One of my favorite parts of having any kind of platform—no matter how small that platform is—is getting early copies of books I wanted to read anyway. So I was happy to dig into Lisa Marchiano’s new book, The Vital Spark, which hit the shelves yesterday.
The Vital Spark responds to the set of expectations that fall unevenly on women: the ever-present injunction to “be kind,” self-effacing to the point of self-abnegation. Lisa is interested in the qualities that make women difficult—shrewdness, disagreeableness, sexuality, cunning, authority, and anger—and argues those same qualities enable women to reconnect with themselves, reassert their needs and desires, and reinvent their lives. When neglected, she writes, these “banished qualities” form “a kind of unlived life”:
Our unlived life may be very different from the one we are living, and we may meet it first by seeing it in other people. Perhaps when we see someone else being audacious, cunning, or desirous, we feel upset, repelled, or even self-righteous. We can’t imagine that we could act that way, and we may judge others—especially women—for doing so. If this is the case, you might want to become curious about your reaction. Strong feelings we have in response to others often indicate that they are displaying a trait we may need to own and develop in ourselves. Be especially wary of feelings that are toned with judgment, such as outrage, indignancy, or moral superiority. When these arise, it is usually a good sign that we are working hard to hold some disowned part of ourselves at bay. If a woman’s stubbornness annoys you, ask yourself whether you need to claim your tendency to be unyielding.
If she looks selfish as she pursues her heart’s desire, consider what has become of yours. We can’t stay cut off from our vital spark without paying a great price. Sooner or later, the unlived life asserts itself. It produces symptoms such as depression, anxiety, or physical ailments. It visits us in dreams filled with troubling imagery. It may even orchestrate accidents or spectacular failures to get our attention. If we continue to ignore it, we will likely become bitter, resentful, and rigid. When the unlived life demands to be known, we may feel frightened as our previous assumptions about our life and identity are challenged. We are asked to admit that we may not be the person we thought we were. It may feel safer to stay small and cling to our former certainty. Being connected with the central fire can be exhilarating, but it can also be terrifying. “Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves,” according to the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Staying cut off from our vitality is a form of anesthesia.
If we can embrace the challenge presented by the unlived life, we turn our ship around and begin our homeward journey—our return. This part of the voyage may call for a reversal of values from those to which we previously adhered. To fulfill the promise of our original wholeness, we must attend to and develop those traits and attitudes that have become alien and unfamiliar. They may even seem frightening and strange. They have been quietly waiting for us in the wild wasteland of our souls. Finding them will confront us with unlived possibilities and an invitation to reclaim them. Connecting with split-off or undeveloped parts of ourselves can enliven and rejuvenate us. It can allow us to become more of who we were meant to be. And it can help us move toward the potential for wholeness with which we came into the world.
Along the way, the reader encounters familiar myths and fairy tales, freshly retold—Psyche and Artemis, Scheherazade, Cinderella, Snow White and her evil stepmother, the furies all make appearances—and unexpected ones, like the Leopard Woman. Lisa takes a prismatic approach to the interpretation of fairy tales, offering multiple ways of interacting with what each story has to offer, exploring themes around passivity and agency, avoiding knowledge and seeking it, skirting confrontation and facing it.
And—in case you missed it—Lisa and I talked about fairy tales, this book, and much more in this conversation with Benjamin Boyce last summer:
On an intellectual level, I understand what Eliza is saying, but I am not a woman, so I can't identify with it completely. I can imagine that girls and women begin to develop a "nice" persona the first time they express themselves aggressively and are rebuffed because of their sex. The thing is, boys and men are also rebuffed for being aggressive. However, over time a woman will realize that she is being rebuffed by society BECAUSE of her gender, whereas men are rebuffed less often and for reasons that may not have to do with their gender. Among men there are hierarchies. There are those of us who are smaller and/or not athletic, and therefore not well equipped for physical altercations, and so we repress some of our aggression -- but any shame tied to that is associated with our size and physical conditioning, not with our gender.
If Eliza doesn't mind, I'd like to share something I'm going through that isn't related to sexism. I am poor (having only Social Security as my income), so I got onto Section 8, which pays most of my rent. Section 8 has lifted me right out of poverty and put me squarely in the middle class. However, the local housing authority treats their applicants badly, with tremendous hostility. It took me a while to figure this out, but I believe it is because the staff members of the authority (about 4 of them) are all conservatives -- conservatives who are contemptuous of the poor, and don't like having jobs in which they dole out government money to the poor.
I know from past reading that it is quite common for housing authorities to treat their applicants badly, but that is usually due to racism (a substantial number of people on Section 8 are black). My town happens to be mostly white, and yet these conservatives at the authority hate us anyway. (I came here because my mother was here, and not because of the racial makeup of the town.)
After five years of being treated badly in tangible ways (they make the yearly reapplication process unnecessarily difficult), I found that the effect of being hated by strangers at a government agency that I depend on was beginning to wear me down psychologically. I started falling into a deep depression.
This experienced helped me to realize is what it must be like to be a member of one of those hated under-classes in the U.S., like being black or Jewish (or female for that matter). Over years of being discriminated against, a deep shame or lack of self-confidence must take root in those groups, and it must become difficult if not impossible to be happy, upbeat or forward-looking -- or to have any kind of pride for what youare. In my case, the shame I started to feel for being poor got the point where it was affecting me at every level.
The only thing left for me to do was to start fighting back. In the past I had sent them emails encouraging them to lighten up on their stringent rules. So in January, I sent them another email, and this time they responded with aggressive threats to throw me off my benefits. Their response was disproportionate to what I said to the, and it is backfiring -- I have started looking for an attorney.
What I guess I'm saying is that I now realize that social oppression has very real effects. Having experienced a bit of what that feels like, I have much more sympathy for all those other groups than I had before.
It can be argued that the activities of anti-transgender activists like the people here is having the same effect on trans people, but that is a different situation, as trans people are pushing changes to society that are irrational and unhealthy and which are hurting other groups, such as women and children -- and even liberals like J.K. Rowling. I would encourage everyone here, however, to do your best to distinguish between trans people themselves (gender dysphoria, I believe, is real thing) and their obnoxious ideology, which must be debunked and resisted.
(If this comment is too far off-topic, Eliza, let me know and I'll try to stay on-topic in the future.)
This book is winging its way to me right now and I’m so excited!! It sounds like it was written for me. I love Lisa and her podcast This Jungian Life!