Dear reader,
When I first read pride and prejudiceI admired Mr. Bennet.
There he was, sitting in his library surrounded by books, polite and sarcastic, excoriating Mrs. Bennet, who was fixated on getting her five daughters married off.
It is not until much later that I realize that Mr. Bennet is too high-minded to care about his daughters’ prospects, leaving Mrs. Bennet to do the hectic and socially degrading work of matchmaking. Because the truth is that marriage was one of the only ways for women to advance at that time; To remain unmarried is to be in a poor dependent relationship or at best a nanny.
This is the great double standard of both literature and life: we vilify flawed mothers who stay in the trenches, while we romanticize inconsistent and often absent fathers.
There has been a flood of recent books about mothers who have traumatized their children; The wonderful Arundhati Roy Mother Mary comes to mea big shot at Jennette McCurdy I’m glad my mother diedand Molly Jungfast got angry How do you lose your mother?. I’ve read every one of them, both for their emotional truth and also because I’m obsessed with mother-daughter stories. While I sympathize with these daughters, it also seems to me that we tend to blame mothers much more for our trauma.
Why?
Of course, literature and life are full of parents who traumatize their children – Tara Westover’s bigoted bipolar father in learnerPoet Safiya Sinclair’s abusive father How do you say Babel?or all the alcoholic parents in books like Angela’s ashes.
But many literary fathers are idealists despite the damage they do. Think of the father who drinks alcohol AA tree growing in Brooklyn With his extravagant and magnificent gestures.
Then there are those literary fathers who were idealized because they had to play both father and mother—like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird Or Dr. Carr V What did Katie do?. I love them both, but I can see now, that it’s equivalent to the adoration a father feels when he takes his kids to the playground, whereas when a mother does it, it’s simply her job.
There are fathers who are seen as exemplary despite their absence, or perhaps because of it.
Take Parents in Ann Patchett’s new novel Whistler. I admired parts of the book like the lunch party scene at a wealthy Connecticut home which is a masterpiece of dialogue and description. But what stayed with me most were the emotional truths in the novel about fathers.
There are three fathers in Whistler.
There is Daphne’s biological father, a sailor who abandons his wife and two daughters to return to sea, occasionally returning to service the car. Then there is Eddie, the narrator’s stepfather, sympathetic and endearing, who suddenly disappears. And her current stepfather, self-help guru Lucas, is physically present but emotionally absent.
The novel begins years later when Eddie suddenly appears. The story goes back to showing us the beauty of that relationship. Eddie, the stepfather who had to leave, was glorified and forgiven. He is the one who is loved.
And the mother who stayed? She has survived the betrayal of men in her life, but she takes the blame.
On Father’s Day, I think about my father, a professionally successful and largely absent man. I think about the father of my children, another professionally successful man who tries hard to be present.
And I realize that maybe that’s the real argument for Father’s Day. Don’t retire from perfection. Save it for dads who don’t criticize moms. Save it for the supportive parents. The ones that do school sports days. Those who don’t stay away.
Sonia Dutta Chowdhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a personalized book service. For all questions about life and literature, email sonyasbookbox@gmail.com.
