know- what goes in, must come out. Otherwise, we’ll be poisoned by our own bitterness.
Tears are cleansing, but they sure do raise hell w/the delicate skin under the eyes! I never knew that!!
It’s all good.
Well, well &well, Gilbar.
Love it.
Favorite action movie scene, replacing hero tied to chair being tortured: hero or hero platoon walking through dark building with guns pointing wherever they look. It's good for about the same amount of time filling. A powerful woman doesn't so far fit in any of these fillers, though Atomic Blonde had a long powerful woman fight scene for over-the-topness rather than filling.
https://youtu.be/v0weamgxy24
Little things like this short movie have always made me cry.
Women are pretty neurotic; it’s true. In 1948 men did not allow women’s neuroticism to steer national policy relating to public health, economics, civil rights and education, among other things. Sadly that seems to be the only thing that drives the bus now.
Mask up! Send more money to Ukraine! Support trans teachers! etc etc
I cried when my dog died back in the early 80’s
- Krumhorn
Interesting words from Natalia Ginzburg in 1948. These could have been written today.
Also interesting comments from Enigma, of which I'd say...I agree. Biology cannot be ignored, though as a society we try mightily hard to ignore the thousands of years of evolution to reach this point of who we are. This generation- suddenly swarming with gender fluidity- makes me laugh. It reminds me of the Keanu Reeves character in "Parenthood" when he notes the crazy haircut he and his wife got. "I don't know what we were thinking", he remarks. I expect to hear a whole lot of that in a few years.
But those who refuse to say that out loud, and instead continue to move down a path of resisting biology, will find themselves as Natalia Ginzburg wrote in 1948- suffering and crying in secret in their rooms- for self-induced reasons.
Lastly, I always wonder what women who see this and live this, think men's lives are like. Truth is, men are made- biologically and by society- to suck it up and just keep moving forward. Or sideways, or downward, as is sometimes the case. We all have our own stuff to deal with. And we just have to move forward. Unless you're a DEI Director at Princeton (see other post), in which case you can look for a jounalistic shoulder to lean on.
farmgirl, thank you for the testimonial of hopefulness...reflecting on "what goes in, must come out." If the well is very deep and filled with self loathing and shame, the climb out can be daunting. I have a middle aged daughter who spirals down several times a year, and the current one she is mired in is coming close to tipping me over and slipping down myself. But I'm fighting against it and finding respite in some miracles of nature. The past week, 1000's of black birds (starlings?) have been enjoying going from large tree to large tree in our woods and seeing the living murmuration swoop and sweep about in the sky is a mesmerizing distraction.
Come to think of it, I teared up at the end of Toy Story 3.
- Krumhorn
Eh. Some women, some men. The biggest fuck-ups I've known are mostly men. Women limit the harm more to themselves. Biology gives them harder knocks in their early lives, and most white-knuckle things better later for it.
But in the best scenario, a man and a woman trade off their complementary strengths over time.
Oh yeah, and there was the time over the North when shrapnel from a close call with an Uncle Charlie SAM banged up my leading edge slats and rear stabilizer and rang my bell. I was fortunate to get back to the pitching deck of the Coral Sea during a stacked up recovery. But I got a little teary when as soon as I stepped out, the cherry picker plucked up my Marine Corps jet and dropped it over the side into the South China Sea along with my .38 revolver.
Fucking paperwork.
- Krumhorn
farmgirl said...
https://youtu.be/v0weamgxy24
Little things like this short movie have always made me cry.
That was Sad.. But Lovely. Rose handled it beautifully.
Pants: so Fauci is doing such a great job? Public health disasters of the last fifty years may be laid squarely at the feet of the still virtually exclusively male leadership of the CDC, DHR, and NIAID. Bad example. Gay, promiscuous, and down-low men are responsible for the vast majority of infectious diseases, and add in almost exclusively straight male leaders to add also the lies and destructive policies of Covid. Men still commit the vast majority of child abandonment, drug abuse, and crime. On abortion I yield your point, but more women than men are pro-life and run those organizations, so men are just checked out.
Education policy at the top is almost exclusively male. The troops are women, but the men are running that clown war. Almost all the most important federal staff positions, unbelievably influential policy boards, and leadership of both public and private fascist teacher training are either straight or gay men or gay women, mostly Marxists and even Maoists and Stalinists, and have been for decades.
Voter and candidate breakdown in swing counties reveal many more leftist males than reported. The females are just more visible and more courted by the media. Most powerful leftist NGOs are run entirely by males, as are virtually all leftist Leftist mega-donors and their boards are overwhelmingly male.
Maybe we need to start acknowledging how much the gay and lesbian agenda in conjunction with creeping fascist leftism run almost exclusively by males have harmed the areas you highlight, rather than Just dumbly blaming straight women. This sounds harsh, but objective facts bear it out. Call it gender realism. And don't be afraid to neglect race realism. If you're serious and honest.
We could go through all the names, but I'm sure you have a Google machine.
Thanks to Althouse for posting this, against interest in a way.
"[W]omen have the bad habit, now and then, of falling into a well, of letting themselves be gripped by a terrible melancholy..."
Is she a biologist or something?
"Women begin in adolescence to suffer and cry in secret, in their rooms—they cry because. . "
So they really are different, aren't they?
"they’re really crying because they’ve fallen into the well and they understand that they will often fall into it all their lives and this will make it hard for them to accomplish anything worthwhile"
As opposed to not crying because, well, you know you might be called to go to war or kill yourself doing backbreaking work and die long before those crying women.
"Women think a lot about themselves and they do so in a painful and feverish way that is unknown to men."
Can this even be said today? It's the wellspring of feminism: the theory that women are special, and must be recognized for their superior specialness.
"It’s very difficult for them to identify with the work they do"
Wait, women might not want to devote themselves to things, to businesses, to careers the same as men?
"free beings hardly ever fall into a well and don’t always think about themselves but are occupied with important, serious things in the world and occupied with themselves only in an effort to be more free every day...."
Was the western idea of freedom and autonomy always an illusion?
Michaele- one of my dearest friends has battled depression spirals for years. She’s currently working in a movement therapy. She’s a masseuse so I think it has to do w/that. She took a very helpful workshop w/a woman from England recently which gave her hope.
I love murmuration.
It’s a living miracle of nature.
Hugs!
Women are different from men and always will be. Possibly they tend to be more sensitive and subjective, less "rational problem solvers" and more "emotional".
But Ginzburg builds a lot on that and adds a lot to it that may be more limited by country or era or class. There may also be much of her own personal experience and the experiences of the women around her in what she says.
More women now think of themselves as "free beings" than did her her day. They have their own jobs and money. Many women are more career-oriented than men. Realizing that one can't have it all isn't falling into a deep and debilitating well of suffering.
I'd suppose that many men in Ginzburg's day didn't think of themselves as truly "free beings." They felt trapped too, but they didn't fall into the well of brooding introspection. They just went on working. More men now have fallen into deep and painful wells of their own nowadays than in Ginzburg's day.
Some may think women still complain too much or feel too much, but the general situation is very different from what it was 70 years ago.
That is a wonderfully vivid description. It certainly describes some women, but I have no idea how broadly it applies. I am tempted to try a few Natalia Ginzburg books.
…oh, and I squirted a couple when the LSO had words with me about coming in low and slow over the round-down even though I got the 3 wire. Fucking squid prick.
- Krumhorn
This negative energy is now being channeled into "gender dysphoria" as if changing sex would solve the problem.
Glad I'm old.
It's silly of her to generalize her depression to all women, but it's just as silly to deny the existence of intelligence and reduce all human lives to unthinking animal-like reproduction.
One notices, too, that people only do this in certain circumstances. A man devotes his life to building bridges, designing software, or racing cars, and no one says "he should be having more kids." A woman wants to work outside the home, and "she's defying evolution."
The smaller grift of DIE meets the larger grift of the modern elite university.
Princeton didn't graduate an African-American student until 1947. They aren't going to let you run the university.
"To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in that suffering."
Applies to all humans.
I get teared up whenever I hear L'Internationale.
"...and they walk with bold steps down the street with large hats and beautiful dresses and painted lips...."
As a result of DIE, we now know that the people who do this were not all born women. Diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE) are just grand.
Tina: this is the most salient part of your comment
The troops are women
Yeah there are men who are powerful, incompetent and corrupt. Of course there are. But your comment does not talk me out of my opinion that this country did not seriously go off the rails of [at least aspirational and on paper] rule of law and policy by principle and not feelings until we allowed women's neuroticism to enter the public sphere instead of staying in the private sphere where it belongs.
Cry and seek safety as much as you want at home with your husbands, ladies, if you have them. But when you're harming my life and my kids' lives by doing that in public, demanding I adhere to nonsensical and harmful covid protocols, that's when I get testy.
Tongue-bath gay men all you want, because it delights you to have pets, in your personal life, but when you start demanding that I clap along at the parade and teach kids in public schools to do the same, that's when I get testy.
Harbor the refugee, the friendless, the downtrodden, the poor as much as you want in your own home and your own community, and I'll applaud you for it. But start demanding en masse that we allow everyone with a sad story to flood into this country because it would be mean to set limits or have a plan for how we are going to integrate literal millions of third world peasants into our country in a healthy and productive way, that's when I get testy.
Men used to not allow women to bring their emotive nonsense into the public sphere. They do now. They are checked out and not willing to fight. Dial up some more PornHub, fire up the Xbox and get some weed delivered, guys! It's all good!
We have an old friend who is a wealthy and accomplished attorney in his fifties. No children, so no investment in the future. He was practically giddy a couple weeks ago, contemplating a weekend where his wife would be traveling, so he could spend the entire weekend smoking pot and watching porn. What a pitiful existence.
We have deep-seated character problems in this country with both sexes. For the record I am a woman raising five young women. I'm not a misogynist. I just think there is a time and place for character. And for emotion. And we have too little of the former and too little of the latter in social and public life.
mikee said...
"To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in that suffering."
Applies to all humans.
=====
That fits with this I ran across yesterday:
"In our civilisation, therefore, religion is the force that has enabled us to bear our losses and so to face them as truly ours. The loss of religion makes real loss difficult to bear; hence people begin to flee from loss, to make light of it, or to expel from themselves the feelings that make it inevitable."
- Sir Roger Scruton
Sometimes a gal just needs to garner some new clothes and accessories to put a spring in their step.
Just ask Sam Brinton.
Speaking of scarfs, Fauci is deservedly getting some heat while Birx largely escapes scrutiny even after admitting (in her book) she lied about a number of crucial things (including jabs) as she advised the admin. Scott Atlas says she was the one actually in charge of things, though she avoided any interaction with data he brought to the table.
I miss her saying "granular".
Perhaps BOTH sexes live lives of quiet desperation.
More quiet on one side of course.
Diversity denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination under the twilight faith, [Pro-Choice] ethical religion, progressive liberal ideology. #HateLovesAbortion
That said, men, women, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
Nice story, Krumhorn. So you're just slightly less incompetent than John McCain. I prefer my war heros who don't lose millions of dollars worth of equipment. Thank you for your service. I know I feel safer now that Vietnam is a staunch ally and bulwark against the ChiCom hordes thanks to our war with them.
The truly brave warriors hide behind cloth masks designed by Inga.
Semper Fudd.
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