Poetic Menopause

The Allegory of the Memory by Antoni Pitxot Soler

Long time no write. I meant to write a 'one year on' post, then a 'two years on' post but found I had so little to say, so this is something of a 'nearly three years on' post. I went for my regular check-up recently with the lovely Karen at St Mary's and was told to come back next year for what will be my penultimate visit. It has been particularly nice to see the same nurse each time and that she has been kind and supportive. My hot flushes have faded away after the first year and I only get them very rarely now, and it would be hard to pin down any other symptoms that have caused me any particular trouble. I debated deleting the whole blog because I didn't feel I had anything helpful to say on the subject but decided to leave it just because of the endometrial cancer and how important it is for women to be aware of the risks and symptoms. And also because I like looking out for the very occasional mention of menopause in literature.

Today I bring you a poem. I picked up randomly (it's the best way to pick up poetry) 'How the Stone Found its Voice' by Moniza Alvi (the cover image being the one above) and I found this one:

The Thieves

A period, you'd imagine, is no use
to anyone, but the woman who owns it,
who thought she held it secure

in the safe of her body.
Yet thieves broke in and grabbed it,
took it instead of her jewellery:

She's forty-nine, she won't miss it -
we'll just take the one, maybe two.
On the other hand, we'll have the lot,

stash them away. Nothing to boast about.
Not anything you'd forget, though.
To make off with them on a quiet night - 

it's like stealing the darkness itself,
or taking the moon, bowling it away,
expecting it to retain its glow.

Expensive People

Long time no post. I keep meaning to write a 'One Year On' post but have nothing much to add. I debated just leaving it here but decided I would keep up with my 'Menopause in Literature' posts, just because it amuses me when I come across them. This one is from 'Expensive People' by Joyce Carol Oates, reviewed today over on Silencing the Bell. It was written before she had experienced menopause so I guess she just had to go with the cliché.

"'My mother is inclined to hysteria,' Gustave explained. 'It's the change of life, you know. You can't be too careful with them at that time.'
'What's wrong with her?'
He stared at me coldly. 'It's a biological condition,' he said.
Biological conditions of mothers always frighten me, so I said nothing.
'It began a few months ago, and I knew at once what it was. I had had sense enough to be reading ahead. Father doesn't have the slightest idea what's going on - he wouldn't want to admit his own age - and I can't possibly tell him. How could you tell your father anything so personal? I've left a copy of the Reader's Digest around with a lead article on the subject, but ... My mother gets upset all the time, she cries if the toast is cold for Father, she's always picking on our maid Hortense, and she's always on the telephone, it's embarrassing, and yesterday her parakeet Fifi died and she spent all day crying, then accused Hortense and me of not giving a damn about the parakeet. so she took the corpse into the kitchen and put it in the garbage disposal, and before I could stop her she had turned it on. She was hysterical about that. This is a difficult time of life for both of us,' Gustave said vaguely." (p.55)

Old lady sex

I have just reviewed 'Love, again' by Doris Lessing over on Silencing the Bell but wanted to add an apposite little quote here. The book is about an older woman (in her 60s), how she falls in love with a very young man, after being widowed and alone for twenty years. She is thrown into confusion by the strength not only of her feelings but of her physical desire for the man who becomes the object of her affection. Her reaction is to opt not to admit her crush to anyone, not even her closest friend, for fear of censure:

"He would have to overcome, for a start, some pretty orthodox reactions. Most men and more women - young women afraid for themselves - punish older women with derision, punish them with cruelty, when they show inappropriate signs of sexuality. If men, they are getting their own back for the years they have been subject to the sexual power of women. She consoled herself with: When this business with Bill is forgotten, I shall still be Stephen's friend." (p.129)

Interestingly there is no sex in the book at all; she finds herself entangled with several men but does not succumb to their advances or her own desires. I was left, rather disappointingly, with the message that it was some weird kind of aberration to fall in love with an old woman and that it was better for all concerned if they just moved on.

Mid-life Crisis

Life has pottered on through the summer, I've had my own version of a mid-life crisis and dyed my hair for the first time ever ... and no, not to cover up any grey, just for the hell of it. However I am totally in sympathy sometimes with the reaction of Eva in 'The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year'. When you have spent half your life seeing to the needs of other people you can see the appeal of just retiring to bed and refusing to get up again. While the book was pretty dire it made me laugh quite a bit, including this lovely exchange between her weird genius twins:

" 'No,' said Brianne, 'tell me now.'
Brian Junior said, 'It's nothing much, but Dad rang and said that after we'd gone Mum went to bed wearing all her clothes, even her shoes, and she's still there.'
...
Brianne said, 'That's what happens to women when they get to be fifty. It's called the men-o-pause.'
'So what do they do?' Brian Junior asked.
'Oh, they go mad, shoplift, stab their husbands, go to bed for three days ... that kind of thing.'
Brian Junior said, 'Poor Mum. We'll phone her after the Fresher's Fair.'" (p.38)

Wise Children

Continuing my series of random references to menopause in literature I have just reviewed 'Wise Children' by Angela Carter and saved this lovely little quote. It seems that sex and having babies gets mentioned regularly in fiction but periods and menopause are still rather a taboo subject, so this rather matter of fact comment by Dora Chance is quite refreshing:

"We started the very same day those two were born, as it happens. Funny coincidence. I went to have a wee and there was the evidence, all over my underwear. I hotfooted it to Nora and she took a look on her own account. Same thing with her. Grandma got us some cotton wool. Although we are asymmetrical, in many ways, we always, funnily enough, came on in unison until we stopped, short, never to go again, the tap turned off just twenty-five years ago." (p.74)

Kitty

I read 'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham over the weekend, a wonderful book capturing the lives of three very different women, and made a note of this small passage. I liked it because it is just a nodding acknowledgment of the ageing process (Kitty is the friend and neighbour of Laura Brown):

"Kitty looks at her coffee cup with elaborately false, foolish absorption. She seems, briefly, like a simple, ordinary woman seated at a kitchen table. Her magic evaporates; it is possible to see how she'll look at fifty - she'll be fat, mannish, leathery, wry and ironic about her marriage, one of those women of whom people say, She used to be quite pretty, you know." (p.107)

Howards End

Another into a brief foray into literature. From Howards End by E. M. Forster, this is a description of Jacky Bast; I don't think she is strictly a menopausal woman being only in her thirties, but it is about the judgements that are made of women as they age. I won't quote the whole gory description of her appearance, described as 'not respectable' but 'awesome', from the boa, to the pearls, to the cheap lace and the flowery hat, but here is how it concludes:

"It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime may have been. She was descending quicker than most women into the colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it." (p.49)

Invisible

Returning to the theme of the portrayal of older women in literature I have been reading 'Swimming Home' by Deborah Levy and came across this quote. It refers to the elderly Madeleine Sheridan:

"She screamed at the waiter for a whiskey and a Pepsi for Jurgen, who disliked alcohol for spiritual reasons. It was hard for an old woman to get a waiter's attention when he was busy serving topless women in thongs. She had read about yogic siddhas who mastered human invisibility through a combination of concentration and meditation. Somehow she had managed to make her body imperceptible to the waiter without any of the training." (p.74)

(Photo from trip to Dartmoor with mum and dad)

Menopausal women in literature

I had been thinking about the way women are portrayed in literature, particularly older women, and how little mention there is of the menopause as a part of women's lives. So I am on the look out for examples of menopausal women in my reading. This first one is from 'The Personal History of Rachel Dupree' by Ann Weisgarber, that I have been listening to on audiobook. This is a description of Mrs Fills-the-pipe, a native american woman who Rachel invites for tea on the porch, in spite of her husband's antagonism to 'Indians'.

"She looked older and slower than she had in the spring. Her back was bent with a little hump reminding me how women folded in on themselves when their child bearing years had passed."