"It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realize the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 81
In this instance Proust is reflecting on meeting a young woman during a surprise visit to his uncle's house, the assumption being that the woman is a mistress or a proto-mistress or at least a woman who lives on the fringes of high society through her beauty. I keep flashing back to John Singer Sargent's famous portrait of Madame X, although it certainly has no connection to this woman or this event.
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| Again, this has nothing at all to do with the story, but I do love this painting. In today's hyper-sexualized world it's weird to think that Sargent had to go back and paint in the strap up on her shoulder because of public concern about morality. Seriously, how many nudes are there in museums? As with all things, I guess it's all context: the strap down potentially signifies intent, and she's a very real woman and not a Greek goddess (although she looks the part). |
Sadly, I have no real experience maintaining a beautiful mistress in a luxurious upscale apartment. While academics have the requisite flexible schedule for for such adventures, we don't have the requisite fiscal flexibility. It brings up an odd memory relating to my good friend Peter Straub. Over ten years ago I was part of a Champlain College team that made a week-long visit to Dubai to check on the campus we had there at that time. It was my first time overseas, and it's strange to think that over the years I've probably ended up spending as much time in the UAE than the rest of my international stops put together. We were staying at a fairly dodgy hotel downtown, at least by Dubai standards. On the last night there, while the rest of the team was getting packed, Peter and I went down for a final beer in the hotel bar. There was a remarkably bad house band performing - think of a Filipino version of Captain and Tennille (with two Tennilles, with hip boots, swaying). Anyway, the bar was full of Emirati and Saudi sheikhs and Russian prostitutes, and the prostitues were swarming the sheikhs and wisely ignoring the downtrodden American academics. As we left the band kicked into a cover of R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion, which, as I've often stated, was the most transcendent moment of my life.
What I was also thinking about relates to Proust's intent only tangentially. I've met quite a few very talented, intelligent women who made it clear that they could walk away from their careers tomorrow without a second thought, while I dread the thought of retirement. Essentially, is this one of those societally dictated gender role issues? And, granted, I'm making a quantum leap based on way too little evidence for the sake of argument. I'm certainly not a Type A personality, and I've never thought of myself as being particularly career driven, although several people have identified me as a workaholic (while I think of myself as the laziest person in the world - parentally-imposed perceptions are hard to dislodge) so self-image is a dodgy thing. That said, I have trouble imagining what I would do outside of my career, and even when I do try and imagine that eventuality it doesn't include puttering around the house. So, is this another one of those instances where society is limiting people because of designated roles, and who is being limited - the women in question or me? Clearly, this is also a generational thing. While Proust's generation seems to be light years away, in other ways in today's world one or two generations is at least on the other end of our the solar system (as any episode of Mad Men will tell you). In the end I would propose that I'm the one who has been, and still too often is, operating in a limited universe. I'm really fortunate in that I truly love what I do, and thus it never, ever seems like work. Not only do I get to live the life of the mind, but I get to spend time with amazing colleagues and students in their most intellectually hungry age. In that way, I'm not really a good specimen for this case study anyway. So why am I even fretting over this? As much as I don't want to even consider the notion, the clock is ticking on my academic career. And there is a very small chance that I'll keel over dead as I cross the Wadi Rum on a camel (my preferred method of dying - and they could just heap some sand over me and me where I fell) so I need to consider what's next.
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