Just Off Center

Last night Nina and I watched The Hours in bed. This was a strange end to a strange weekend. We’d had big fun, laughing, sadness, a bit of exercise, and a shitload of cocktails. I need to use this week to dry out. Yesterday we watched a few movies in bed and accomplished none of what we needed to. I have a whole week’s worth of ironing to do that I’ll only be able to get to when I get home each night now. Fuck.

Anyway, I told Nina that we had to watch this movie, because it was just sitting there for a couple weeks and was holding up our Netflix queue. So we put it on and braced for impact. We knew it was a heavy drama and had a largely female cast, so it was destined to be an emotional roller coaster ride. However, it was less striking to me than to Nina. At the end, I thought I understood, but was more confused than anything.

The big idea in the story is that it follows three women for one day. One is a successful lesbian something or other preparing to throw a party for her novelist ex-boyfriend dying of AIDS. Good start, right? The second is a housewife in the late 1940s living the suburban life with her husband, son, and unborn child. She’s just terribly sad and unfulfilled, but doesn’t really express it. And the third is the author Virginia Woolf moping around the house trying to find some joy in her life.

The movie starts, shows, and ends in misery. Fine, I’m all for the depiction of misery in film. But it was the nature of the misery that had me utterly confused. At the end I turned to Nina, now a swollen sobby mess, and told her that it was a very good movie, superbly acted, and well shot. But I don’t get why these women were all so sad. There was the obvious argument that they had everything they needed to be happy. Nina argued with the obvious and expected rebuttal that the things that are “supposed” to make them happy do often not satisfy women.

This brought me to the subject of fulfillment. Sure, I get that having a husband and a house doesn’t mean that you should automatically be gleaming and radiant embodiment of joy. I’ve been of the opinion for many years that women too often sacrifice personal fulfillment in exchange for comforts. But these women weren’t empty. They had careers, successful ones at that. They had loving partners, great memories, financial independence, and all the opportunities in the world to seek out fulfillment.

Take the case of Virginia Woolf. I can certainly understand the concept of voices in one’s head taking away from life’s pleasures. I’ve heard a few in my own day. But to be so utterly unfulfilled when you’re a successful novelist, educated, wealthy, and adored by fans and your intellectually equal husband makes me wonder just what the hell she could have needed that was missing. I may never accomplish so much as this in my time and yet I feel that the pursuit of such lofty goals should in and of itself be my reward. So why the long face, Virginia?

Moving on, we got onto the topic of emotional differences between the sexes. I would never argue that men are the emotional identicals of women. However, I would argue against the idea that women are more developed humans because of their emotional complexities. I have only a few emotions. I offered the metaphor of color. I may look at a color card and be able to recognize the difference between eight shades of blue. An artist may be able to see the difference in 64. In similar fashion is my set of discernable emotions. I only feel a select variety of them. I’m not so Neanderthal and limited in my separation of feelings. And me not spend me life living only in limbic system neither.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yes! So I suppose that I have to conclude that there must be some combination of emotional factors that I myself cannot use my brain to pull apart that Nina can feel when she sees something like this. Couple this with her assumption that most women feel this sense of emptiness and despair at some times in their lives, and it becomes more probable that our fairer gender is capable of discerning the contrasts of emotional subtleties that we men cannot. The down side for the women is that they are so rarely able to verbalize these feelings. This means that women haven’t any greater or more advanced intellectual capability than we have as they can only feel the emotion without the ability to define it.

I went to sleep last night somewhat perplexed and glad. Glad that while my own desperations come in the form of a sense of slavery associated with my gender’s expectations of provisions, I am still able to understand and identify what limited array of feelings I experience.

# posted by Mike @ 7:42 AM