For Rue
"Sometimes it’s important to start with numbers. When it comes to inter-generational conflict, tied as it is to stories about Oedipus and Hamlet, numbers help ensure we’re speaking of a particular relation rather than a mythic archetype."
Malcom Harris is quite right, and provides all kinds of useful numbers* in his article Arms and Legs, but I want to step back and think about those archetypes for a moment. I find it interesting that he chooses two stories about fathers and sons to illustrate these mythic archteypes, considering that the numbers he is talking about are not so un-inclusive of women.
That the older generation must give way for the newer is not a theme limited to stories about men. Just off the top of my head, I know that in some versions of Little Red Riding Hood, little Red Cape eats bits of her own grandmother, having been presented to her by the wolf, and that this is a common symbolic trope in folk tales about girls becoming women.
And yet - there do seem to be more stories about fathers refusing to stand aside for their son's turn. I wonder why that is? Is it simply that there are more stories about fathers and sons - at least in terms of canon? Or are mothers and grandmothers more willing (forced?) to accept the need to feed their children's future - even at the expense of their own bodies?
I am curious about this not just because of what it says about gender, literature, and women in literature but also because, while facts and numbers are useful and needed, so too do we need myths and stories to weave the facts and numbers together and make sense of them. The statistics that Harris presents are not only inclusive of both genders, they are also less limited to fathers and sons than in the past; there are more debt-ridden daughters and "working" mothers within those charts than there would have been in previous generations.
And yet, the stories that he tells - not just the ones mentioned and dismissed at the beginning, but also short, fractured tales of death and persecution scattered throughout - all center on men, on sons. While claiming to eschew myths, he builds some himself, with the help of those vignettes about young men murdered before they had a chance to really live. And it's one that mothers and daughters are not a part of, despite their increasing cultural and political clout.
We must let women's stories** be a part of it though, if this is to end in anything other than Oedipedal or Hamlet-esque tragedy.
*although, his references to youth revolts around the globe, spread throughout an article based on US centered numbers, is a bit confusing...and just a little appropriative?
**and now, bc everything ever in my head right now seems to circle back to The Hunger Games, I am thinking about the ways in which - despite all the hoopla about Gale and Peeta - The Hunger Games is a story about women providing for women. About the failures of mothers and the strength of sisters; about learning to let elders atone for their mistakes and accepting younger sisters as capable in their own way. Where would the story be, after all, if Katniss had not volunteered to take Prim's place? Why, after all, do the trailers keep focusing on that? For that matter, what would the ending be like if Prim had stayed a helpless younger sister?
Malcom Harris is quite right, and provides all kinds of useful numbers* in his article Arms and Legs, but I want to step back and think about those archetypes for a moment. I find it interesting that he chooses two stories about fathers and sons to illustrate these mythic archteypes, considering that the numbers he is talking about are not so un-inclusive of women.
That the older generation must give way for the newer is not a theme limited to stories about men. Just off the top of my head, I know that in some versions of Little Red Riding Hood, little Red Cape eats bits of her own grandmother, having been presented to her by the wolf, and that this is a common symbolic trope in folk tales about girls becoming women.
And yet - there do seem to be more stories about fathers refusing to stand aside for their son's turn. I wonder why that is? Is it simply that there are more stories about fathers and sons - at least in terms of canon? Or are mothers and grandmothers more willing (forced?) to accept the need to feed their children's future - even at the expense of their own bodies?
I am curious about this not just because of what it says about gender, literature, and women in literature but also because, while facts and numbers are useful and needed, so too do we need myths and stories to weave the facts and numbers together and make sense of them. The statistics that Harris presents are not only inclusive of both genders, they are also less limited to fathers and sons than in the past; there are more debt-ridden daughters and "working" mothers within those charts than there would have been in previous generations.
And yet, the stories that he tells - not just the ones mentioned and dismissed at the beginning, but also short, fractured tales of death and persecution scattered throughout - all center on men, on sons. While claiming to eschew myths, he builds some himself, with the help of those vignettes about young men murdered before they had a chance to really live. And it's one that mothers and daughters are not a part of, despite their increasing cultural and political clout.
We must let women's stories** be a part of it though, if this is to end in anything other than Oedipedal or Hamlet-esque tragedy.
*although, his references to youth revolts around the globe, spread throughout an article based on US centered numbers, is a bit confusing...and just a little appropriative?
**and now, bc everything ever in my head right now seems to circle back to The Hunger Games, I am thinking about the ways in which - despite all the hoopla about Gale and Peeta - The Hunger Games is a story about women providing for women. About the failures of mothers and the strength of sisters; about learning to let elders atone for their mistakes and accepting younger sisters as capable in their own way. Where would the story be, after all, if Katniss had not volunteered to take Prim's place? Why, after all, do the trailers keep focusing on that? For that matter, what would the ending be like if Prim had stayed a helpless younger sister?