Home: Leila Rosen—English Teacher and
Aesthetic Realism Associate
A Woman’s Determination: What Makes It Right or Wrong?
by
Leila Rosen
including
a discussion of the short story “The Last Leaf,” by O. Henry
Throughout history, people
have admired women who had a beautiful determination, such as Joan of Arc,
Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie—women who used their thought and energy to do good
for the world and other people. Their determination arose from what Aesthetic
Realism shows is the greatest purpose anyone can have: good will—defined by Eli Siegel as “the desire to have something
else stronger and more beautiful, because this desire makes oneself stronger
and more beautiful.”
Yet women also have a kind of determination
that comes from a completely different source, the feeling: “What I want, what
serves me and makes me important is the only
thing that matters, and I’ll stop at nothing till I get my way.” And even if we
get what we’re after, this determination is wrong, because it is in behalf of
contempt—“the desire to get a false importance or glory from the lessening of
things not [one]self”—and this is the greatest weakener of a woman’s life. As I
know from intense personal experience, this kind of determination makes us mean
and has us feel empty and disgusted with ourselves.
I
describe tonight some of what I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism, in
consultations and classes taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss, about various
forms of feminine determination: defiance, an insistence on feeling hurt, the
drive to have a man make me important. As these have been kindly criticized in
me, I’ve changed, and now have a happy, fortunate life—as a woman, wife,
teacher, friend. I will also speak about
two kinds of determination in a keen, moving American short story.
I. A
child’s determination: right and wrong
Growing up in
I was also determined to wring as much praise
as I could from the adults I knew. Though I wanted this from both my parents,
my mother wasn’t as silly about me as my father sometimes seemed. When he took
me to work and showed me off as his sweet, well-behaved little girl, I felt
powerful as he and his co-workers fawned over me, with my auburn ringlets and
pretty dresses. But the father who was adoring at times like these was, more
often, explosive or distant and, I felt, uncaring. In my first Aesthetic
Realism consultation, I was asked: “Do you think the way your father is two
people has angered you?” Yes, it had. A child can rightly object to her
parents’ doubleness, but I exploited my confusion to feel I’d be smart to
depend only on myself, and had the triumphant determination Mr. Siegel
describes in these lines from his poem “Twenty-One Distichs about Children”:
Dreary Catastrophe
As much as little
She
thought, I’m in myself and just my own.
I could go far away in my mind, oblivious to what was going on around me. And
while I was “obedient” when it paid, I felt I was my own boss, and no one was
going to tell me what to do.
Once, when I was 3 or 4, my mother was trying to get me ready to go out and I
wouldn’t let her put on my shoes. She said sharply, “Give me your foot!” “Take
it!” I answered. My stubborn insistence on having my way became family legend;
there’s a story of my mother hearing me say: “First we get up, then we get
dressed, then we eat breakfast—no, first we get up, then we get a slap, then we get dressed.”
In my teens, I coolly ignored my father when
he asked me, for instance, to bring him some water or do the dishes, and
inwardly mocked him for blowing up while I was unperturbed. My consultants
asked: “Do you like to
defy people?” I had. “What good does it do you?” I wasn’t sure, and they
explained: “When we defy someone we feel
we're [somebody]. We're not wishy-washy. But do you like the way you defy, and
the reasons for it?” No, I didn’t.
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