photo: Becka McFadden
I am not someone who enjoys anything in the vicinity of camping.
One summer, however, I wanted to attend a theatre festival in South Bohemia and I thought it would be fun to stay in a little campsite of small wooden huts.
Yes, this is camping-proximate activity.
I lasted exactly two nights in this accommodation before the long walk to the toilet and the lack of anything approaching acceptable coffee in the morning had me googling the nearest hotel. (It was in the town of Vodňany, by the way, and it was charming and affordable - I should have gone there in the first place.)
Before I left the campsite, however, I managed to contract a case of ringworm. It was on my finger and probably came from the mattress. I named it Bert and it has served since the summer of 2014 to support my thesis that under no circumstances should camping be a thing I do.
I share this anecdote because today's letter revealed that Jack too had a little case of ringworm in the Philippines. It also drives home the fact that what he is describing in the letters is most certainly classifiable as camping-adjacent.
It also hammers home the extent to which current regulations around staying at home (home here generally taken to be somewhere one is not likely to contract a case of ringworm) are not really asking too terribly much of us.
I say this in the context of Dominic Cummings, whose (delayed) press statement was the cause of this evening's delayed start.
Some interesting insights in today's letter, particularly around the nuances of Jack and Winnie's relationship.
Or maybe 'context' is a better word than nuance. Or 'contextual nuance.'
I've been avoiding digging into the phrase "little wife" that crops up with a degree of regularity in these letters. It makes me cringe, but I'm aware that a) perhaps some women enjoy being referred to thus, which is entirely their right; b) its utterance in 1945 is contextually distinct from its utterance today; and, c) the way I in particular hear this phrase - how I hear it and what I hear in it - is not a universal experience.
(But then when is anything ever?)
Seriously, though - we're getting to the end of this...and by this I mean ALL of this, whatever this iteration is. Lest you doubt me - or in case you're reading this in the UK or US - here's some proof: today it has been possible to go out without a mask AND I have been invited to dinner. In a restaurant. For the first time since March.
It's not to say that this project - and this situation of quarantine and social distancing - will not return. But there is a particular process we're in and feels a bit that it's winding down. So perhaps it's time to look at "little wife". Or perhaps more broadly, "little wife-ism."
There's the phrase itself. The implied cuteness. I just react negatively to anything that seems to foist cuteness on adults. "Little wife" makes me uncomfortable in the same way I don't like seeing clothes associated with children on adults.
There are other overtones in the letter - the financials of it all, that she has an allowance, which she shouldn't run down - dip into the allotment check. That she went to some carnival alone, "unescorted" to be precise. That he appreciates her following his "suggestion" not to overdo it with her volunteering - "perhaps it was stronger than that," stronger than a suggestion, that is.
In the earlier letters, the ones from 1942, it's she who is often expressing concern for his well-being: don't work too hard, don't tire yourself out. I realise I read these expressions of concern differently depending on who's written them - his feel more controlling, hers needier. Is it because they somehow fundamentally are, or is that the patina of gender, inflecting how I interpret them, how they strike me?
There are three passages in particular in this letter that sit with me. I'm not sure if I can be articulate about them, but when in doubt make a list, so let's get them out there and then we'll see what, if anything, emerges.
First, there's the carnival Winnie visited. Apparently there was a burlesque show there (I thought burlesque was dead by the 1940s, at least that wave of burlesque, but obviously I was wrong). It appears to have been offering "17 New Housekeeping Tricks!" Jack is glad she did not attend, as these are matters best left to him to introduce.
I suppose I sense in that the particular way marriage has of contracting - so easily - one's existence, even if the parties involved don't intend it. There's something scripted in the roles, in the interaction, that implies something smaller and more limited than what would be the case otherwise. As if one's life is inscribed within the institution, as if one's experiences of a certain kind can have no existence outside that frame. Obviously not, now, but seemingly so then, and still, today, something that must be guarded against, actively.
Then there's a discussion of the volunteering - she's in a hospital, in the maternity ward. He's glad the experience hasn't scared her, as he's aware it sometimes puts women off the thought of having children all together.
I don't know what it is in that that gets under my skin, exactly, but it does. As if somehow only fear is a justifiable reason to refuse to reproduce. As if it's something to talk about. What do I mean by it? I don't think I actually know what I mean.
Third, there's a rather bizarre anecdote in which another serviceman compliments Jack on his beautiful wife by saying hers is the first picture he's seen since leaving home that would make him considering being unfaithful.
Together with the burlesque thing, it's a challenge to sit with. It's like the marriage sucks everything to do with sexuality - attraction, appearance, adult activity - into it and that content, or at least the public-facing side of it (the photograph on the desk, the wife at the burlesque show) becomes the property of the husband. So the passing guy can say what he does, because it's not about her, even though it's her image. More than anything else, it's Jack's.
Again, much of this is contextual, in the sense that the letters give me insight into how people thought and expressed themselves at the time. That's what we're here for, right? No surprises there.
Still, there's something that contracts rather than expands in this. I don't love it. It feels uncomfortable. And that's okay. Sometimes things do.
Until next time, pep.
Your loving hubby
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