at home
I've been wondering all week about two things: what we mean when we say we feel "at home," and why the house burnt down in the Alice Walker story. Maybe addressing the first question might help to answer the second.
As I was reading for last week's class, I came upon this line in the first chapter of Debord's The Society of the Spectacle: "The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere." I was struck by the fact that even Debord, with his emphasis on defamiliarization, sees feeling "at home" as a positive quality. It's synonymous with having our needs met, whether these are for creativity or comfort. This contrasts with Heidegger, for example, who saw the state of being "at home" as a deluded tranquility which is disrupted by the more authentic state of anxiety.
I've been thinking about which version of feeling "at home" is invoked in "Everyday Use." When Caitlin asked us for word and picture associations with "home," I remember that I wrote "warm," and Mike drew a picture of a fire. In retrospect these choices strike me, given we'd just read a story which in which there's a house fire. The fire that provides comfort and warmth can also destroy: the homely becomes unhomely. This fire scars Maggie as "homely," as she bears the marks of the home and its destruction. Does this fire imply that feeling at home is delusional or impossible?
There's clearly an allegorical dimension to the story, in which the burnt house represents America and its failure to be a place in which African Americans could be at home. In the face of that failure, Wangero/Dee chooses the life of the exile, simultaneously rejecting the state of being "at home" and locating it somewhere else—in Africa, rather than in her mother's house. The story implies that Wangero/Dee sees her mother's understanding of being "at home" as a kind of illusion: her mother and Maggie are attempting to make themselves at home in a place where they will always be exiles, and where they still bear the names of their oppressors. Rather than being marked by the destructive effects of this home, Dee/Wangero actively reshapes herself. She is not burnt but instead burns: the mother describes "the scalding humour that erupted like bubbles in lye" (27), and the way she "burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know" (26). Like the fire, Dee is a threat that emerges from inside the home.
The mother is afraid of fiery Dee and her rejection of home, while Dee scorns any relationship to home that isn't creative and aesthetic (using the quilts rather than hanging them). But I wonder if the image with which the story opens doesn't complicate the division between the aesthete's exile and passive domesticity. "A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. . . . It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house" (23). To me this image evokes a vision of being "at home" in the world which is neither diasporic nomadism nor the kind of fiercely defensive domesticity the mother invokes in her rejection of Dee's life and values. The world is the home and the home is the world.
Or perhaps I'm just being optimistic and romantic. Is it instead a bitter irony that the yard is more homelike than the house?
As I was reading for last week's class, I came upon this line in the first chapter of Debord's The Society of the Spectacle: "The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere." I was struck by the fact that even Debord, with his emphasis on defamiliarization, sees feeling "at home" as a positive quality. It's synonymous with having our needs met, whether these are for creativity or comfort. This contrasts with Heidegger, for example, who saw the state of being "at home" as a deluded tranquility which is disrupted by the more authentic state of anxiety.
I've been thinking about which version of feeling "at home" is invoked in "Everyday Use." When Caitlin asked us for word and picture associations with "home," I remember that I wrote "warm," and Mike drew a picture of a fire. In retrospect these choices strike me, given we'd just read a story which in which there's a house fire. The fire that provides comfort and warmth can also destroy: the homely becomes unhomely. This fire scars Maggie as "homely," as she bears the marks of the home and its destruction. Does this fire imply that feeling at home is delusional or impossible?
There's clearly an allegorical dimension to the story, in which the burnt house represents America and its failure to be a place in which African Americans could be at home. In the face of that failure, Wangero/Dee chooses the life of the exile, simultaneously rejecting the state of being "at home" and locating it somewhere else—in Africa, rather than in her mother's house. The story implies that Wangero/Dee sees her mother's understanding of being "at home" as a kind of illusion: her mother and Maggie are attempting to make themselves at home in a place where they will always be exiles, and where they still bear the names of their oppressors. Rather than being marked by the destructive effects of this home, Dee/Wangero actively reshapes herself. She is not burnt but instead burns: the mother describes "the scalding humour that erupted like bubbles in lye" (27), and the way she "burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know" (26). Like the fire, Dee is a threat that emerges from inside the home.
The mother is afraid of fiery Dee and her rejection of home, while Dee scorns any relationship to home that isn't creative and aesthetic (using the quilts rather than hanging them). But I wonder if the image with which the story opens doesn't complicate the division between the aesthete's exile and passive domesticity. "A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. . . . It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house" (23). To me this image evokes a vision of being "at home" in the world which is neither diasporic nomadism nor the kind of fiercely defensive domesticity the mother invokes in her rejection of Dee's life and values. The world is the home and the home is the world.
Or perhaps I'm just being optimistic and romantic. Is it instead a bitter irony that the yard is more homelike than the house?
posted by smbrook at 11:26 PM
4 Comments:
I remember thinking the image of the yard was a strange one as well. On the one hand, it's an artificial extension of the house, but still removed from it -- you can look up and see trees, and feel the outside breeze. Also, it's made of "hard clay", which wouldn't have burned with the rest of the house. So maybe it's a kind of middle ground, not directly a part of the flammable and dangerous 'home', but also not a part of the vast indifferent land that doesn't welcome the family as equals?
It's like, if you're gonna play with fire, you're gonna get burned. That's what I always say.
I mentioned in class that I have lived in many homes (20 or so) and until three years ago, every one of those houses and apt. buildings were still in the world. Since then, at least one has been torn down and replaced with townhomes. However nomadic I claim to be, I still connect a part of myself, my identity, with these places...my psychological storage lockers. Regarding front yards, in a city where it rains a lot, outside spaces hold more abject notions for me - that close to home, I'd rather be "in."
I remember the yard most as a child, always using it to play games and things and even though we have a big yard now I never go in it yet I dont want to get rid of it. We were wanting to move so I went around looking at houses and despite how nice the houses were they just didnt have a big yard and so I didnt want to live there. It doesnt really make sense I guess and its quite paradoxical but like Mike says the yard is an extension of the house and its just a nice feeling knowing that its there when things inside the house do get too much to handle. By going into the yard, even though you are still within the safety of home, you are able to separate yourself from the things that you would normally associate with it.
I like the idea of the yard as a kind of third space, part of the house yet separate from it.
I remember playing under pine trees with my friends when I was a kid, creating houses by sweeping the needles into floor plans: the kitchen, the dining room, the bedroom.
Interpellation into "femininity" is a pretty insidious thing.
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