In Her Day by Rita Mae Brown

Author:Rita Mae Brown [Brown, Rita Mae]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5275-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

Across the courtyard Lucia, in a mother earth mood, was baking fresh bread. The smell of it invaded Ilse’s small cottage. Vito chased a busy fly and Ilse was curled up in her bed reading Mao’s remarks on art at the Yenan conference. Mao continually surprised her. He was so practical. Carole’s insistence that art was the morning star of revolution prompted her to look at what others had to say on the subject. Initially she thought Carole was firing another flashy line but grudgingly she was losing some of her distrust of the beautiful.

She had feared beauty, feared anyone consecrated by creativity. Mother forced the so-called fine arts down her throat until she thought she’d choke. At school she was expected to flutter over Beethoven or swoon at Renoir. She hated the whole thing. Gaining a feminist viewpoint taught her that art was nothing but an extended commercial for the rich. They celebrated their values or lack of them, their petty morality or latest conquest. And so she threw the baby out with the bathwater. She forgot about Mark Twain. She didn’t know about the artisans of the Middle Ages. She’d never even heard of Muriel Spark, Bertha Harris, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tillie Olsen, Barbara Deming, Maya Angelou, and all the other women fighting their way into recognition. She thought of art the way she thought of tennis. It was for the white and the rich. Worse than tennis it was almost all men.

As Ilse never faltered in her feminist faith so Carole never faltered in her faith that humans must create beauty or spiritually die. Carole forced Ilse to reconsider what she had thought was a dead issue. She still didn’t think of art the way Carole did but she reconsidered it from a political standpoint. Could art be useful? Can it teach? Can it activate people?

Why am I afraid of beauty? All my life I’ve been told I was beautiful. It was as though I was an art object, admired, prized, handled, and, later, polished. Mother saw to that. Daddy was too busy making money to participate in my growing up although he did manage to tell me I looked pretty. He also managed to look at my report cards. I hate them both. They’re self-deceived, cowardly, and inflexible. They are the enemy. Really, my parents are the enemy. Even Mother. I can understand why she did everything she did but I can’t forgive her for it. Even if she had no choice then she has a choice now. My mother should be right here in the movement beside me instead of taking ups in Brookline. Maybe that’s why I fear beauty or art or whatever it is that Carole pursues. It might get me off course, drag me back into my proper past. I don’t want a past. I want to start new. I want to be reborn. Reborn. That’s why I’m having trouble talking to Carole about feminism. I’m changed. I’m not what I was or what I was raised to be.

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