I got the curse this week. I was - of course- relieved. Who wouldn't be? Anyone would naturally be relieved, under the circumstances. It stands to reason. You hear of women waiting for it, and worrying incessantly, and then when it comes, they're released and everything is all right and that anxiety is over for the moment and for a while one need not think What would I do? What would become of me? I was terribly relieved. It was a relief, reprieve.
That is a lie, Rachel. That is really a lie, in the deepest way possible for anyone to lie.
No. Yes. Both are true. Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none.
If I had to choose between feelings, I know which it would be. But that would be a disaster, from every point of view except the most inner one, and if you choose that side, you would really be on your own, now and for ever, and that couldn't, I think, be borne, not by me.
That is a lie, Rachel. That is really a lie, in the deepest way possible for anyone to lie.
No. Yes. Both are true. Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none.
If I had to choose between feelings, I know which it would be. But that would be a disaster, from every point of view except the most inner one, and if you choose that side, you would really be on your own, now and for ever, and that couldn't, I think, be borne, not by me.
Poor Rachel, always thinking and then backtracking and correcting her thinking, as though the expectations of Manawaka society in general and her mother in particular ought to have control even over her private thoughts. Ah, mothers and daughters. I have a mother and two daughters; I am a mother and a daughter. I don't have relationships as controlled or controlling as in A Jest of God, but do remember feeling the weight of unvoiced expectations when I was a teenager. I fantasized about moving out when I was in university but never brought it up-- I have no idea even now if it would have been considered the betrayal that I assumed at the time. I do know that when my parents moved across country and I chose not to go with them, when I was nearly 21, my younger brother referred to it as me "running away from home". Rachel never got this chance, this chance at starting her life, when her father died and her mother called her to come back and take care of her.
A few years ago, my mother bought me a copy of The Alchemist, saying that she had been searching for it everywhere, that it was a book she thought I had to read. I didn't get far into it before I had to start wondering if it was indeed the book she had been thinking of-- such mushy new age philosophy, not her thing at all, and more suited to a youth reader. What it did leave me with, however, was one important idea-- children should never be burdened with these unvoiced expectations, and to my older daughter anyway, I outlined the basic plot of the story and the lessons it endeavors to impart, especially: you have this one life and it's yours to live. I made that very clear: whatever my children decide to do with their lives (short of crack dealer or terrorist or basement-dwelling-too-scared-to-attempt-living-adult-child) will have my full support and they never need to worry if they're disappointing me. Unintended consequence of my efforts to stop the cycle of burdensome expectations: I have a bright and academically successful daughter graduating from high school soon who has no clear dreams at all, and although I have tried to explain the satisfaction of starting your life and going off to university (a projection of my own frustrated fantasies, I know), even when you don't have a clear idea of what you want to end up studying, the best I may hope for now is she accepts the offer of admission to the school that's closest to home. Sigh.
Originally titled A Jest of God, the edition I read had been renamed Rachel, Rachel. I can't find a reason for why it had been renamed (and I assume at some point the publishers reverted to the original title) but the original is much more fitting. The climax does indeed seem a jest of God Himself: After finally making a physical connection with a man for the first time at 35, Rachel fears she's pregnant. Knowing that she can never tell the father, who has skipped town anyway, or her mother, whose frail heart would never survive the humiliation, Rachel considers suicide and then, as a last resort, an appeal to the God she doesn't believe in. When it turns out she had a tumor, which required a hospital stay in the city to remove, Rachel got the resolve to finally start living her own life, deciding to uproot her mother and move them both out to Vancouver to be nearer to her sister. Before she moves, Rachel realises that the town assumed she had gone to the city for an abortion and that she and her mother were fleeing in shame. Who but God could conceive of such a punishment for answered prayers?
A Jest of God is a strong member of the Manawaka Sequence, not quite up to The Stone Angel or The Diviners, but since I can't bring myself to give it only 3 stars, the 4 will need to stand.
