Saturday, July 25, 2009

Mrs.Fox and Arina Petrovna (and Robert Frost)

Quite without intending to, I have stumbled into the literature of old age--specifically female old age. There are two instances in particular. One is Mrs. Fox, mother-in-law of Solander, mother-in-law of Mathilde, and so one of the dizzying circus of hustlers, dependents and naifs who swirl through Christina Stead's Letty Fox: Her Luck. Mrs. Fox is certainly not a naif. She she may have been a hustler, although this seems doubtful; at any rate, she is old and her powers may be seen to weaken. She is, alas, as dependent, or at least one who lives as such, not-very-effectively charming and wheedling herself to a bare sustenance day after day. She talks--my heavens, how she talks, pages at a time, with only the slenderest sense of narrative order. She's funny for he reader to listen to, but probably not so much if you are related to her. At the end of one such monologue, her daughter-in-law asks:
"Will you have some ccoffee?"
"If it is fresh."
"I don't reheat it."
"Reheat it: well, that to me is poison. I can't take it. That's another kind of thing, altogether."
"Mother, I asked you would you have some coffee!" [A pause.]
"Is it fresh? Who knows? What is she talking about?" [A pause.]"Not if it is reheated. I'm very sorry, I thank you, but I can't."
"I told you it was fresh."
"Well, if it's fresh. . . . Reheated, you say? No. All right, if it's fresh, but you say--" [A pause.]
"Here's your coffee."
"So latae in the afternoon? I don't know, my dear. I don't sleep." [No repsonse.] "Tea is better. Is it fresh, anyhow?" [Mournfully, low.] "They don't tell me. I don't know. I know nothing!"
"Drink your coffee," said Mathilde, "it's getting cold."
"Cold, hot? What does it matter? I'm dying, my dear!"
"Mother, please don't keep saying that. Every time you come--"
"My dear Mathilde, if you knew--" Grandmother let out a great cry, with a fresh voice, a wail; "I can't keep going any more; it's all over, my dear."
In fact, it is nearly over; a week later, Mrs. Fox is dead: "It was only then that Mathilde had the sense to see what had been the matter; death had been at his tricks.
Mrs. Fox was a dependent most, perhaps all, of her life.In Shchedrin's The Golovlyov Family," we are faced iwth Arina Petrovna who is quite another matter. Or was: for most of her life she bullied, sweated and otherwise dominated her family, her servants and anyone else in reach of the Golovlyov estate. But life is full of surprises; at the end of life she finds out that she too must subsist on the sufferance of others who have no instinct (but where would they have learned it?) to treat her any better than she treated others:
Day followed day with the depressing monotony so characteristic of country life, when one has neither material comfort, nor food for the intellect, nor work. Apart from the eternal causes that made personal work on the farm impossible for Arina Petrovna, she felt an inner revulsion against the petty cares that fell to her lot at the end of her life. She might perhaps have overcome her aversion had she had a purpose that would make her efforts worth-while--but that was just the point, she had no purpose. Everyone was sick and tired of her, and she was sick and tired of everyone. Drowsy idleness had taken the place of her former feverish activity and the idleness gradually demoralized her will, and developed in her inclinations she had not dreamt of a few months before. The strong and self-possessed woman whom no one v entured even to think of as an old lady had suddenly become a wreck, for whom there was neither past nor future, but only the present moment to be lived through.
On the evidence presented here, I suppose Mrs.Fox is marginally better off--at least there is someone to argue with her. But both women would have done well to harken to the advice of Robert Frost which, because it is late and because I am lazy--and because it sticks so vividly in my mind--I quote from memory:
The witch that came, the withered hag
To wipe the steps with oil and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag;
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood;

Die early, and avoid the fate,
Or, if predestined to die late,
Make certain that you die in state:
Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
So nobody can call you crone!

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all: Provide! Provide!

No comments: