Signifying Pain Chapter Three

Chapter 3: Breaking the Code of Silence: Ideology and Women’s Confessional Poetry

Once again, I am breaking away from any sense of organized approach to this book. How I have written about De Salvo and Pennebaker is not at all how I am approaching Harris. I hope she can forgive me. I’m going to blame my lack of sleep on why I can’t seem to pull myself into focus.

The victim never deserves the perpetrator’s crime; he or she is rendered powerless by an overwhelming forced, an atrocity. It is only the survivor who can tell a story of his or her own victimhood; some victims do not survive. It is the responsibility of the living to make certain that their outrage is not only justified, but also the only appropriate response to the extremities of helplessness and terror and to confront the past as past (60).

This ties in so obviously and so well with what I was saying about how the survivor is the one who writes the memoir, who confesses the truth, who speaks out on the page. Or on the internet, as I seem to be doing. The need for the survivor to speak is so necessary. In the previous chapter, Harris wrote about how Freud thought that any sexual memories from childhood were merely wishful fantasies (on which he inevitably built his theory of the Oedipus Complex). In not being able to imagine that maybe some of these patients were actually recalling memories, by relegating them to false memories, the survivor’s voice lived on in denial. But this is no longer the case. When enough people raise the flickering candle of what happened, eventually people will stop and see. It may take time but it does have a certain imperative implication. If you have survived, you must speak. If not you, then who? The one(s) who did not survive?

Writing is a significant way to master trauma and complete the work of mourning (60).

One of the things of which I am repeatedly reminded as I read these books is how beneficial writing is for the person who is trying to heal. When I was struggling with my marriage, trying to discern for myself what would be best for myself and my children, I journaled a lot. My counselor often observed that I would take what little work we had done in her office and run with it in my journal, exploring and digging deeper to try to get to my own answers. My work was mostly a form of mourning. I had to let go of the fantasy of saving my marriage and come to terms with the fact that the relationship was dead, lost, and not something I could salvage. I had to cry and scream, beg and question. These things were done most easily between the pages of my journal.

[A] few of the original members of the confessional school . . . have been belittled and even demeaned for writing poems deemed as exhibitionistic, self-indulgent, narcissistic, or melodramatic (61).

I can only imagine what these same critics are saying about bloggers. The truth is, my step-sister and I discuss this often—the narcissism of writing. She has her memoirs and poems. I have my blogs, my poems, my . . . well, the list is rather endless. And exhibitionist. And self-indulgent. And narcissistic. I don’t think it’s melodramatic but I can only hope that these critics of the confessional school of poetry never stumble into any of my writing.

The victim should feel not guilt, but shame. Shame is the painful feeling of embarrassment or disgrace, a feeling that something unfortunate or regrettable has happened; but unlike guilt, shame does not blame and condemn its own heart, although shame, like innocence, is still in darkness. Shame repeats the question “why?”—and unfortunately, guilt is all too anxious to provide the answers (62).

I took exception to this. I don’t see how shame is empowering. I don’t think that it is very different from guilt, frankly. But then, I confess I am rather shameless. There may be a power in shame of which I am personally unaware. It may be a part of the healing process. And perhaps there is something here to consider—that the process of healing is not the same for everyone. Perhaps shame is necessary for some but for others it may not be. Pennebaker pointed out in his book, atehiet, that some people who survive trauma not only do not seem affected by it but may not be less emotionally healthy than those who struggle hard to make meaning of their experience. There may not be a right way and who am I to say that shame is not appropriate in some circumstances?

That is Job’s ultimate salvation: not guilt, but the love and the courage to live and love with unanswered questions (63).

My heart leapt at this. I often remind others because I need to remind myself that it is okay to ask the questions but it is crucial not to get stuck needing an answer. It is understandable to want to know why (see the previous quote) but it is not always necessary to have an answer. In fact, I have seen many people get stuck in needing to know why rather than finding a way to let go. Job is never really told why the events of his life happened. And in the end, he didn’t need to know why. Sometimes it is enough just to ask the questions.

Like the Holocaust survivor, the female confessional poet who has endured a traumatic experience is not untouched by shame for having been there to witness, present to terrible acts. The female confessional poet must break the code of silence and overturn the imbalance of power relations (65).

This reminded me of something I read in the introduction to the book Treblinka by Jean Francois-Steiner. The author suggested that the Frank family (as in The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank) were very naïve, even self-destructively so. To hide in an attic with no means of escape was foolish enough but for them not to have any means of self-protection, no guns or weapons to speak of, showed no real foresight. There is a shame implied in bearing witness to something as impossible to imagine as the Holocaust was. That the Holocaust became a metaphor around the time that the confessional poets were emerging is contextually and historically inevitable. Just as the events of September 11 have become a focal point for our contemporary society, the Holocaust had a repercussive resonance for these writers. As nations faced the truth which was gradually unfolding in Nuremberg and other trials across the globe, these confessional poets were trying to face and put voice to their own truths.

Had they [the Nazis] not know the difference between right and wrong, here would be no reason to hide it (70).

My first thought was about the children who are told to be silent, to hide the truth, to share in the secret. The minute the abuser says not to say anything, the child knows. If this were right, if there were nothing wrong in what we are doing, then I would not have to be silent. Like the Nazis who destroyed files to hide what had been done during World War II, the child knows, intuitively, that destroying the truth suggests something is not right.

Therefore, the language of confession is torrid, descriptive, and often brutal. . . . Silence only sustains suffering, but the artist breaks the silence by giving up suffering to speech and writing (72).

I have to agree that this is a brutal practice. This need to dig and then expose, to take what was secret and no longer remain silent. It is brutal on an experiential level and that brutality is bound to find itself in the words used to say “This is what happened to me!” There is nothing gentle about this and the reader who doesn’t feel somewhat brutalized by what they have read has not read closely.

And that’s okay, too. Sometimes it is safer and easier to not look brutality in the face. There is a time for these things. Now is not always the time.