Martha My Dear

I am having a very troubled time shifting today, Thanksgiving morning, into to baking pies for the family gathering. I'm in the middle of dissertation formation and I am I not feeling friendly towards my kitchen.  One might say I am actually enraged. I fear these are going to be some angry apple pies.  The Buddhist in me is aghast. I should be feeling like I'm getting off easy as this is the first T-day in several years I haven't been the hostess.  Three years ago, I had my whole family PLUS my office room mate from grad school and our newest grad colleague from Cameroon and his three children.  It was a fun, food-filled, funny day.  (The moment Michael from Cameroon pulled in and my son shouted "he's got kids in his car!" was a moment of hilarious scramble as we unearthed the card table, adding 3 more seats.)

Right now, despite my love of pie and the usual relative ease with which I cook-- finding joy in the smellsm textures and tastes of the foods, extemporizing with spice or form, anticipating delight of my loved ones--despite all that, I could give a flying...well you know.

I feel like Martha Stewart might have felt upon being booked into prison.  I barely tracked that whole drama but have always felt pretty certain that she got gigged simply because she was a woman who dared to become a mogul.  Do you think it maybe made a difference that she snuck into mogul-dom on little domestic design feet?  I do.  How dare she build an empire by marketing the sacred sphere of the domestic.  We can handle Ikea building it's Nordic base upon domestic furniture, we can even handle that crazy Julia Child bringing the hearth and it's crockery into the public and the marketplace (though, I daresay, she didn't quite make it to mogul status).  But Martha?  My God!  She took all the sweet little flourishes of decor, problem-solving, flower-arrangement, holiday cooking and patio play and she did them better and then make bunches of money through being saavy, driven and, I guess, a bit sloppy in sharpshooting the marketplace.  Or was she just an easy target for some other sharp-shooter?  Who gained ascendance while Martha sat behind bars? 

Vermeer's version

I can't help but think, given all the egregious sins of the many other moguls with penises out there, that there was some jealous spirit gnawing away at the process that busted Martha.  Maybe it was just that she had that new testament name.  Martha was the one, after all, in the Jesus story, that was the steady homemaking sort, obeying the dictates of of time and place, preparing the food for the illustrious visitor and his coterie.  And she is a bit cranky with Mary when she goes to sit in on the teaching.  When Martha heads out to fetch Mary back to the kitchen where she belongs, Jesus says ⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (NIV, Luke 10:38-42)  


My mother the feminist theologian used to teach on this one.  The rooms would be full of "Martha"s (sometimes quite literally) and, after years of keeping both the church dinner and the church accounts balanced, they not just a little perplexed in their hearts by Jesus' admonition.  Mom had both good news and bad news for them.  She would gently point out that she thought that maybe Jesus had a point--if we pass up the chance for a profound moment because the kitchen needs to be swept, we might have our priorities skewed.  Also, we might be worrying about minutiae while the very the mountains are moving.  Then again, it was that same Jesus who fed thousands, who admonished his followers to "give the coats off [their] backs."  



Was it a bunch of misguided Marys bringing down the house of Martha? That was one weird blogger's accusation--that feminists brought her down. (1)

I can't believe, especially now as the ridiculous wrongs of the marketplace and their moguls are made so clear in the glare of the OWS objections, that she actually served time.  



We sure did put her in her place, no? Did "someone" see her contaminating our domestic interior by bringing with capitalist--not initiative, which can be downright cute, as long as it stays small--but with capitalist success, success on the guy's terms in the guys' world using the girls' world and the girls' dollars. (2)  I think someone, and I (along with Ms. magazine)  really suspect a male, wanted to see this picture:

So here--the apples are unpeeled and the pumpkin still in cans--have a lil' piece of psychoanalytic pie, instead.  






(1) To redress that absurd and badly argued point check out this wonderful examination (pre-arrest, I believe) of the positioning of Madonna and Martha. Cool feminist analysis that concludes "an examination of Stewart's performance of domesticated femininity reveals that she is readily appropriated by queer cultures, who welcome her as an Other figure who reinvents rigidly defined social institutions, such as the 'family' and particular holiday occasions."   (http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/viewArticle/thrift/112)

(2) (To get a complete--and I mean complete--picture of how the domestic and public spheres are not only fluid but became defined as such, check out a The Secret History of Domesticity by Michael McKeon).