Women, envy and the usual recommendations
Hello,
I’m currently reading Ways of Living by Gemma Seltzer, described as a ‘keen exploration of what it means to be a modern woman inhabiting the urban landscape’. In it there’s a beautiful story about Rose and Colette. They have been friends for over sixty years and are on a train, on their way to attend Rose’s adult son’s birthday party when
The anger comes hard to Colette, jagged and black. Other feelings compete for attention. Envy watching Rose marry in ivory silk aged nineteen. Bitterness when Rose’s first baby was called the healthiest on the ward. Desperation as life floated by while Colette sat exams and read newspapers. Then, like caught food slowly sliding down your throat, the moment eases.
I’m fascinated by envy among friends. And how easily it flits in and out of our consciousness when allowed. It was a feeling I experienced a lot in my teenage years and my early twenties. I never thought I would be able to escape it. I couldn’t figure out why I felt something so ‘ugly’ towards the people I loved most. As it happened, I was also on a train when reading about Rose and Colette. There was just one other woman in the carriage. She was on the phone and it was difficult not to eavesdrop. It seemed she was talking to another woman and both of them were gossiping about a third woman. It was clear all three were friends, but there was a maliciousness in their discussion.
A slight digression — on overhearing this stranger’s conversation, my first thought was ‘wow, people are still talking about other people’. Rich, considering how long it took to train myself out of gossiping and backbiting. So I wanted to share two things which put me on this path. The first was when my father read me a forwarded quote that went
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
The internet attributes this one to Eleanor Roosevelt. I was a tween when I heard it and for some reason it’s never left me. The second was when I was a teenager and as a believer this left an even great impact as it’s from the Quran:
"O you who believe! Avoid much suspicion, in deeds some suspicions are sins. And spy not neither backbite one another. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? You would hate it (so hate backbiting). And fear Allah, verily, Allah is the One who accepts repentance, Most Merciful" (Quran 49: 12)
In this verse, Muslims are strongly forbidden from backbiting, an act that’s compared to eating the flesh of your dead kin. So yes, I was motivated to stop but avoiding talking about people was tough. Why? I think it’s the easiest (and hence most superficial) form of connecting with others. It’s so unchallenging to bond over a gossip session. It also brings solace. I’ve not experienced anything as satisfying as backbiting about someone after they’ve upset me. It is a coping mechanism too. A lot of us feel trapped in our lives and are unable to distance ourselves from those who hurt us. It also comes from a place of envy. I think we talk about people when we can’t be them, when we want something they have. And it doesn’t matter if we love them. Susie Orbach hits the nail on the head when interviewed about envy in friendships for Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn:
The envy is just a starting point — what we are really feeling is more complex. There is the specific envy for somebody having what you want but, on a more profound level, I believe what envy lets us know is that women often feel embarrassed or ashamed about their own emotional needs and desires. That’s been schooled into us for hundreds of years. For that reason, envy becomes part of how women understand themselves; they can project on others the things that they want, because actually activating their own longings feels impermissible. There is still a complex set of internal taboos that induce shame around wanting. So the envy you project on to others is a sign of what you want but can’t get for yourself. It is a sign post for your longing, rather than literal envy for the other. It’s showing you what you want.
This got me thinking of what Fariha Róisín wrote in her July newsletter titled On Validation. It’s a raw and honest letter that covers many subjects, but below is an extract from the second half which I feel is connected with what Susie Orbach said.
Sometimes it’s extremely difficult to engage with other women, only because it seems that all of us have bought into weird power dynamics where we withhold affection, withhold care and maybe intentionally make others feel small… just because we’ve been taught to engage like that. So, instead of being honest in a situation — all of a sudden there’s competition, there’s projection, there’s assumption — without a desire to crack into something deeper and more healed, we turn on each other.
I love the idea of healing ourselves so we can stop turning on each other. It’s a pity that this is not our default. Patriarchy forces women into tight spaces with no room to explore our feelings and is quick to label complicated ones as ugly. All this to say — read Ways of Living and Conversations on Love! They are both great books. Another recent read that’s stayed with me is Look At Me by Anita Brookner. It’s a novel but there is a lot in there about writers and writing that many books on writing could never match. A paragraph that I revisit often is in the beginning of chapter 6, typed below for you:
And I did not write for many evenings that followed. In my new security I began to see it all in a different light. I began to hate that inner chemical excitement that made me run the words through in my head while getting ready to set them down on the page; I felt a revulsion against the long isolation that writing imposes, the claustration, the sense of exclusion; I experienced a thrill of distaste for the alternative life that writing is supposed to represent. It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state ‘I hurt’ or ‘I hate’ or ‘I want’. Or, indeed, ‘Look at me’. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It was only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.
I felt a similar revulsion in June and I stopped writing completely. I told myself I wanted to live, to do all the things I couldn’t do when I was trying to write. I missed all my deadlines but I think it was worth it because it helped me figure out that I don’t have to choose one over the other, that it is possible to do both. I’m pleased to say that July was a better month in that sense. I managed to write in short bursts and developed a healthier attitude towards my draft while also making time for friends and family and most importantly — being totally present in everything I did. Anyway, back to the book, this 1983 NYT review of Look At Me sums it up brilliantly
It would be an error to see ''Look at Me'' simply as a novel about a self-conscious young Englishwoman who becomes a writer on the order of, at a guess, Barbara Pym. Instead, it is a horror story about monsters and their victims told in exceptionally elegant prose. It is a great pleasure to read, especially when one considers that Frances, in becoming a writer, may end up the biggest monster of them all.
I also really enjoyed The Adventures of Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne. I listened to it on my walks over a stretch of three months. And I’m now waiting desperately for Hermione Lee’s biography of Anita Brookner. I ordered Excellent Women by Barbara Pym after being reminded that Jia Tolentino mentioned it in her collection Trick Mirror. Speaking of Tolentino, do check out her and Ronan Farrow’s excellent investigation on Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare.
A few other recommendations from around the internet
The Joy of a Well Chosen Word: An Interview with Gemma Seltzer
Ali Sethi: I came across Sethi through his Instagram lives and was especially inspired when he spoke about riyaz (practice). I’ve implemented it into my writing life with great results. His coke studio song with Abida Parveen is one of my favourites.
19 Lines That Turn Anguish Into Art — a close read of One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.
Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi on Netflix: it’s a Hindi film where Ramprasad’s family stays together for 13 days after his death, to perform and observe the Hindu traditions and death rituals called the tehrvi.
Harm on BBC iPlayer: I watched this last week but continue to be haunted by it. Directed by Atri Banerjee with great precision, it’s also brilliantly written and acted. It’s described as follows ‘When a lonely estate agent becomes obsessed with the perfect life of a charismatic social media influencer, the lines between the online world and reality become dangerously blurred.’
Starstruck on BBC3: A romcom series I enjoyed recently. This is also available on Hulu outside the UK. It’s funny and light but also mighty revolutionary in the way it portrayed a brown man (desirable).
All the Violence It May Carry on its Back: A Conversation about Diversity and Literary Translation
IRL I enjoyed Paula Rego exhibition at Tate and Chantal Joffe’s portraits at Victoria Miro. And a few other books I read recently and loved (I’m linking my short Insta reviews if you want to know more)
Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
Lessons in Love and Other Crimes by Elizabeth Chakrabarty
Still Life by Sarah Winman
Consumed by Arifa Akbar
Ghosted by Jenn Ashworth
Absorbed by Kylie Whitehead
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennet
Not a book but a journal by Muslim women on sex — Issue 1 of In Our Arms
Books I’m looking forward to reading
Cut From the Same Cloth? edited by Sabeena Akhtar
Send Nudes by Saba Sams
Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love by Huma Qureshi
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennet
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria
Would I Lie to You by Aliya Ali-Afzal
Finally, belated publication wishes to Sabba Khan for The Roles We Play. The reactions and reviews for this graphic memoir truly match the brilliance of Sabba’s work. Get yourself a copy!
I have started taking the train and meeting a few friends but still miss spontaneous book recommendations from strangers reading on the train. So please feel free to share your recent reads with me! I felt the void deeply when I visited Foyles and unearthed a whole swathe of books I had never heard of. It’s so easy to be reading and talking about the same few books when you are in your online bubble.
Zeba