Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist ... - MailChimp

cakes. Before they went out, he inspected her hands; seeing them, he withdrew
his invitation. My mother never forgot this. Her hands were rude and red from
washing and cleaning in order to help her mother send money to her brother.
She herself received no education. When her mother, my grandmother, was
asked to marry a former fiancé, her brother talked her out of it, saying that
everything was going just fine. To him, my mother bitterly added, but to me it
would have made a big difference. I would not have had to wash and clean and
I might even have received an education.
This is one of my mother’s narratives. I cannot remember when my
mother told me this. Was it when I came home from my uncle and aunt’s
house, filled with admiration over them and their way of life? The reflection
mentioned above on her part of responsibility for our love of our father came
very late; obviously my mother had done some memory work. Only when it
was too late did I come to understand and recognise the insight underlying this
reflection; my mother took on responsibility for our valuing our father more
than her. I will return to this later.
As for my own observations I noticed and became more and more
appalled by the way my mother had to account to my father for the money she
received for the household. In order to have what she needed for her personal
needs she had to cheat; this my father knew and she knew that he knew. He
could have raised her allowance, but he did not do so. Instead he made jokes,
telling me that my mother used all the money and left him with only wool in
his pocket and demonstrated it by turning out his pocket.
In the beginning my mother and my father worked together building
up a firm. She told me how her knees became ruined when cleaning bricks, and
how she was expected to keep the house clean and neat even in the cupboards.
My father used their home as a showroom. Every Friday evening they would
walk down the main street, buy something for the house using the rest of the
household money, and also two bars of their favourite chocolate. Later when
the firm was established, she was no longer needed; she became a house wife.
To work outside the home was never an option; my father would never have
allowed that. After my father’s death, she had difficulty managing the economy;
or rather she had problems recognising that she was rather well off and able
to do what she wanted without asking anyone. It was as if the money was not
hers or she had not earned it; she took out as much out as necessary in order to
survive but she never really enjoyed being independent.
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