A woman's education/The Taliban/Maisie Dobbs-a book review 8/27/21

After bidding a fond fairewell to my friends in Three Pines, Quebec, who live in th novels of Louise Penny, I looked around for a new set of murder mysteries. I looked up most popular, prize winners, the ten best, and came up with author Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs novels. Maisie Dobbs is the impoverished daughter of a oving and hard working 'costermonger' in London's East End just before the onset of World War I. Her mother has died, and her father, upond delivering produce to one of the great houses' (think Downton Abbey) speaks to the cook and the butler about the possibilities of getting his daughter a 'place' as a servant where at least she will be well looked after, fed and safe. It is arranged and the uncommonly clever young Maisie while doing the usual pre-dawn chores of cleaning out the fireplace grates and starting the fires each morning, finds a lirary. Also uncommon is that Misie Dobs is literate, she can read and write as well as being exceptionally intellectual curious and this is a most important point for the theme of my post here today. Maisie begins to read her way through philosophy in the fancy library in the pre-dawn hours until one day, months into her employment, she is discovered. Fortunately for her, the Lady of the house, in both senses of the word Lady, is a feminist and active suffragette so instead of punishing Maisie she looks for a way to keep her service (which is dutiful and competent) while supporting her desire for knowledge. She also sets her up with a tutor in the persona of a family friend and scholar, Mr. Blanche.

One of the things that struck me immediately was the intellectual hunger of this pre-teen girl because I had the same characteristic, but not until I was much older did I realize how unusual it was. At the time and for most of my life, I took it for granted and if it was commented on at all, it was in disparaging terms as being "odd" and not in the good sense. Mostly it elicited comments such as "Get your nose out of thea book and do something useful." Like Maisie, I happened onto a hidden trove of treasure, in my case it was the shelves of books in my Grandmother's basement, a colection of the greatest novels of European literature, a set of Charles Dickens and a set of Mark Twain, but even more important to me, a couple of novels of THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON A HIKE! I didn't know at the time that these were a series, all I knew was that here were girls in a book who were like oddball me - adventurous, intelligent, and clever. I didn't know any girls like that, and my main attribute was intellectual curiosity more than a thirst for adventure, but how I loved that book! They introduced me to more enterprising young women such as Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, and Nancy Drew. But, I was also, at a very young age, reading those European classics and imbibing advanced ideas and Victorian vocabulary. I loved those novels, in particular, Guy deMauppassant. What a rich field for th sowing of seeds of interest in human psychology, history, class politics, gender politics, a world of thought.

But, what brought me to this essay today, was about women and education and class. Neither of my parents graduated from high school though both were self educated and both read. My mother subscribed to at least 6 magazines including Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Better Homes and Gardens and National Geographic, and my father read all through the years I knew him as my parent. I don't know if he read earlier on in his life. Both of my parents were intelligent and interested in things. We took weekend drives to places of some interest all through the spring, summer and autumn months. We visited caverns, museum, all inds of palces of interest, and in particular, regularly to Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Mountains, where my father ha worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps in his youth. They opened my eyes and my mind was already fitted out with a voracious appetite for knowledge by genetic, some mysterious inheritance. I can trace it back on both sides to a teacher a generation back on my mother's side, and a seminarian two generations back on my father's side.

Like Maisie Dobbs in the Winspeare novels, my reading and my active intellectual curiosity fitted me to make the leap to college, and it was a leap from my working class life and world. My high school also helped to prepare me for that world though not through education. Tracking put me into the 'business' program not the college prep program. But through the social interaction, my association with other young people going to college, it appeared on my horizon as a place I might be able to go at some point through some miracle. The miracle turned out to be student riots in th 1960's which opened the college doors to people who had interest and desire if not SAT scores and college prep courses. I started out in extension school programs and when I saw I could easily manage, I was able to switch to day college, then full time, then a Bachelor Arts in English and when I had really learned 'the ropes' I got another Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts, and way leading on to way, as it does, eventually to a Masters in Education. Throughout all of this, I worked as a teacher. Still through most of the peer group I inhabited, from my husband and the couples we spent our free time with, my intellectual pursuits were unusual, even rare. Some of them read, my ex-husband was a reader, but none of them pursued higher education and NONE of the women had any interest in college.

But times were changing, and I met others like myself in college, women who were always intersted in learning more, and figuring out how things were, and how they had got to be how they were and how they could be different and better. I met women interested in class dynamics and gender issues as well as in Art and Literature.

It turns out now that the half dozen or so of my best friens, that is the ones I have seen the most and spent the most time with over the years are all like me in that we came from families where our parents either didn't go to high school or didn't go to college (though some of my friends don't like to admit it) and we struggled to find our own way to the promised land which set us on paths through education to self-systaining careers and financial independence even through retirement. We were a generation, and our education is a generation marker. Not one of my closest friends had a mother who went to college and all of my closest friends have achieved even graduate degrees, many of us on our own. We were working class girls.

This is, in fact, a remarkable thing. And it is equally remarkable that I was born with this unusual trait to seek out knowledge, to love books and learning. I still know very few people of whom this is true. It ha een a saving grace for me.

Which brings me to the Taliban. Patriarchy has always been intent on repressing women and our intellectual capacity. We underestimate the biological imperative of maleness to 1.Dominate females to contro their reproduction, and 2.defend and extend territory to provide resources for the offspring of their reproductive efforts. Many of the state goals of the Taliban, as with many other old and patriarchal relgions has to do with controlling female reproduction through denying education, forced marriage, forced continual childbearing and subservience to male needs. Their suppression of female abilities whether Catholics, Muslim, Mormon, or any of the other religions or cultures that specialize in domination and suppression of wome, denies them a treasure of creativity and innovation - the abiities of half the population to add to the cultural richness. Even in our own culture, in my lifetime and early childhood, women were not encouraged to be educated and oru culture drove women like cattle into a cycle of early marriage, childbearing, childrearing and home-making rather than the pursuit of independence. Dependence was encouraged, and many women were on board with it, thinking the easy life of being supported and required to master only the simpler tasks of the home were enough, until, of course, their breadwinners disappeared through one means or another and they found themselves with no income, no skills, children to provide for and now viable means of adequate support except o find another male meal ticket.

The uneducated and untrained women were forced into employment that was difficult, menial, and low paying with no benefits. The cultures that repress women are forced into backward civilizations that depend on violence against women to keep the status quo. Fundamentalist groups like Boko Haram are forced to kidnap children to rape and subdue in order to continue their biological imperative to reproduce. The cultures of these other fundamentalist societies remain impoverished and so envious of the gifts of the civilizations of modern cultures that they must kill and repress their populations to keep them within their borders. The drug gangs of South and Central America have much in common with the Taliban and Isis, Boko Haram and violent death cults of that sort in that they are like a cancer that kills the host on which they feed and bring about their own demise. The ultra right wing cults of the ignorant, anti-science, and racist states in the South of the US are another example. Their defiance of science and common sense is causing them to kill their own population through the epimeic of Covid 19 and the Delta variant. Sadly many innocent people are caught in the deadly web of this ignorance and will suffer and die. I am often grateful to my ancestors who came to the US and provided me with all the opportunities I have enjoyed and I hope they are pleased that I did get an education and that I worked for the common good for my adult life as a teacher spreding knowledge and struggling against ignorance.