Smith & Watson

Gordon draws on a ton of different types of narrative, point of view, art, and methods of exploring herself throughout her memoir. Smith & Watson's tools helped me decipher a few conclusions we drew in class that captured such huge topics. A few of the tool-tips were especially helpful:

Trauma Tool-Tip- 

• Do the traumatic memories come to the fore fragmentarily, repeatedly, throughout the narrative?
• Undoubtedly, Gordon shows her trauma through fragments of memories and storytelling throughout the memoir. Putting spaces between different memories, out of order, show her fragmented state of mind and exemplify her trauma. I'm not sure whether this was done deliberately or if it was laid out based on how she dealt with writing on a sensitive topic.
• Does the narrator struggle to speak the unspeakable?
• Mary, the narrator, oddly finds the words for her memories of her younger mother , she also finds the words for the negative images of her mother. However, when memories collide with her own image of herself in combination with that of her mother she struggles. She begins to use art and other vessels (prayer, her father, writing, perfume research) to show her connection and character. I believe this reveals not only a sensitivity to the subject, but and uneasiness of her self-image (?)
• Does the narrator discuss the therapeutic effects of writing?
• Although she never outright says that the writing of her memoir is therapeutic, Gordon always comes back to the idea of "needing" or "having" to write this book. It clearly serves some sort of purpose for herself.

Audience and Addressee Tool-Tip-

• Is there a person to whom this text is specifically addressed?
• The daughter of Mary is who it is addressed. This addressee is important because it shows the full circling moment of grandmother-mother-daughter. Gordon's daughter, Anna, is clearly named after Gordon's mom, who the text is written about/not about. Although Gordon deals with becoming a mother to her mother, she also becomes a mother to Anna. Anna "makes sense of everything". I believe the fact that throughout the whole book Gordon is dealing with loss and self-reflection through her mother she sees the best traits of both through her daughter. 
• The title also alludes to this approach, "Circling my mother" 
• What kind of reader does this text ask you to be?
• This question was very interesting for me. I believe that through art, Gordon tries to empathize with her readers and connect with them. One of the choices laid out by Smith and Watson for a type of reader was a sympathetic one or a therapeutic one. Gordon continually explains her mothers current existence through her own connection with art in combination with stories from her mother's past. This tactic not only connects the reader with something cultural but it is also relevant and personal to the author in order for the reader to empathize with and become a source of therapy for the author. 

Art History in the Memoir

As an Art Major I don't care for art history very much. I never have. It's not that I don't heavily respect the artists before me or learn from the greats (Albrecht Durer being my favorite), but I always found it somewhat crazy to try to compare my work to Leonardo's work to mine.

In the first few pages of Circling My Mother, Mary Gordon starts connecting everything to Bonnard's work. I took the liberty of looking up some of his pieces because I had never heard of him before. I suddenly understood both why I'm an art major and what Gordon was trying to communicate. 

Mary Gordon describes a very important fact about his works. They are all very light, colorful, and playful, but they are most definitely not happy. His wife, Marthe, was suffering. He held this incredible sadness in such light, flighty colors. She uses this to describe her mother and much of the on-goings of her mothers life and surroundings. She particularly compares her mother to Marthe when she describes how she somewhat drowned in isolation. 

Mary's mother stays in this nursing home with fluorescent lights and old people smell. She sits by herself all day sometimes, with her head in her hands. Mary states that she's unsure if her mother even thinks at all when shes like that. Her mother likes sweets and flowers. 

The sweets, flowers, and her surroundings ultimately bring me back to Bonnard's paintings of hazy color. Mary's mother is enjoying them though no one knows why or how. He surroundings are bright but her situation is grave, and life keeps moving around her. Like the colors of Bonnard's paintings, Mary's mother is lost in an out of mind experience without feeling and mary herself relates to the colors by sheer uncertainty. 

17

Sasha,

Though I would not ever erase anything that has happened in our life for fear of taking away the future we have created, there is an unnecessary damage that could have been avoided. Right now, at age seventeen, you are damaging your relationship based on events in the past. You are forming an image of men that doesn't, and never will, exist anywhere but in your past.

You feel that it has to do with the past men you have chosen, but it also has to do with those who should have chosen you. Though your concerns are valid, you are at fault for allowing it to form your judgments and accusations of the new people in your life.

This person is different. This person is trusting, loyal, and loving. This person has not ever lied to you. He does not keep secrets, his words have no ulterior motives, he understands your crazy, and the levels of your pain. He values you as a person and as his best friend. It is a mantra you need to start repeating. Start repeating it, draw it, learn it, and let his love in.

It is honest and true.

The amount of forgiveness and understanding that has come from this man deserves a better image in your mind.

Love,
A Stronger Us.

Peggy & Torch

These two women are characters in a movie and TV series that have a particular focus on women in the 1960's. They also happen to be played by the same actress, Elizabeth Moss.

Elizabeth Moss

Peggy Olson

Peggy Olson is from the TV series Mad Men, about a big time accounting firm and all of its dirty secrets. Peggy started as a secretary and worked her way up to a writer's position. Peggy defies the laws of "60's womanhood" by throwing out the possibility of becoming a domestic housewife. In the middle of the series she has a baby, but gives it to her own mother to raise in order to pursue her career farther. She also owns her own apartment, has her own secretary at the firm, and has a few different boyfriends throughout the series.

Polly (Torch)

Torch, on the other hand, is trapped at Claymore, a mental health institution, in the movie Girl, Interrupted. Torch burned herself as a child and was deemed clinically insane. However, Lisa, another mental patient, notices how Torch loves to act like a child and doesn't want to leave the mental health institution. Torch seems to retreat to childhood in order to escape the fate of becoming a woman in the 1960's.

These two characters seemed to resemble two sides of the same coin for me. Peggy works her butt off to be respected by the men at her accounting firm while Torch hides behind her scar and toys. The TV series and movie also seem to represent the same coin by depicting women in the 1960's either successful, quiet, or insane. I found it ironic that these two characters were played the same actress, but it helped to see the two (theatrical) extremes of the decade.