SARAH HAMPSON
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
February 19, 2009 at 12:58 AM EST
What is a wife? A dead girl.
That is the message – unintentional, mind you – of a painting by French artist Gustave Courbet that belongs to Smith College, a famously feminist all-women's institution in Northampton, Mass.
The 1850s-era work depicts a young bride surrounded by women who are helping her prepare for her wedding. But for many years, there were questions about it. Why is the bride's head slightly lopsided? Her arms limp by her side? Why is she slumped in her chair?
An X-ray provided the answer. Mr. Courbet had painted a scene of women preparing a dead body for a funeral. He left it unfinished, however, and after he died his sister asked another artist to make adjustments to create a happier scene so the work would sell. Mr. Courbet's original title, The Preparation of the Dead Girl, had been changed to The Preparation of the Bride.
The Smith College Museum of Art now uses the before-and-after to help teach students about art history and painting technique, says Louise Laplante, the school's collections manager – not as a comment on marriage.
But maybe the college should, as it would provoke an interesting discussion about wife and husband identities and the roles they encourage. Once divorced, many people discover, quite surprisingly, that parts of their character re-emerge, even though they weren't aware they had lost or subsumed them while married.
Unwittingly, often, they had let some part of themselves fade.
What it means to be a wife or husband is often learned as a child. You emulate what you experienced with your parents or forge your own role in contrast. Like many women of my generation, I borrowed a bit from my mother, who was a traditional stay-at-home wife, and another part from my contemporaries and my own ambitions.
I wanted a degree of financial independence and some semblance of an identity outside that of wife and mother, but I also made it my job to have nice dinner parties and a tidy home. Somewhere in my wife psyche, I also thought I needed to defer to my husband all the time and let him have control – a situation that, over time and as I matured, became untenable. In her 2004 book The Meaning of Wife, Anne Kingston delved into the complex and often contradictory wife-identity issue for women.
Men receive subliminal messages about what a husband should be, too. “The underlying assumption, when a man becomes a husband, is that he can support a wife and family,” says Neil Chethik, an American commentator on men's issues and author of Voice Male, What Husbands Really Think about their Marriages, their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment.
A thrice-married and divorced 50-year-old man we'll call Mr. Experience explains: “One of the first things older men say to a young man who has just married is ‘Well done.' It's as if you have joined a club of grown-up men.”
Some feel crushed under the burden of the role. “I had to wear so many hats,” Alan Harding, a recently separated father, told The New York Times last month in the paper's “State of the Unions” column about marriage. “I had to be the daddy. I had to bring home money. I had to be the husband and I had to be the best friend. I wasn't ready for that.”
Interestingly, Mr. Harding and his estranged spouse, Leslie Parks, had lived together happily for many years before marrying. Their first son was born out of wedlock. The change in role – and his own expectation about what he should be – came with marriage.
Apart from the assumption of gender roles in marriage, a couple's desire to pursue common interests, as opposed to individual ones, can also curtail the personalities and lifestyle developed while single. I know of many divorced men and women who happily resort to pre-marriage behaviours their ex-spouses discouraged. There is some sweet and satisfying retribution for the lost wife years in decorating a house to your preferences rather than accommodating a husband's tastes, for example. And a sports car is a popular reidentification device for a man who is happy to be a non-husband again.
Still, the loss of the spousal identity is not always easy. “I didn't want to be a traditional wife. I took on the identity gradually. It wasn't something I embraced,” says Sally Morgan, a 42-year-old mother of three who was married for 17 years. “And yet when we divorced it was a very difficult transition. Being my husband's wife had become an important part of who I was. I was proud of him, and I had spent so much time supporting him and being the primary caregiver for our children,” the Victoria resident says. “I remember being sort of cast at sea immediately after the divorce.”
But a year and a half later, she feels liberated. “For me, one of the joys of divorce has been rediscovering myself. It is very freeing to be able to start to reclaim who I was and start to nurture that person.”
For men, the loss of the husband identity is often difficult, primarily because of the competency it suggests, male experts say. “It's a loss of purpose, which is very hurtful to men,” Mr. Chethik says. “They lose their status as head of the family.”
Still, the insight that comes in the wake of the loss can be helpful. Some ex-wives admit that they descended into domesticity and lost sight of their primary relationship with their spouse. No longer intellectual partners, they talked about diapers, babysitters and school choices.
Men, too, hope to learn from their identity mistakes. “Many go to the extreme of wanting to please their wives, and they lose their identity as men,” explains Elliot Katz, a divorced father and author of Being the Strong Man a Woman Wants: Timeless Wisdom on Being a Man. “Many think, ‘My wife seems to know what she wants, so I'll just do what she says and I'll be a good husband.' But that's not what women want. Strong women want a strong man.”
Mr. Experience adds:
“Being a husband is a title. It's what you become when you marry someone. But it shouldn't be a preset role. It should be about being in love. My regret is that I let the institution of marriage and the role of husband and father be enough. You fall into these roles, and all that men and women really want is the person they fell in
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
February 19, 2009 at 12:58 AM EST
What is a wife? A dead girl.
That is the message – unintentional, mind you – of a painting by French artist Gustave Courbet that belongs to Smith College, a famously feminist all-women's institution in Northampton, Mass.
The 1850s-era work depicts a young bride surrounded by women who are helping her prepare for her wedding. But for many years, there were questions about it. Why is the bride's head slightly lopsided? Her arms limp by her side? Why is she slumped in her chair?
An X-ray provided the answer. Mr. Courbet had painted a scene of women preparing a dead body for a funeral. He left it unfinished, however, and after he died his sister asked another artist to make adjustments to create a happier scene so the work would sell. Mr. Courbet's original title, The Preparation of the Dead Girl, had been changed to The Preparation of the Bride.
The Smith College Museum of Art now uses the before-and-after to help teach students about art history and painting technique, says Louise Laplante, the school's collections manager – not as a comment on marriage.
But maybe the college should, as it would provoke an interesting discussion about wife and husband identities and the roles they encourage. Once divorced, many people discover, quite surprisingly, that parts of their character re-emerge, even though they weren't aware they had lost or subsumed them while married.
Unwittingly, often, they had let some part of themselves fade.
What it means to be a wife or husband is often learned as a child. You emulate what you experienced with your parents or forge your own role in contrast. Like many women of my generation, I borrowed a bit from my mother, who was a traditional stay-at-home wife, and another part from my contemporaries and my own ambitions.
I wanted a degree of financial independence and some semblance of an identity outside that of wife and mother, but I also made it my job to have nice dinner parties and a tidy home. Somewhere in my wife psyche, I also thought I needed to defer to my husband all the time and let him have control – a situation that, over time and as I matured, became untenable. In her 2004 book The Meaning of Wife, Anne Kingston delved into the complex and often contradictory wife-identity issue for women.
Men receive subliminal messages about what a husband should be, too. “The underlying assumption, when a man becomes a husband, is that he can support a wife and family,” says Neil Chethik, an American commentator on men's issues and author of Voice Male, What Husbands Really Think about their Marriages, their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment.
A thrice-married and divorced 50-year-old man we'll call Mr. Experience explains: “One of the first things older men say to a young man who has just married is ‘Well done.' It's as if you have joined a club of grown-up men.”
Some feel crushed under the burden of the role. “I had to wear so many hats,” Alan Harding, a recently separated father, told The New York Times last month in the paper's “State of the Unions” column about marriage. “I had to be the daddy. I had to bring home money. I had to be the husband and I had to be the best friend. I wasn't ready for that.”
Interestingly, Mr. Harding and his estranged spouse, Leslie Parks, had lived together happily for many years before marrying. Their first son was born out of wedlock. The change in role – and his own expectation about what he should be – came with marriage.
Apart from the assumption of gender roles in marriage, a couple's desire to pursue common interests, as opposed to individual ones, can also curtail the personalities and lifestyle developed while single. I know of many divorced men and women who happily resort to pre-marriage behaviours their ex-spouses discouraged. There is some sweet and satisfying retribution for the lost wife years in decorating a house to your preferences rather than accommodating a husband's tastes, for example. And a sports car is a popular reidentification device for a man who is happy to be a non-husband again.
Still, the loss of the spousal identity is not always easy. “I didn't want to be a traditional wife. I took on the identity gradually. It wasn't something I embraced,” says Sally Morgan, a 42-year-old mother of three who was married for 17 years. “And yet when we divorced it was a very difficult transition. Being my husband's wife had become an important part of who I was. I was proud of him, and I had spent so much time supporting him and being the primary caregiver for our children,” the Victoria resident says. “I remember being sort of cast at sea immediately after the divorce.”
But a year and a half later, she feels liberated. “For me, one of the joys of divorce has been rediscovering myself. It is very freeing to be able to start to reclaim who I was and start to nurture that person.”
For men, the loss of the husband identity is often difficult, primarily because of the competency it suggests, male experts say. “It's a loss of purpose, which is very hurtful to men,” Mr. Chethik says. “They lose their status as head of the family.”
Still, the insight that comes in the wake of the loss can be helpful. Some ex-wives admit that they descended into domesticity and lost sight of their primary relationship with their spouse. No longer intellectual partners, they talked about diapers, babysitters and school choices.
Men, too, hope to learn from their identity mistakes. “Many go to the extreme of wanting to please their wives, and they lose their identity as men,” explains Elliot Katz, a divorced father and author of Being the Strong Man a Woman Wants: Timeless Wisdom on Being a Man. “Many think, ‘My wife seems to know what she wants, so I'll just do what she says and I'll be a good husband.' But that's not what women want. Strong women want a strong man.”
Mr. Experience adds:
“Being a husband is a title. It's what you become when you marry someone. But it shouldn't be a preset role. It should be about being in love. My regret is that I let the institution of marriage and the role of husband and father be enough. You fall into these roles, and all that men and women really want is the person they fell in
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