Invisible Woman, Redux
I don’t know why I torture myself with this.
So, remember when I was speculating on what Nicole Johnson was saying with the Invisible Woman:
According to her analogy, is the family and the husband suppose to be the cathedral that women are building for God? Is that the correlation? If so, then isn’t she implying that the outcome is solely the woman’s responsibility, since cathedrals can’t build themselves?
I found the excerpt from her book, The Invisible Woman: When Only God Sees.
In the excerpt, Nicole states:
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.
So, I did read her analogy correctly. Women are the builders and the family is the cathedral. A very interesting, if not very socially conservative, perspective.
Her phrase, “And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, …”, concerns me. Her sentence structure clarifies the pronoun “we” to mean “invisible women”, and by “women”, she means “mothers”. So, Nicole puts the responsibility of raising the family squarely on the wife’s shoulders. Is that really what she believes?
Furthermore, Nicole says, “We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right.”
I don’t even know what to say regarding that. If a mother is being a good mother, she shouldn’t even be seen? I understand sacrificing for your family, and your sacrifices might not be noticed.
But, “We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right”? I guess that’s why she said:
When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, “My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.” That would mean I’d built a shrine or a monument to myself.
I guess in her logic, any acknowledgment of her sacrifice would mean that she’s not sacrificing. And since the cathedral must be a work of sacrifice, therefore the wife cannot receive any acknowledgment.
So according to Nicole, as a mother, if you’re seen, you’re doing it wrong.
