Was That My Life Passing Me?

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood spotlighted extreme misogyny in which a certain class of women was forced into a strictly sexual/reproductive purpose without love or attachment. Certainly, many females throughout history and disparate ethnicities and gender identities have suffered a similar fate, but the chronological role track set for “modern” women has traditionally been girlfriend, wife, mother…and caretaker. Many females have managed to combine ambitions or independently avoid that track altogether, especially after the rise of feminism. Not so long ago, however, young women were chided that they went to universities only to gain their MRS degree. For many that was true. As young women faced what was advertised as a lonely, grinding future in which independence would be disadvantaged, the pressure to be matched with a mate who could provide necessities and identity was intense. Those not coupled were suspect as less-than. Careers were often shadowed, the earned accolades primarily assigned to the men who worked nearby. To this day, women were/are rarely paid or recognized on the same plane of achievement as their male counterparts, and a segment of the current population believes the discrepancy is appropriate. The Equal Rights Amendment for women has never been fully ratified and women’s freedom to make reproductive decisions is under renewed fire.

Outspoken male supremacy lost favor for a while, although an undercurrent that insisted a woman’s true calling lay in tending children and marriage never ended. (The irony of removing a woman’s right to control her own reproductive future when the decisions are most consequential for her remains disturbing.) Right-wing religions still insist a woman’s place is subservient to a man. Most women who accept the chronology of wife/mother/caretaker don’t necessarily describe themselves as secondary, but once they marry, many are forced by circumstances such as finances, childcare, and time management to prioritize the family as their default. The question is what cleverness or ambition survives in the wife’s weary brain after years of squeezing both career and family into skinny slivers of time? If her husband doesn’t act as a full partner, she’s exhausted. Like her superiors in business, her husband may replace her with a more current model. “Who am I now?” she asks herself as her physical appearance, professional timeliness, and short-term memory may gradually decay. Enter the 2017 British film EDIE.

Edie is a thin woman about 83 years old who has spent the past 30 years caring for her husband who suffered a severe stroke just as she was about to take time for herself. With the social responsibility she inherited as a wife, she never had a chance to enjoy a final camping trip with her beloved father. Her grown daughter now finds her intractable and annoying, unwilling to try to like the senior care selected for her. In a flash of independence, Edie decides she’ll take the trip she had planned with her father, this time solo without permission from anyone.

The fact that Edie’s goal is to climb a mountain in Scotland is impressive—more so considering Sheila Hancock, the actress playing her part, was of the same approximate age and actually did the deed for the film. (Okay, Hancock enjoyed more help, but the story is based on a real person.) Most of the young people in the village remind the viewer that a woman from that age range is often dismissed as incapable and laughable.

Society can sympathize with young women who serve ambitions. But we don’t like to talk about older women whom we assume are facing no goal more significant than an honorable death if they haven’t achieved fame already. In these times of political protests, older women are stepping into the limelight, often leading because they have the time and are invested in the outcome. We women beyond a certain age may have dialed down dreams we once had in favor of family, but we aren’t ready to surrender to being utterly dominated and demeaned. We looked into the mirror and, beneath the wrinkles and traditional history, we saw a powerful soul. Who am I now? I’m ME.