The Rape of the Mind

Joan Castleman wins the Nobel Prize in Literature

There’s a line in the episode, “Homo Homini Lupis” of Law & Order Criminal Intent in which Detective Bobby Goren, ever champion of women, says to the perp, “You raped her mind, you raped her body, but SHE GOT YOU!” The rape victim, a little girl, was able to draw the creep’s tattoo from memory, “every tiger stripe, every letter, every number.”

As I watched The Wife, I kept hearing that line. Though I did not know the outcome of the story, I could feel the rape of Joan Archer’s young mind. Joan is writing her husband’s books. Why? Because it’s 1968 and we are told, society doesn’t want to read books by female authors. Joan has been able to “sell” her husband, Joe Castleman, to a publisher by promising the waspy house their very own Jewish author. (Literary movies often name the characters after characters in famous fiction and I couldn’t help but hear the name of one of lit’s most famous liberated, feminist characters, Isabel Archer*, a woman who also gets “caught.”) The young Joan is beautifully and delicately played by Glenn Close’s daughter, Annie Starke. As we watch her writing, we can sense the tension slowly building. At least, at least, Joan, young and old, gets to keep her words. One of my favorite scenes is when the elder Joan (played by Oscar! Oscar! Glenn Close) is on the phone extension listening to the Nobel representative congratulating her husband on his work: I could see her mind listening to his praise, taking it all in, as though he were speaking directly to her about her own accomplishment. Of course, unknown to him, he was speaking to her.

Colette etching Willy's name in the glass

Interestingly, also out this year is a similar story, a real life story about the writer, Colette, another female author forced by society’s lack of interest in the female voice, to write under the shadow of her husband’s identity. 

But, was society uninterested in the female voice? Colette wrote a series of novels about the mind of a young girl, Claudine. These were very popular, both when the public thought they were written by Willy and when they thought the books were written by his sensational wife. Eventually, Colette leaves Willy and writes more books under her own name. Her authorship becomes known.

Both these women got to keep their words. The books existed. Women had written them. 

Alice &

But, another movie troubles me. The Girl in the Book (2015). This story is about Alice, a young girl with exciting potential. Her parents are literary; she has every advantage of wealth, education, and social contacts. She has talent, and more importantly, a voice. We hear her words as she writes them down: they are cool, sophisticated, poetic yet precise. But, Alice is extremely lonely. She comes home and ritually calls, “Hello?” to an empty house. One of her father’s authors, a ruggedly handsome much older man, pays attention to her. As Alice cries, later in the story, “You were the only one who ever seemed to see me!” She doesn’t realize until it is too late that his attention was the grooming process of a pedophile. 

He raped her body. He raped her mind. 

He stole her words.

Far worse, he stole her confidence by constantly criticizing and undermining every one of her efforts while he was busy racking up her brilliance for himself. He writes a Lolita/Catcher in the Rye type of novel called "Waking Eyes" that becomes wildly successful with the kind of success every writer desires - the book becomes a classic. In fact, he writes several more books on his own that do not catch fire.

He took her talent. He took her ambition. He took her faith. 

What kind of a man needs to rape the mind of a little girl to get his words?

A very, very small man.

Does Alice “get” him? Does she get her words back? 

I won’t tell you. I will say that it is a long, tortuous journey for Alice. A tenuous effort to grasp that which does not exist yet, that which is forming. 

Colette and Joan Castleman were lucky. They got to keep their words. 

Another favorite scene in The Wife is the very last scene. Joan's husband has passed away from a sudden heart attack and she is flying home from the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. What will Joan do now? we ask ourselves, as Joan looks up at us from the blank page of her notebook. She smiles.

Oh, yeah!

*Isabel Archer, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2019

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die: A Historical Novella of Marblehead, Telling of Two Murders Which Happened There, 301 Years Apart (2011), about Marblehead legends and true crime, and its sequel, Dreamwater(2013), about the Salem witch trials. Her novel, Holy Days(2015) is about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her poetry books are  Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse (2018); Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, (2017), illustrated by the author; Atlantis (2006), and Marblehead Moon (1993). All Plum Press. Her poetry has been published in nthposition.com, Pemmican Press, Radius: Poetry from the Center to the Edge and The Potomac, among others. For more work and information, please visit http://patriciagoodwin.com/. 

I Must Be About The Work Of My Fathers

Daddy

All the girls cried that you looked like Alan Ladd, they asked me, 

“Do you know Alan Ladd, honey? Your Daddy looks just like him.” 

You were quick to point out that Alan Ladd was short and you were tall. 

You said, “They had to put his co-stars in a ditch so he could kiss them.”

Remember, Daddy how you ran from bed to catch the arsonist who was throwing fire in our doorway? You gave him such a beating he never came back.

You rolled your cigarette pack under your T-shirt sleeve. Lucky Strikes.

Papa

No one gets you, not really. How I suffer when I hear them argue.

I loved you when you woke in Paris

while Hadley slept and you washed the Bumby bottles, fed him

and afterwards, went down for the papers

then you wrote 

You taught me everything I know.

You raised me, word by word.

I listened carefully to your Zen description

of the elephant and the lion, the fish and the sea, the boxer and the bullfight.

How the old women went up the hill in the early morning

to drink the bravery and came down grey faced.

When Pilar washed her feet in the stream, I knew I’d come home.

You named your boat Pilar. Of course you did.

You were truly One.

Because of you,

I keep my baby picture on my windowsill

to remind me of my promise.

Fitzgerald

You touched God.

A word like a flower in a valley of ash: robin’s egg blue.

You were the finest champagne.

I loved that you died with your head slamming to the typewriter,

as Hemingway said, “Without ceremony.”

I want to die like that. I want to live like that.

Stephen Crane

You helped me understand my red badge of courage.

Because of you I was not afraid of the pain,

no, nor the yellow pus or the dark blood.

Because of you, I knew I could sleep

under the green bough in the dappled grass,

a chapel more holy than church.

You gave me the prayer book: Maggie, Girl of the Streets.

The first modern novel.

 D.H.

You.

Had to be published in Italy where the printer could not speak English.

He could see only the purity of letters.

You taught me where and why everything was.

I am not afraid to get wet, to stand in the rain.

I am not afraid of words or animals.

I am only afraid when a rich man is in the last of Sherwood Forest.

Robin Hood

Nobility cannot be taken away.

Maid Marian was a better archer than you, and a better horseman.

I remember how you listened to her ideas – and then – followed her

though you were a leader!

You laughed! Stole from the rich, gave to the poor.

You died, finally

Betrayed by your cousin, a nun.

Tarzan

What did you teach the boy?

Tarzan teach Boy where to find water when thirsty, where to find food when hungry.  

Tarzan teach Boy to be strong like lion and happy like bird.

You find everything you need in the jungle do you?

Wise man need little.

Have you ever thought what will become of Boy if he grows up in the jungle?

Boy grow up to be brother of sun and friend of rain.  Hurt nobody.  Want nothing people have.  Grow old like cedar tree.  Boy will be good man, happy man.

No one can want more than that.

Virginia Woolf

Words are waves and waves are words. I let the words take me like waves.

I do not try to understand them.

The shark fin races to find you. The lighthouse is dark.

You stood to work because Vanessa stood to paint.

You walked every day.

I read your letter to Clive on Christmas afternoons, when all is quiet.

“It is past nine o’clock and people still sing carols beneath my window.”

Colette

Earthly Paradise.

How you reminded me of my Nona,

her blue velvet slippers with toes cut out to relieve the pain,

shuffling ahead of me, taking longer in old age than my quick baby steps,

going down the stairs, three flights to the garden

with a heavy bucket of water and back again.

Devotion.

Forbidden pleasures: The chocolate pan sizzling before dawn.

How Sido laughed when the infant crushed the rose in his little palm.

The cool flesh of Cheri, Leah’s pearls about his throat.

All these nurtured me through my girlhood. I close my eyes to write.

Georgia

You were not afraid to follow the Great God of Where the Line Goes

The shapes of Nature repeat themselves

line may be lip or bone

round may be breast or stone

Flowers so precious they became Mountains

You were a black sculpture tracing lines of yourself on the sand

which only the ancient may understand

Patti Smith

You do not think it’s bravery. I do. Because I need to be quiet.

But, I adore your horses and your ties.

Kiss me with your words and your beats, Oh Prince!

I do not know if you are father or mother, but I love you.

Gloria!

Jesus

You are too beautiful to look at directly.

I can only follow you.

I think of you living.

I know your Father and Mother gave us yang and yin.

And the Holy Spirit, which is life and love.

You wanted us to love each other and to marry.

To have children and to live well.

From the time I first heard of you

I believed someone who loved so much

must have fallen in love with a woman.

I am a Magdalena. I carry a rose.

Husband

Guru.

You taught me how to read life

and how to cook brown rice.

When I first met you, your house was art.

I knew I had come to the right place.

We gave each other life beyond our own – a family.

You take care of us in a storm and build an ark

out of a Mini-Cooper.

We love you!

Thank you.

Happy Father’s Day!

UPDATE: Found out exactly what Dad is doing in this photo! Seems the little one stepped in dog poo! What a guy!

©Patricia Goodwin, 2013

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.