PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS ÇA RESTE LA MÊME CHOSE
posted by bitchphd
Check out this employer's essay about her nanny and the nanny's response in her blog. Full disclosure; the nanny is on my blogroll (which is how I found out about the article) and I met her last time I was in NYC. So obviously I feel inclined toward her "side" of this thing. On the other hand, I think the article she's responding to kind of speaks for itself. But then, on my left foot, I think the author's underlying point isn't so much to impugn her nanny as it is to reveal how the sexist judgment she passed on the nanny ricocheted. And yet, on the other foot (don't worry, I'm out of appendages now), I think the essay ultimately fails to transcend its own sexism and achieve some kind of feminist solidarity. But, like every skirmish in the ongoing "mommy wars," its limitations are profoundly meaningful.
The point of Olen's essay, I think, wants to be "her online revelations brought feelings of mine to the surface I'd just as soon not have to face as well." Which is a high compliment; good personal writing should do that, strike a chord in the reader, incite self-awareness. That's what we want our writing to do. But beneath that surface moral lies another, more upsetting one: even though we're in the twenty-first century, when nannies have blogs, we're still clinging to the idea that women in domestic employ must not only do their jobs; they must reinforce their employer's sense of social and moral superiority. Hence, the real problem is that, because of the blog, Olen's understanding of her nanny's humanity goes beyond what it has with previous nannies, whose "problems I could feel superior to and that made me grateful for the steady routine of marriage and children." By becoming more fully human, Tessa "broke the covenant"--an unspoken contract in Olen's mind (one that Tessa not only didn't sign on to, but was apparently completely unaware of) that "her" nanny should make her feel "young and hip by proxy," should not give her reason to fear that she was now a "boring hausfrau," should maintain a "mythology of friendship with our nannies, pretending the nanny admires us and loves our children so much that she would continue to visit even without pay." In other words, because she wrote well enough to engage her reader, Tessa was a bad nanny.
Olen's husband identifies the problem early on. "My husband thought her writing precociously talented but wanted to fire her nonetheless. "This is inappropriate," he said. "We don't need to know that Jennifer Ehle makes her hot."" But--and this, not the fact of being married with children, is what marks the couple as offensively "bourgeois"--the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that Tessa is not a simple domestic servant onto whom they can project a truncated, flattering image of themselves itself gets projected on her anyway: somehow it is Tessa's writing and her life, rather than their discomfort with the fact that their nanny has thoughts of her own, that he labels "inappropriate." Of course when she is fired, they don't tell her why.
Tessa's response to the whole thing, understandably, is defensive; but, though less polished, I think it is more self-aware. She feels the need to defend herself against the implications that she is "promiscuous" and drinks too much--but she also recognizes that defending against these things implicitly acknowledges that, if true, they would be "inappropriate," and takes pains to point out that she consciously rejects her own internalized sexism, the fear we've all learned of being judged as "bad women," even as she can't help feeling a need to defend her character. And she recognizes that Olen's feeling that "My issues, my problems, my compromises, my entire being seemed to be viewed by her as so much waste" actually expresses the hurt of realizing that Tessa was more important to her than she was to Tessa, who "didn't judge her life. Why? . . . I never really thought about it at all. She employed me to care for her children. Her choices? Her compromises? Not my business. The only times I considered her life was in relation to my employment." The reason that "her employment or the blog would have to come to an end" seems, in the end, less because Olen and her husband "did not . . . care to find [themselves] a character online" than because they realized they were, in the end, only minor characters.
In the end, of course, Olen's essay really isn't about Tessa; it's about Olen. She wanted her nanny to take care of her children, but it seems she also expected her nanny to take care of her--not only by waiting on her when she was sick, but by maintaining the necessary fictions of her self-image as a married woman and mother, the edifice of respectable domestic life. Tessa didn't do that very well; she chose instead to write, to nanny for a living, and to apply to graduate school to study Victorian novels. I wonder if she'll write her dissertation on the Brontës.
And I hope Olen will re-read Jane Eyre, and realize that the only reason Bertha accidentally burned down the house is because Mr. Rochester had her locked in the attic.
The point of Olen's essay, I think, wants to be "her online revelations brought feelings of mine to the surface I'd just as soon not have to face as well." Which is a high compliment; good personal writing should do that, strike a chord in the reader, incite self-awareness. That's what we want our writing to do. But beneath that surface moral lies another, more upsetting one: even though we're in the twenty-first century, when nannies have blogs, we're still clinging to the idea that women in domestic employ must not only do their jobs; they must reinforce their employer's sense of social and moral superiority. Hence, the real problem is that, because of the blog, Olen's understanding of her nanny's humanity goes beyond what it has with previous nannies, whose "problems I could feel superior to and that made me grateful for the steady routine of marriage and children." By becoming more fully human, Tessa "broke the covenant"--an unspoken contract in Olen's mind (one that Tessa not only didn't sign on to, but was apparently completely unaware of) that "her" nanny should make her feel "young and hip by proxy," should not give her reason to fear that she was now a "boring hausfrau," should maintain a "mythology of friendship with our nannies, pretending the nanny admires us and loves our children so much that she would continue to visit even without pay." In other words, because she wrote well enough to engage her reader, Tessa was a bad nanny.
Olen's husband identifies the problem early on. "My husband thought her writing precociously talented but wanted to fire her nonetheless. "This is inappropriate," he said. "We don't need to know that Jennifer Ehle makes her hot."" But--and this, not the fact of being married with children, is what marks the couple as offensively "bourgeois"--the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that Tessa is not a simple domestic servant onto whom they can project a truncated, flattering image of themselves itself gets projected on her anyway: somehow it is Tessa's writing and her life, rather than their discomfort with the fact that their nanny has thoughts of her own, that he labels "inappropriate." Of course when she is fired, they don't tell her why.
Tessa's response to the whole thing, understandably, is defensive; but, though less polished, I think it is more self-aware. She feels the need to defend herself against the implications that she is "promiscuous" and drinks too much--but she also recognizes that defending against these things implicitly acknowledges that, if true, they would be "inappropriate," and takes pains to point out that she consciously rejects her own internalized sexism, the fear we've all learned of being judged as "bad women," even as she can't help feeling a need to defend her character. And she recognizes that Olen's feeling that "My issues, my problems, my compromises, my entire being seemed to be viewed by her as so much waste" actually expresses the hurt of realizing that Tessa was more important to her than she was to Tessa, who "didn't judge her life. Why? . . . I never really thought about it at all. She employed me to care for her children. Her choices? Her compromises? Not my business. The only times I considered her life was in relation to my employment." The reason that "her employment or the blog would have to come to an end" seems, in the end, less because Olen and her husband "did not . . . care to find [themselves] a character online" than because they realized they were, in the end, only minor characters.
In the end, of course, Olen's essay really isn't about Tessa; it's about Olen. She wanted her nanny to take care of her children, but it seems she also expected her nanny to take care of her--not only by waiting on her when she was sick, but by maintaining the necessary fictions of her self-image as a married woman and mother, the edifice of respectable domestic life. Tessa didn't do that very well; she chose instead to write, to nanny for a living, and to apply to graduate school to study Victorian novels. I wonder if she'll write her dissertation on the Brontës.
And I hope Olen will re-read Jane Eyre, and realize that the only reason Bertha accidentally burned down the house is because Mr. Rochester had her locked in the attic.
Posted at 11:41 AM
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