(no subject)
May. 15th, 2023 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretGaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
Reread (Listen to the audio, actually) for two reasons:
One, as a retreat to a familiar favorite Oxford novel after reading Babel and The Royal We, but honestly I don't have much to say about that. I don't have very strong feelings about Oxford or the Oxford novel.naraht had an interesting comment on some of the Oxford inaccuracies in Babel.
The second reason is that my 20th high school reunion is happening in a month and I am having feelings about that. I haven't gone to any previous reunions; My tenth was scheduled, like Prom and many other important social events when I actually was in high school, on a Friday evening. Don't worry, I'm not still spiteful about that. :P But they scheduled our 20th for a Saturday night so I can actually attend. There's a lot of reunion literature about returning and wanting to project a certain image of yourself to your old classmates, but that's not really a concern of mine. I was a weird eighteen year old nerd in high school, and I am now a weird thirty eight year old nerd, and in twenty years I expect I will be a weird fifty eight year old nerd. I was never afraid to be at least a significant fraction of myself in front of my high school classmates, no matter how little they liked me as a result.
But that's why I think I find Gaudy Night such an interesting touchstone for reflection. Harriet is certainly concerned about reputational issues, but more than anything her reunion gaudy is an opportunity to ask herself "Is the self I am now consistent with the vision I had for my future when I was a student, and if it is not, am I okay with that?" She looks at her former classmates with a concern not to how they judge her, (moreso, an exhaustion about how they judge her) but with a concern to how they all represent different paths she could have gone down from the same starting point. And I have to admit I am very curious along the same lines to see how the many classmates I have lost touch with have fared. There's only a very small handful that I have been in contact with, and even that has been sporadic and/or Facebook-mediated. I left high school behind, with gratitude for the good parts and with a clear sense that I was leaving something behind that had limited me. So it feels a little paradoxical: On the one I hand I feel genuinely excited to see some of my classmates again, on the other hand it feels somewhat selfish and petty to want to see them again given that I don't anticipate any rekindling of friendships, just the satisfaction of curiosity. I suppose there are worse reasons to go to a reunion.
One early datapoint of where people have ended up: A few weeks ago, the reunion committee passed out a list of my classmates who have passed away in the last twenty years, asking if anyone knew anyone else who should be added to the memorial list. I hadn't heard about any of the deaths, and I spent a couple of days googling obituaries and just feeling aimlessly sad about people I'd known as early as elementary school, but who admittedly I'd always known I would lose touch with as soon as we left school.
The central tension in Harriet's reflections on her Oxford experience and its aftermath is on whether women can have both personal and professional success, or if they have to sacrifice one for the other. There is a sense that this question is particularly fraught for women because they are judged suspiciously even if they do manage professional success. But I resonate with the question anyway. Does a successful life require success in both, or success in the right one, or what? If I had made different choices about balancing the two spheres, would I be happier and more successful now?
It'll be interesting to see how I feel coming out of the reunion.
Reread (Listen to the audio, actually) for two reasons:
One, as a retreat to a familiar favorite Oxford novel after reading Babel and The Royal We, but honestly I don't have much to say about that. I don't have very strong feelings about Oxford or the Oxford novel.
naraht had an interesting comment on some of the Oxford inaccuracies in Babel.The second reason is that my 20th high school reunion is happening in a month and I am having feelings about that. I haven't gone to any previous reunions; My tenth was scheduled, like Prom and many other important social events when I actually was in high school, on a Friday evening. Don't worry, I'm not still spiteful about that. :P But they scheduled our 20th for a Saturday night so I can actually attend. There's a lot of reunion literature about returning and wanting to project a certain image of yourself to your old classmates, but that's not really a concern of mine. I was a weird eighteen year old nerd in high school, and I am now a weird thirty eight year old nerd, and in twenty years I expect I will be a weird fifty eight year old nerd. I was never afraid to be at least a significant fraction of myself in front of my high school classmates, no matter how little they liked me as a result.
But that's why I think I find Gaudy Night such an interesting touchstone for reflection. Harriet is certainly concerned about reputational issues, but more than anything her reunion gaudy is an opportunity to ask herself "Is the self I am now consistent with the vision I had for my future when I was a student, and if it is not, am I okay with that?" She looks at her former classmates with a concern not to how they judge her, (moreso, an exhaustion about how they judge her) but with a concern to how they all represent different paths she could have gone down from the same starting point. And I have to admit I am very curious along the same lines to see how the many classmates I have lost touch with have fared. There's only a very small handful that I have been in contact with, and even that has been sporadic and/or Facebook-mediated. I left high school behind, with gratitude for the good parts and with a clear sense that I was leaving something behind that had limited me. So it feels a little paradoxical: On the one I hand I feel genuinely excited to see some of my classmates again, on the other hand it feels somewhat selfish and petty to want to see them again given that I don't anticipate any rekindling of friendships, just the satisfaction of curiosity. I suppose there are worse reasons to go to a reunion.
One early datapoint of where people have ended up: A few weeks ago, the reunion committee passed out a list of my classmates who have passed away in the last twenty years, asking if anyone knew anyone else who should be added to the memorial list. I hadn't heard about any of the deaths, and I spent a couple of days googling obituaries and just feeling aimlessly sad about people I'd known as early as elementary school, but who admittedly I'd always known I would lose touch with as soon as we left school.
The central tension in Harriet's reflections on her Oxford experience and its aftermath is on whether women can have both personal and professional success, or if they have to sacrifice one for the other. There is a sense that this question is particularly fraught for women because they are judged suspiciously even if they do manage professional success. But I resonate with the question anyway. Does a successful life require success in both, or success in the right one, or what? If I had made different choices about balancing the two spheres, would I be happier and more successful now?
It'll be interesting to see how I feel coming out of the reunion.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-15 04:28 pm (UTC)I went to my tenth but not my 20th. I lost track of them after that.
As far as your question, "Does a successful life require success in both, or success in the right one, or what?"
I do think this question is different for men as opposed to women in our society. For one thing, no one believes men ever have to choose between them.
For women, I think it all hinges on what you define as a success and staying very clear about that. Because society gives us extremely mixed messages about what success is or should be. I think there is not one definition that works for everyone. And as Harriet found, whether or not you have kids is a big, big factor because there are only 24 hours in a day.
I am much older than you, but I remember when I had my kids I had to really continually revisit what I was doing and what I thought I SHOULD be doing. My mom went to work when I was 13; my husband's mom was a full time homemaker her entire life. Very different and often unconscious assumptions were at play.
Wishing you the best.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-15 04:36 pm (UTC)Yes, THIS.
Heh on the mixed messages, too. One side of my life gives me messages about professional/corporate success, and the other side of my life gives me messages about motherhood success. It's... complicated.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-15 04:33 pm (UTC)Though I'm only going because a couple of friends that I've stayed in touch with reached out and said they were thinking about going, and I am hoping to rekindle those friendships. Otherwise I probably would have stayed home.
I have managed to be not unsuccessful personally or professionally, but also have not felt like I have distinguished myself in either -- but did I even want to distinguish myself? If I'm happy, is that a better outcome than distinguishing myself, or not?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-15 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-15 08:19 pm (UTC)Ha! I think for me some of this is the novelty that comes of being unable to attend previous reunions that were on Shabbat. It's quite possible after this one I won't want to go to another.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-05-16 06:40 pm (UTC)Similar experience with college. University of California, so enormous graduating class, and even if there were something specific to my department, I didn't really socialize/connect with the department, as such. If there were ever a reunion for the "entering class" for my grad school experience, that would be more tempting, but of course we all completed our degrees (or in some cases, left without completing) at different times, so the concept of a "graduation class" is fuzzier.