Framing Dorothy Day, part II

Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day wrote often about her childhood and cast it in happy terms. Her stories of making dolls from calla lilies or enjoying happy times gathered in the dining room reading and eating apples (which she would peel and salt) paint an idyllic picture of her girlhood. Even the privations are cast in positive terms-- a sheltered childhood allowed time to read and study; housework when the family could not afford a maid instilled discipline and a work ethic, being the primary caretaker for her baby brother when she was not at school gave her an opportunity to push the carriage up and down the streets of working class Chicago that had so gripped her imagation as she read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Poverty meant a chance to play with the poorer children. Prosperity meant a more comfortable home.

Yet between the lines--and within the lines of her autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin--a harsher picture emerges. She states in The Eleventh Virgin that as a child she was “slapped for many things.” (EV, 8). When Della and Dorothy were holding horsehairs in a brook, hoping they would turn into snakes, Della fell into the water and Dorothy (called “June” in the novel, presumably because in real life her middle name was May) was “whipped for it because, Mother … argued, June was two years older and should have known better.” (EV, 8) Later, Dorothy learned to cope with punishment through reading: A friend gave her a book about a saint and “thereafter, …[she] prayed to Pelagia, her birthday saint, every time a whipping threatened. It didn’t avert the punishment but her faith remained unshaken.” (EV, 16) She remembers being so tired from baby care of her younger brother John, born when she 14--including being assigned the four o'clock feedings--that she was exhausted at school, where she was working hard to earn a college scholarship.

She also recalls much housework--and perhaps most poignantly, isolation. Her father “in one his recurrent moods of superiority, would not let his daughter play with the girls of the neighborhood … Mother … assisting him in carrying out his idea of exclusiveness ….” (EV, 23) In such a state, “there were no adventures to make her realize that life was joyful.” (EV, 29) Dorothy longed for the days when the family had been poorer and she’d been free “to mingle with crowds of children in playgrounds and play in the dirty streets with strange little girls and tell them wild, imaginative tales.” (EV, 29) When the family moved to a more affluent neighborhood, “it was a humdrum life of lonesomeness.” (29) She longed, early on, for the freedom she saw among the working classes.

Why did Day frame her childhood as happy, when it clearly had its share of grief--and possibly abuse? She left home at 16 and was, for the most part, self-supporting for the rest of her days, preferring unheated tenement rooms and heavy labor to returning home. Late in his own life, her father described Day as the "nut" of the family, and wrote that he wouldn't have her around him.

I haven't read anything that discusses the possibility that Day was an abused, scapegoated child. I understand she didn't want to be portrayed that way. Also, what's considered abuse in one generation or culture is often normal child rearing in another. At the same time, it's not hard to see a person who was the underdog and scapegoat in childhood sallying forth as an adult to help those stigmatized and held down. What most interests me, as I look at 20th century "saints" (and Day resisted that label) is how we misread what seems to be lying in plain sight in front of us in favor of a narrative "line." Why would we not see what is there? Do we do her a disservice when we look away?

Framing Dorothy Day I

In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, a character named Mary Crawford has grown up in the household of a corrupt uncle, a Navy admiral. At one point, she says wittily that she knows all about "rears and vices," following that with the statement "Now don't accuse me of punning." Of course, it seems obvious, even without Mary pointing to it, that she is indeed punning--she knows all about rear and vice admirals and all about their "rears and vices."

However, on the various Jane Austen lists to which I subscribe, violent fights break out periodically over this statement. One faction sees the worldly Mary punning, the other says no, of course she's not punning--look, she even says she's not punning. I have a level of frustration with this second faction, wondering how in the world they can't see the pun, especially given that Mary and her brother Henry are serpents who invade the "garden" of Mansfield Park, complete with allusions to Milton--and complete with adroit skills at manipulating language. I give enormous credit to Jane Austen for creating in Henry and Mary such well-rounded characters--they are so charming, so talented, so delightful, so capable, at times, of genuine social kindnesses--that you half fall in love with them, while at the same time knowing the "city" has twisted and corrupted them. Their vices hide in plain sight.

Dorothy Day was an enormously good woman who should, I believe, be made a saint. Her childhood contributed to that, and she's documented her tale of growing up at least three times. Yet because of the way she's framed it, the real story may be hidden in plain sight. To be continued ...(Not a tease, I'm just out of time right now ...)

Dorothy Day and a good book on children's literature

I'm reading a good book on children's literature called American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood by Gail Schmunk Murray (1998).

What interests me about children's literature is the lifelong impact it has on readers: In other words, that it's formative. It colors how we view the world. As Murray argues, it's also conservative. Such literature is written by adults who have typically wanted to inculcate children with whatever they consider the prevailing "good" morality of their time period, be it Christian sentiment in the 19th century or acceptance of minorities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. I would add too, that because it is imagined by adults who, inevitably, transmit the values of their own era--essentially the era before the birth of the child reader--children who internalize these values are carrying forward and conserving older values. If they express these values as adults, they are expressing the values of their grandparents' generation, though, of course, influenced by the experiences and values of their own lives.

Dorothy Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker movement in the 1930s, was much influenced by the 19th century novels she read as a child. Two that impressed her were Wide, Wide World and Queechy by Susan Warner, both huge best sellers before the Civil War and an influence on a generation of literature to come. In these novels, which are sentimental by today's standards, young orphan girls survive in a cruel world through faith in God, patience, innocence, kindness, forgiveness and self sacrifice. Although these novels were written from an evangelical Christian perspective, Day was able to carry their values into the Catholic Worker movement. Along with other books, they gave her an inspiration and a touchstone. The Catholic Worker hospitality houses required huge amounts of patience, kindness and self sacrifice. They also ignited the popular imagination: the CW hospitality house movement spread quickly.

Books like Queechy and Wide, Wide World remind me of Shirley Temple films of the 1930s, often featuring Temple as a brave, innocent and virtuous orphan girl who makes her way in a cruel world. It interests me that such Victorian motifs carried into the 1930s, a time of great suffering, and that they manifested in both films and the Catholic Worker movement. One could argue that the compassion imagined in the 19th century is in many ways realized in the 20th century, especially during the New Deal of the 1930s, as many of the people who grew up reading 19th- century children's literature came of age. And it's surely possible that children's book like the Little House series, which, as Murray points out, promoted self help and implicitly critiqued government programs, have influenced the politics of our era in an individualist direction.

Questions that arise for me include: What values did I imbibe and have I carried forward as a child reading children's literature in the 1960s and early 70s? What values are today's young adults carrying forward? What impact have they had and will they have on how our society is structured?

Dorothy Day: On Love

In my last post, I forgot one of Dorothy Day's lifelong convictions, from St. John of the Cross:

"Where there is no love, put love and you will find love."

Dorothy Day: Simple Truths

I am finishing the 600-page diaries of Dorothy Day, which span 45 years, and I am struck by the consistency of Day's beliefs. Once she became a Roman Catholic--or by 1934 -- her beliefs never wavered. She reminds herself of them often in her journals, so much so that they become ingrained in the reader as well. Here are a few, in no particular order except as they occur to me:

1. We must build a society in which it is "easier to be good."

2. The world will be saved by beauty. Late in the diaries, she speaks of a group who would go into the slums, as she calls them, clean and paint and repair, then furnish the rooms with the utmost simplicity, hanging icons and crosses on the walls, which glowed with beauty.

3. Christ calls us to find his face in the "least:" the unreformed alcoholic, the poor, the mentally ill. We are to embrace them as brothers and sisters. It is not easy.

4. We are called to stand for peace. Christ was the Prince of Peace. Day never wavered in this conviction: not during the Spanish Civil War, when the Catholic church largely supported the fascists, not during World War II, not in the face of Hitler and the holocaust, not during the Cold War of the 1950s, not during Viet Nam.

5. "Christian" people who live well are not living the gospel. Day had a lifelong distaste for fat, comfortable priests and such like.

6. Silence is important. She is constantly reminding herself to talk less and listen more. She had great affinity for the Quakers.

7. Judge not. She lived with people it would be easy to judge: prostitutes, drug addicts, drunks, people she opened her room to who stole her things and left her lice in trade. Yet she constantly admonishes herself not to judge, not to speak harshly, to praise God for these people as the face of Christ in her life. She constantly sought to live humbly.

8. We can learn from great literature.

9. Manual labor is very important. It is part of the balanced life. It is where we meet God.

10. God and religion are both spiritual and material. People need spirit, but also need things. Poverty is an evil.

Day was a truly awesome person, and I use the word "awesome" in the sense of awe-inspiring. She lived her beliefs every day. What do you think of them? She would also read the biographies of saints for inspiration. I am inspired by her. Could you suggest books about people who inspire you?

Dorothy Day

I'm reading "The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day," edited by Robert Ellsberg. I have long been interested in the Catholicism and social justice leadings that led Day to publish the Catholic Worker and join in the struggle for worker's rights, so I am glad to have this book in hand. Can you think of people who are contemporary incarnations of Day? Who would you list?

In the book's introduction, Ellsberg quotes Day on writing, a timely contribution to the debate on blogging:

"Writing is an act of community. It is a letter, it is comforting, consoling, helping, advising on our part, as well as asking it [advice] on yours. It is part of our human association with each other. It's an expression of our love and concern for each other."

True?