Post-Modern/Post Secular Motherhood, Part Two

Lori’s article suggested to me that the difficulties of modern motherhood are of a more generalized post-secular nature than I had previously considered. What strikes me most about our post-modern, post-secular society is the isolation of it. We live in little bubbles, even within our households sometimes, and it can be difficult to make real human connections. The satisfaction of needs, which is defined as the sufficiency of the self within the home, has been superseded by the satisfaction of wants, which are driven largely by impersonal market forces and have nothing to do with the home or the family. The Internet, with its chat groups, Facebook, e-mail and the like, while a reasonable facsimile and useful in its way, is no substitute for real community. This is the appeal of the Twilight series, as Lori rightly notes—people are looking for connectedness and the Cullen family represents an idealized (and largely unattainable) form of post-modern utopia.

What originally got me thinking about the problems of post-modernity was the HBO series Rome, which I swallowed almost whole during the month of January 2010 (the entire 2 seasons worth!). The series isn’t really supposed to be a statement about modern society or even a self-conscious contrast between our society and ancient Rome, but at the same time, I found myself drawing comparisons from the little details that snuck into the corners of the series. (For context, the series centers around two centurions beginning at the end of the Gallic wars and Julius Caesar’s route of Pompey. The two centurions are based on actual people, the only two regular soldiers mentioned in Caesar’s book about the wars and the time after. The series obviously takes some liberties with facts, but the context seems to be painstakingly researched and there is much about it that could have happened). What struck me most was the small ways in which women in particular lived their lives in a small domestic community within their households. There were always lots of women around (slaves, servants, other female members of the household) to share the physical load of the work but also to share the load of the mental burden of household drudgery. In our modern context (I suppose post-modern would be more accurate) this is rare indeed—those of us who do stay home do all the housework and childcare alone, with no female company. What I longed for (and long for still) is a community in which we live interconnected with one another in a way that our modern society makes impossible. One must give up self-sufficiency and independence, and put up with constant interference in one’s affairs, but that is part of pre-modern life. Lori points out that Bella’s Gothic heroism is in embracing precisely this sort of messy human connection within the vampire Cullen family. A connection that, again, as Lori points out, is lifted to the realm of the ridiculous and fantasy by the very fact of the Cullens’ supernatural status.

The other thing which makes the dream of pre-modern community living just a dream is the fractured nature of modern life—there is no shared culture of beliefs and no shared understanding of How Things Are Done. This lack of culture/shared understanding is critical to why communes generally fail and why small religious groups living together tend to implode given time. It is difficult for post-modern people to give up their self-sufficiency and submit to hierarchy and authority. Carlisle Cullen is clearly the voice of authority in the Cullen family, and while the others are free to make choices against his wishes, there is also the desire to keep the family intact, so for the most part, Carlisle’s decisions stand.

Additionally, there is a great reluctance on the part of post-modern society to label anything “Other.” In order to achieve community in a meaningful way, in which cultural traditions and rites are shared and passed down, How Things Are Done is a shared idea, and in which people give up autonomy for interdependence, one must at some point pick labels like “Us” and “Them” in order to define that which is outside the community. Without this critical distinction, which is difficult for the modern liberal brain to comprehend, there are no boundaries, nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted, and there is nothing cohesive about any of it. I do my thing, you do yours, and we’ll talk, but we can’t connect in a meaningful way. I find this to be true of many of my friends in the mommysphere—I am connected to them by virtue of the fact that we are moms with kids about the same age, but in so many cases, these women, whom I like very well as people, have nothing in common with me and so, beyond our children, we don’t have a lot to say to one another. The lack of genuine connection and shared culture/home life can be quite isolating. The shared culture of vampirism, with its rules and regulations, combined with Carlisle’s insistence on vegetarianism for his family, creates useful boundaries. The Cullens are able to define themselves against the Other—other “normal” vampires, shape shifters, etc.—but are also able to have meaningful relationships across those same lines. In a way, this is also the Twilight utopian vision: the Cullens can have their cake and eat it too, for they are able to exist in the human sphere, rather than lurking on the fringes in isolation, but also can peacefully coexist with other vampires of their society. They are able to live in a connected way to one another in their daily lives, free at home, while constrained in public (I think of the scene in the movie where Edward takes Bella home for the first time and he says to her, “This is the only place we can be free to be ourselves.” Home is the center of that utopian vision.

END PART TWO