Day 31
This is it, the final day. Another year wrapped up. I’m glad my writing has caused so many major improvements in women’s lives (I kid; I wish it did, but it will take a lot more than a woman sitting at a computer for a month turning out works about women). It has been a difficult month. I have suffered a major loss, but I kept writing. I would be tarnishing the legacy of the father I lost to fail to meet a commitment. So if I may be permitted to dedicate my work for women to a man, I would like to dedicate this month to my father, who taught me to never give up. I kept going, and now I can rest. Have a happy April Fool’s Day, and I hope I’ll see you next year.
DEATH OF A BIG FISH SALESMAN
People dream. Some people dream big. For most people, those dreams won’t come true, or will only partially come true. The bigger you dream, the more likely those dreams will not come true. The vast majority of us lead mediocre, ordinary lives, but we like to think of ourselves as extraordinary. In short, we want to be the hero of our story.
Which leads me into my thoughts as I was watching the play from which I took that last line…Big Fish. It’s a fun play, a musical with lots of dancing and with giants and werewolves and mermaids. It’s the story of a dreamer who dreams bigger than his life in small town America. Watching it invariably gets me thinking of another play about a dreamer, this one a truly exquisite script but not so fun…Death of a Salesman.
There is a central theme they have in common…a traveling salesman who dreams of being a hero. Edward Bloom tells stories of his extraordinary adventures; Willy Loman broods. Both of them have sons that fail to understand them. Both of them have wives who insist the sons should understand. They are both dying.
There are other plays about dreamers who don’t achieve what they think is theirs by right or hard work. There is one common thread through all of them…the dreamers are men. Women people the plays mostly so they can have someone take care of all the household duties, to cheer them on, and to be devoted…or to be someone shrewish they can blame most of their troubles on, like in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Through plays, movies, books, and other art, this has been the model presented to me throughout life. Men dream. Women nurture. Men suffer from not achieving their dreams; women give up any dreams they might have had for the love of their life. Linda Loman is described in character descriptions as Willy’s loyal and loving wife. Her personality is muted; she defends Willy no matter how bad he treats her. Sandra, Edward’s wife in Big Fish, is described as patient and calm…and married. One character description says “little movement”. That is as damned true as it can get…maybe it refers to dancing, but it might as well refer to life. The moment she married Edward, she had no more movement.
From a young age, I wondered about the wives in plays like these (not Virigina Woolf – Martha tells you all about her dreams). What were their dreams? What did they give up? Why? We know Sandra Bloom went to college; it is never mentioned what she studied. If she had any dreams, we are not allowed to know it, other than a dream at a young age of being a singer, which seems mostly to be present as a device to introduce her to Edward. Linda Loman barely exists; this play is about the men in the family, all of them failing to achieve the greatness expected by Willy. One of the famous lines in the play is “Attention must be paid”. Linda says this about Willy; the world needs to pay attention to this man. Why? He is utterly mediocre. He is about the most ordinary man you could imagine. His life is winding down, but he still dreams, unrealistic dreams, impossible dreams. He believes he is greater than those around him who succeed.
My point is this: I hear a lot about dreams of men, not just in fiction. We hear about promising young men who failed to live up to their promise. It must be someone’s fault, and media may parse every moment of their life to figure out who’s. (Usually a woman, of course…very few of these reach the enlightenment of Margaritaville, where Jimmy Buffet ends with “It’s my own damn fault”.)
When women dream big, they are dismissed as “too ambitious” or “not feminine”. People don’t write plays showing their dreams failing. Occasionally, you might see something, maybe Caryl Churchill, but they don’t reach the level of acclaim as that reached by Willy Loman. Men’s dreams are important; women’s dreams are amusing.
In the world of theatre, as in movies and television, women are mostly there for scenery, to support the men, to take care of the men, and to give the men a grand love…or a miserable marriage. Women are background. And yet, I know women dream. I know it because I dream. I know it because other women I know dream. Maybe not all women dream or have ambition; some women might be content to be Linda Loman or Sandra Bloom. But a lot of women dream, even though we have been brought up to believe that big dreams (and the big failures that go along with them) are for men. We are there to help when the men fail, or to be the cause of his failure.
All of this has been going through my head off and on for several years, ever since I saw my first production of Big Fish. I decided to write a play that focuses on a woman who dreams big, but when she gets married, her dreams can’t be met. Instead, she focuses on a man’s dreams. She sacrifices her life’s desires for him, because she has been told that is what women do. Her son has nothing but contempt for her, believing she has never accomplished anything worthwhile. It is only following her death that he finds out about her dreams, about her knowledge, and about her sacrifice. Someday, maybe the play will be produced. Given what I usually see on stage…it seems unlikely.