What would you think if your Mum sent you this?

[Autumnleavesfluttering]

"Perhaps that's how it is for every woman. The repression your female ancestors suffered accumulates over the generations, resentment building in daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter like hair clogging a washing machine filter, until along comes a child who is so pumped full of fury that she kicks all obstructions out of the way.

I became the receptacle for her pain, her fury, her bitterness...
I dragged it behind me as an ox drags its plough

• Violette Leduc, La Batarde, 1964

• from a book by Viv Albertine. I haven't read the book, so don't know the wider context.

What do you think it means? In particular, the part about the receptacle for pain etc?

@goldielockdown2

How does it feel like pressing on a bruise if you don't understand the meaning or intention behind it? Sorry, I'm not trying to be a dick!

No sorry I wasn't clear enough. I meant I'd be wary of asking her about this quote, because I think it could dredge up painful stuff. About who is carrying pain, etc. I don't want to have that conversation and that's what I meant about pressing a bruise.

Getting the quote itself is fine, I thought it was interesting and I do like the feminist message. I just couldn't ask her why she sent it, because of our mother - daughter dynamic. It's not straightforward.

Just in case I wasn't clear, Violet Leduc is referring to her mother in the quote.

@TheLastStarfighter

You are the child, carrying her burdens but kicking the obstacles out if the way.

She is proud of you for doing the things she couldn’t.

This.

If my mum sent me this, I'd think that she, as a feminist, is proud of her feminist daughter, but regrets the shit that society has dumped on women.

Maybe you could send a quick message to say you really appreciate that she thought to share the sentiment with you. That way it doesn't necessarily mean you want a conversation about it, and she probably didn't intend on it being a conversation opener anyway.
It probably just resonated with her and as a like-minded feminist, thought you'd like to read it.

It sounds like an apology

@TheLastStarfighter

You are the child, carrying her burdens but kicking the obstacles out if the way.

She is proud of you for doing the things she couldn’t.

That's how I read it too. That maybe now she also understands your anger, sees how she contributed to it, and is even proud of it.

I'd quite like it if my mum sent me that (she won't, she believes men need to be pacified, but still).

Well, I would have thought it clear that you are the child and she is the receptacle. And she's accusing you of having kicked her/taken it out on her, whilst also explaining that she couldn't help who she was, as she was molded by previous generations (she's trying to pass the buck back to her mother and beyond).

Are you an angry person OP? That would be my interpretation - you are a person full of rage, but she understands it's generational / ancestral rage.

I think the dragging part is the child dragging around the pain that has been passed down from grandma-mother-daughter etc.

My interpretation..... as a woman she understands your pain. And as your mother she accepts that it is her burden to absorb some of this pain.

Yes, I thought apology too.

@Autumnleavesfluttering was she an angry person as a mother?

Did she blame you for her hardship, maybe her failures,missed opportunities.. consciously or subconsciously?

Did you have different opinions/ideas about "the right thing", her being constrained and influenced by societal norms and "appropriate " codes of conduct for women?

Iv read this as anger has gone mother to daughter year by year until you couldn't just sit on it any longer and you hear taken all the years and years anger out on your mum. That's how I would read it

@TheLastStarfighter

You are the child, carrying her burdens but kicking the obstacles out if the way.

She is proud of you for doing the things she couldn’t.

I agree with this. I think she's also acknowledging that your relationship (like Albertine's with her own mother) has been difficult but saying that wasn't either of your fault so much as to do with the accumulation of baggage.

If I sent that to my daughter it would be an expression of pride.

If my mother sent it to me I’d think she’d had a bump on the head 🤷🏻‍♀️

I can't say what I would think if my mother sent it but the assumption I would make about your relationship with your mother is:

You have expressed anger or rage towards her at some point
She dismissed or minimised this or turned away from it/pushed you away at the time.
She now understands your rage as being a manifestation of intergenerational oppression and repression.
She now recognises it as a destructive power for good not ill. She is no longer afraid of the rage. Of your rage.
She believes this rage can topple the patriarchy.

Depending on your relationship, her emotional intelligence and how your rage manifested (if it was there at all!), there may be an edge of judgement that you flung your rage at another victim (her) instead of at the real culprit (structural misogyny). Makes me wonder if she was the focus of your rage and male people in your life (father, grandfather, brother?) didn't get it. Or it may be that she is proud of your rage and is letting you know it was entirely understandable

Hard to say. Interesting though.

You should read the book, "To Throw Away Unopened'. It's about Viv's relationship with her mother as her mother is dying, and a whole lot of other things. She really loves her mother.

I love Viv Albertine's books.....

Yes you are the child full of fury, which she does understand, but have you behaved badly to her recently? Is she the receptacle for your pain?

I'd suspect that she regards the poor relationship between you as due to you being angry one, blaming her, taking all your pent up anger and unleashing it on her.

The quote however reads the opposite way so I'd also suspect she misunderstood it.

Is she the receptacle for your pain?

I took it to be the opposite, that the OP has been (is?) the receptacle for the pain of her mother, (and grandmother and others) but has survived and thrived despite that.

On the face of it, I see it as an expression of pride and an apology of sorts.

If my mother sent that, she'd be trying to co-opt my emotions.

Of course she never would send it, because she doesn't like those nasty feminists who burn bras, although how dare anyone not give her equal pay, but meanwhile it's men's job to look after women.

But if she did... Well, she's the Universal Victim, the Martyr of All the World. She would send it if by some unhappy chance she'd been unable to avoid knowing (and avoiding knowing is her speciality) that she had been the cause of real pain to me. As this worldview is not allowed, she would immediately explain that SHE is the one who really has the pain – of all the generations, forsooth! – and aren't I lucky that I'm the one who gets to kick all the obstacles out of the way and not have to be in pain? Unlike Poooooor Herrrrr.

It sounds like you both need to have "that conversation."

I'd reply with something value free, like

"that sounds interesting, what is her work like?"

"What a powerful quote. Where is it from?"

and see if she expands.