“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
¯ Charlotte Brontë
Every year, most of the world wakes up and says, “Let’s celebrate women! You know, our mothers, wives, daughters, our significant others! Let’s! ” And governments go into overdrive and people do too. For a day, you can almost do no wrong, if you’re a woman. And then everything quietens down and it’s life as usual. But what about the women?
In Hypocrite Women , Denise Levertov makes a good point. “Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak/ of our own doubts, while dubiously/we mother man in his doubt!” It’s a strong poem and makes many uncomfortable points, not the least how women often give up their dreams. “And our dreams/ with what frivolity we have pared them/ like toenails, clipped them like ends of/ split hair.” The most important and cherished dreams sometimes disappear in the demands of whatever the woman is involved in.
Louise Bogan gives us another point of view in Women . The poem is a bundle of contradictions. Women, “wait, when they should turn to journeys/they stiffen, when they should bend.” And women are provident, with no wilderness, “content in the tight hot cell of their hearts/ to eat dusty bread.” The poem almost seems to suggest that women are a bad fit, in any situation! Or that they would okay no matter how their life turned out- being the survivors that they are.
As Marie Ponsot says in Among Women , “What women wander?/ Not many. All. A few/Most would, now & then /& no wonder. / Some, and I’m one /Wander sitting still.” She ends the poem saying, “Women wander/ as best they can.”
After all, freedom means different things to different people. For some, it could be pursuing education in a city far from home, for others, being able to look after her child without being judged for having an education but not pursuing a career. We do the best we can do when we choose it with free will.
I have a confession to make. I am not a big believer in Women’s Day. Maybe because I come from a family of strong women. Mother, sister and aunts, each of them with something to teach. And friends! My friend circle has women who work, who stay at home and who are happy with the choices they make. This is the kind of woman power that I understand- it’s not the tom-toming of being ‘strong women’ or endless discussions about what feminism means. It just… is. Like Nora Ephron says, “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
Perhaps my reluctance to celebrate this day comes from that old chestnut; that having a day allotted for you in itself means that you are treated differently. That said, this is undoubtedly a season of change. And women are celebrating, raising their voices, marching in protest, going about quietly in their day to day essential work, speaking up, not being pushed to a corner, not cowing down , not backing off, not being stereotyped, not being treated as if they are nothing.
Asbestos and iron rods, mocking eyes and loose talk- the woman has been subjected to horrendous experiences and yet, she doesn’t give up. It is not in her nature to. I am almost always proud to be a woman. Today, and in this country, I am especially so.
Happy Women’s Day to all of you.
Srividya is a poet. Read her work at >www.rumwrapt.blogspot.com
