The Angel and the Editor
She really doesn’t die, that creepy undead Victorian lady, sitting in the corner of the room, staring at me with her cold, gentle, empty eyes. She reproaches me and I lunge at her, angry and terrified all at once.
The Angel in the House is a figure of idealized womanhood from a poem by Coventry Patmore which the Victorians really took to in a big way. The Angel in the House is the epitome of womanly virtue: patient, self-sacrificing, kind, loving, submissive, gentle. She exists to love and be loved.
Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman’s pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress’d,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she’s still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.
Virginia Woolf wrote about how she needed to kill the Angel in the House in order to free herself to write. It is startling to me that seventy-five years later I am still trying to kill her. To have a day to work seems delightful but also strangely greedy and selfish. To sit in pajamas at the computer while there are dishes to do, children to entertain and Christmas cards to write (what, it’s still within the twelve days. I got time) sends me into temporary spirals of guilt and self-doubt. Is this activity, this word-mongering, this story-telling, worthwhile enough to make my ignoring my ‘duties’ worth it? What must I do to deserve this time? How do I earn it?
I know all the counter-arguments. I make the counter-arguments. I espouse, believe, chant and rant the counter-arguments. I thump people with the book of counter-arguments and that is my better self talking, the person I choose to be. But there is nevertheless, a lingering, cringing little pre-feminist virus which still silently infects my heart (and the hearts of many women). If I do what I want, if it benefits no one but me, is that all right. The shouted “yes!” is hard to hear in the dark night of doubt. That little virus is the Angel, sitting like Patience on a monument, waiting for me to be good. Naturally I refuse. Of course I do. Predictably. Utterly. But do I struggle to refuse? Yes, that too. I wield a sword against her and yet she will not absolutely die. Not forever. Not always. The band The Story knew this. They knew that killing the angel in the house was an almost impossible task.
Sometimes she joins forces with the Inner Editor (and boy, do I have a cruel Inner Editor) to say things like — Not only have you not done the dishes and are those crushed cheerios on the floor, but what you’re writing? Yeah. It’s not all that. That word there? What were you thinking. Oh, goodness, but your story is derivative. It’s too short. It’s too long. It’s predictable. It’s hard to follow. That character? A cipher. A zero. A construct. That paragraph is a mess. Oh don’t write that. Or that. And certainly not that. Give up. Go be useful. Go be kind and available and practical.
Shield and sword at the ready! Swipe, lunge and skewer. Ears blocked up with cotton wool, courage firmly screwed to the stickiest place I can find. Cheerios left on the floor. But it is, make no mistake, a daily battle, a constant fray. Just one I am willing to join. Daily. Hourly. Constantly.
