seriously???

[tempestsarekind]

Is this the worst article, or THE WORST article

Comments

[litlover12]

*facepalm*

Excuse me, Ms. Craig, but I think your own insecurities are showing.

[tempestsarekind]

YES. Motherhood is obviously a great and worthy task, but what's with the assumption that it's the only way to really be a woman?

Though sadly, this does seem to be a common enough view...

[litlover12]

Yes, indeed.

I wouldn't even argue against the idea that it's good to learn to put others first -- good for one's character even if it might be hard on one's career. But, contrary to what so many people seem to believe, you can do that even without having children!

[tempestsarekind]

Yes! I agree that learning to put others first sometimes is a good thing - but it seems to be the case that only women are asked to do it as a matter of course. I can't imagine an article about a male author suggesting that his work would have been better if he'd learned to put others first, because even when we freely acknowledge that some male artist is a jerk as a human being, his work remains separate ("horrible man; great artist"), if we don't assume that it's his freedom from the rules of civility and decency that allowed him to be great in the first place.

[viomisehunt]

GRRRRRRR, and this is from a writer who is a mother and grandmoter.

[tempestsarekind]

There's absolutely a line between "mothers can be great artists and make great art about motherhood (or anything else they like) and "women can only really be great artists if they are mothers," and this article sailed *way* over that line!

[cschells]

Because when I think of Simone de Beauvoir, I definitely think of books that are limited in their enlightenment by their charm...

[tempestsarekind]

You can't be charming and insightful! Everyone knows that! Charm is childish and insignificant. Like comedy.

UGH

[leucotheasveil]

OMGWTFBBQ?!?
Is it that slow a news day that he has to pick on childfree women?
You should cross post this to childfree30plus, or one of the other CF communities.

Noone ever says things like that to men, probably because if they did happen to knock somebody up, "great men" have a higher calling and its okay if they are absent of lousy fathers, so people dont make the distinction of whether they had kids or not.

UGH!

Re: read article

[leucotheasveil]

AND WRITTEN BY A WOMAN?
That grates even more.
If you had kids and regret it because you blame them for ruining your holidays...
Don't take it o ut on the departed.

Re: read article

[tempestsarekind]

Yes, absolutely: no one suggests that about men; you can be a horrible father - or person - and still be a great artist. And this self-aggrandizing piece on how only mothers can be really good writers just takes the cake. Like, it's great for you, writer of article, that motherhood has made you a better person, but that doesn't mean that women without children are somehow unfinished or arrested in their development as humans or as artists.

Re: read article

[neadods]

This was written by a woman? Someone's feelong defensive about her life choices, methinks... And it isn't famously single authors.

Feeling. Damned Ipad touchscreen!

[lareinenoire]

FAIL. OH, SO MUCH FAIL.

This is why I don't watch biopics of writers I love.* Because they always, always, make it about either having children or not having children. Bah.

* Well, mostly. I have a somewhat shameful love for Dangerous Beauty in spite of its inaccuracies, enough that I showed it to my students, forgetting exactly how much onscreen sex there was...

[tempestsarekind]

Indeed! I'm *still* mad about Becoming Jane (which, I guess, is *technically* about romance rather than children, but it's more or less the same thing). I really liked Miss Austen Regrets, actually, because despite the title (I'll forgive it for the play on "Miss Otis Regrets"), it at least has Austen saying, no, I *chose* this life, and it's made me happier than anything else. Also, Olivia Williams plays Jane Austen, which is everything that is awesome.

I should see Dangerous Beauty again at some point; I watched it in college with friends and remember liking it. I don't really know anything about Veronica Franco, though, so perhaps I would be less affected by its inaccuracies. :)

[lareinenoire]

I actually found the inaccuracies very useful for teaching purposes because it made my students think about the way modern writers re-imagine early modern women, not to mention the kinds of assumptions people still have regarding what women artists can or cannot do (c.f. your post about that awful article about Maeve Binchy).

I remember when Miss Austen Regrets aired and I meant to watch it but never got round to it. I knew Becoming Jane would annoy me despite how much I like both Anne Hathaway and James MacAvoy...

Although, speaking of Austen, I am reading Death Comes to Pemberley and it's quite good. It is heartening to know that good Austen-fic is possible.

[tempestsarekind]

That makes sense! Becoming Jane - which I only watched for the sake of my tutorial - made me predictably livid, but we did actually get a pretty good discussion out of it.

It's good to hear that Death Comes to Pemberley is good, though. Something positive to balance out all these weird thriller versions of NA and erotic additions to Austen's texts that are currently in the works...