I first met Janet at a reading of debut authors. Of course, I loved her wild mop of curly hair, but more than that, I loved her wild intelligence, her wit, her humor--and of course, I loved her novel. So does Library Journal, which gave it a starred review, and the notoriously cranky Kirkus Reviews called it a "monumental achievement." Janet has written essays, scripts and stories and I cannot wait for her next novel. Thank you so much, Janet for being here!
It struck me that although Lilli de Jong is set in the 1800s, it’s
very timely, since there still seems to be a virtual war on women, and there is
still hostility towards unwed mothers and adoption. Can you talk about that,
please?
To answer this, I’m relying on a lifetime’s
reading, experience, and travel. But to answer briefly means simplifying my
opinions; I apologize to any whose experiences I’m not speaking to.
Increasingly, I think the oppression of women rests
on this: Women are a society’s most precious resource. We can create and raise humans,
who are of enormous value, and our attention is in high demand—since nearly everyone,
having been an infant, craves our care. If women are unequal and isolated, we
are easier to control. The conditions of inequality and isolation make it
easier for us to be underpaid and undervalued. This makes us dependent on those
who earn more and have more societal power. It’s what we call a vicious circle.
Since the attentions of mothers, whether birth
or adoptive, are often turned inward—toward those who are unable to survive otherwise—it’s
easier for others to fashion an outer world that diminishes us. We are paid
less, when we work for pay, even than women who aren’t mothers. We do our
unpaid work of raising the next generation at high cost in a society that makes
our sacrifice a private problem, not a public good. Too many—women and
men—endure too much hardship in raising children.
Societal attitudes reveal that a woman must be
married to have sex and children without facing prejudice. These attitudes are based
in structural inequalities with long histories. Married women and children were
and in some places still are the legal property of husbands. Women didn’t have
the right to vote in America until almost 150 years after the nation was
founded, and a married woman didn’t have the right to her own wages; her
children and home didn’t belong to her, so if her husband died, she could lose
them. She depended on a brother, son, or son-in-law for rescue, if rescue was
to be had. This forced dependency still exists legally in some countries (in
Saudi Arabia, for instance, girls and women lack the rights to make extremely basic
decisions), and it still casts its long shadow on the United States.
The unwed mother has long been an easy target.
But why? By looking at the biases against unwed mothers and their children, we learn
that, when a female has sex, by choice or force, and has a child without being married—i.e.,
without being under the legal umbrella of a man—she is a threat to that power
structure. Judging from what occurs, we see that the resources of the unwed
mother and her children must be kept minimal to discourage their independence.
Children around the world are given up to
adoption or to orphanages because of the wage inequality and prejudice that dog
unwed mothers. It breaks my heart to see children not being well cared for; it
breaks my heart to see parents who don’t seem to know how to love. If any mother
truly wants to raise her own infant or someone else’s, whether she is married
or not, a humane and intelligent society will support her in doing so.
At one point, Lilli asks, do secrets
matter? And I think your novel is saying that sometimes they do, and sometimes
it’s best to keep them. Care to comment?
In situations of inequality and prejudice,
telling the truth can ruin your life. A work of literature that explores this
in a heartbreaking way is Thomas Hardy’s Tess
of the d’Urbervilles. Young, innocent Tess is sent by her drunken lout of a
father to live with a wealthy man in exchange for money. The wealthy man rapes
her; she runs away, turns out to be pregnant, and tries to keep her infant alive
while working as a farm laborer. Her tiny infant dies. At another farm, she
meets the love of her life, a man named Angel. They agree to marry. On the eve
of their marriage, she writes a letter confessing the tragedy of her past and
slips it beneath the door of his room. Unbeknownst to her, the letter slides
beneath a rug. They marry the next day; then she finds the letter, unopened. She
gives it to him in the place they’ve gone to honeymoon. He can’t accept her
past misfortune and leaves. The rapist comes for her again, hearing of her
desperate status, and she becomes his chattel. Then Angel, having changed his
mind long before and written letters that the rapist has hidden, comes to her
door at last, asking why she never responded. She goes into a mad rage, kills
the rapist, and then is hung. Having witnessed Tess’s hanging with her younger
sister at his side, Angel walks off into the future with the virginal sister.
Secrets are terrible. Telling the truth is
terrible.
Still today, women who are raped may be whipped
or stoned to death for “tempting” their rapists, as was 14-year-old Hena Akhter
in 2011 in Bangladesh. Even girls forced into prostitution at an early age, or stolen
and enslaved by rebel soldiers (such as schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in
Nigeria), are considered unmarriageable and scorned if they escape. Their
children may be denied rights. This prejudice reveals one consequence of seeing
women and our reproductive capacities as the rightful property of men. This
prejudice is a cancer in the hearts of societies around the world.
Lilli uses her journal to share her secrets
and to express her thoughts, which she does eloquently. Do you also keep a
journal?
I wrote in a journal at least several times a
week from age nine till perhaps eight years ago, when I began to put every
scrap of time apart from work and family into writing Lilli de Jong. So for decades, for hours every week, I poured my
thoughts and feelings into notebooks. I have two old trunks from used-furniture
stores that are crammed full of journals. I’ve carried them with me—accumulating
weight—since I left home over three decades ago. So I am quite familiar with
the intimacy between a journal and a writer that Lilli feels, as well as with
the way that writing in a journal can make one’s troubles more bearable—a fact
that keeps Lilli alive.
The novel is absolutely fascinating. What
was your research like? What startled you?
The research was fascinating, indeed. I adored
getting to know publications of the period, archive materials, recent works by
historians, artifacts, whatever bits I could glean about the nature of life in
1883 Philadelphia. What startled me was learning the depth, persistence, and
legal basis for the crippling of women’s lives and opportunities, as well as reading
old works by many who were quite aware of these problems. Having read about inequalities
of all sorts in history, I no longer believe what so many claim—that people in
the past simply didn’t have awareness of oppression. The historical record
shows that many oppressed people and their oppressors knew precisely what exploitation
and inequality they faced or propagated. Truly, how could they not have? Such
things are rather obvious to the naked eye. Though of course some were
committed to blindness, just as they are today—and to some degree, it’s always
difficult to see what’s accepted as normal.
I was startled, too, to read of the corruption
of public officials at Blockley Almshouse—Philadelphia’s public almshouse, run
by a Board of Guardians. Food and other resources were literally stolen by at
least one of the so-called guardians and put in storehouses in his home. Inedible
foodstuffs and other substandard supplies were purchased cheaply, with those
involved pocketing the price difference.
What kind of writer are you? Do you map
things out or follow the pesky muse?
Both. I write out what comes to me, create a
mess, then try to map it, sometimes section by section. I always put down a lot
more words than I keep. Even to answer these questions, I did a much longer
draft, then pared much of it away.
What’s obsessing you now and why?
How to help Lilli de Jong make the world a better place for mothers and
children—which is everyone.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
“Would you like this stipend to live on while
you write your next novel?” Ha ha. If only.
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