This is not the first time (nor will it probably be the last) that I reprint the writing of Wendell Berry to pass off as ‘my blog.’ As we have discussed marriage as God intends it: this complementary ‘one flesh’ relationship where two individuals come together to create something new and different and greater than the sum of its parts, I can’t help but be reminded of the time that old man Wendell responded to the accusations of sexism thrown in his direction. Since I addressed the unintended consequences of feminism on the marriage relationship this Sunday, I thought it fitting to give an example of what this looks like in practice.
It all started with a little article titled: Why I am NOT going to buy a computer, where he argues in his usual way for simplicity at the cost of ‘keeping up with the times.’ There were plenty of things for people to disagree with, but most grabbed hold of the way in which he talked about his wife, as part of the process of getting his work done:
What would a computer cost me? More money, for one thing, than I can afford, and more than I wish to pay to people whom I do not admire. But the cost would not be just monetary. It is well understood that technological innovation always requires the discarding of the “old model”—the “old model” in this case being not just our old Royal standard. but my wife, my critic, closest reader, my fellow worker. Thus (and I think this is typical of present-day technological innovation). what would be superseded would be not only something, but somebody. In order to be technologically up-to-date as a writer, I would have to sacrifice an association that I am dependent upon and that I treasure.
When the article was reprinted by Harper’s, the critics came after him, accusing him of exploiting his wife. I especially enjoyed this one:
Wendell Berry provides writers enslaved by the computer with a handy alternative: Wife—a low-tech energy-saving device. Drop a pile of handwritten notes on Wife and you get back a finished manuscript, edited while it was typed. What computer can do that? Wife meets all of Berry’s uncompromising standards for technological innovation: she’s cheap, repairable near home, and good for the family structure. Best of all, Wife is politically correct because she breaks a writer’s “direct dependence on strip-mined coal.”
History teaches us that Wife can also be used to beat rugs and wash clothes by hand, thus eliminating the need for the vacuum cleaner and washing machine, two more nasty machines that threaten the act of writing.
Gordon Inkeles Miranda, Calif.
Berry responded to the letters with a short letter of his own, but in time, wrote a follow-up essay that addressed the issue of how a woman is viewed in these modern times. This essay, titled Feminism, the Body, and the Machine is well worth the read, but I will reprint the most pertinent part below:
That feminists or any other advocates of human liberty and dignity should resort to insult and injustice is regrettable. It is equally regrettable that all of the feminist attacks on my essay implicitly deny the validity of two decent and probably necessary possibilities: marriage as a state of mutual help, and the household as an economy.
Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate “relationship” involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the “married” couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.
The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.
There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, “mine” is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as “ours.”
This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of both wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and a common satisfaction.
Berry’s point is that the modern feminist ideal rejects the point of marriage before it even begins, making it impossible to see the good when it exists. The reality is: a Biblical Marriage will cost you something and cause you to lose some independence, freedom, and even limit your potential. Why would anyone ever enter into such a relationship? Because the good it produces far outweighs the costs associated. God has designed this relationship to change us through a deep love and dependence on another person. Let us then commit to making ‘ours’ a more necessary and powerful pronoun than ‘mine.’