Tea at Trianon: “The Lost Daughter” and the Self-Gift of Motherhood

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, February 5, 2022

“The Lost Daughter” and the Self-Gift of Motherhood

I thought it was a dismal film but here is an interesting assessment. From Word of Fire:

Motherhood by nature requires constant self-giving. In this generous outpouring of self, however, we do not lose ourselves, but paradoxically find ourselves. Self-gift is at the heart of the Christian life. The more we learn to imitate God’s generous self-gift, the closer we get to becoming the people we are designed to be. What motherhood requires of women is good for our souls—and yet, we are also in need of the generosity of others. What makes motherhood in our culture so difficult is not merely the demands of our children but the isolation and lack of support that mothers face. Young moms are often left to deal with postpartum depression, sleep deprivation, and other challenges without the support system that other generations leaned on through extended family and tight-knit communities. A contraceptive culture says, “You decided to be a parent, deal with it all yourself.” Piled onto this broken framework are the paralyzingly unreasonable expectations of motherhood that are, lately, exacerbated by social media. Things are not easy for young mothers in the 21st century. It is no wonder that some women feel “crushed” when they are asked to give without limit and, often, not cared for in return—to the detriment of their mental health and happiness.

Motherhood and the intellectual life should not be competing identities, as they were for Leda, but different facets of a whole human person. It is not too much to believe that mothers can parent and also pursue other passions but the nurturing self-gift of others for mothers is necessary for this to be a reality. I have in mind the example of author Madeleine L’Engle, who saw her writing life and her motherhood as two sides of the same coin: her vocation to be a co-creator with God. L’Engle’s writing life was supported by her husband, who also participated in the important work of parenting and maintaining a home. Without this support, she may have felt like Leda—faced with a choice between two identities.

What The Lost Daughter shows us is that pitting women against their children is never the answer. Everybody will lose. We are created for relationship and for the expansive spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth that comes from self-giving. Abandoning her responsibilities does not lead to the self-actualization that Leda thought she could grasp; she only suffers more. The “lost daughter” of the title might be Leda herself, who has wrongly believed the lie that she cannot give of herself generously and still experience joy as well. But perhaps she is right that she cannot do it all alone. (Read more.)

From Aleteia:

At times, in The Lost Daughter’s defense, the film seems self-aware, as if it may be poking fun at its own pretentious worldview in which anxious academics play mind games with helpless six-year-olds on luxurious summer vacations. At one point during a flashback, the younger Leda and her first husband encounter a pair of bohemian wanderers hiking in the woods, and they invite them into the home they’re renting with their young children. Over wine and poetry, it becomes clear that the male hiker has left behind his own children and wife for this free-wheeling backpacking adventure with his paramour. But it’s OK, because running away is the first honest thing they’ve done their entire lives, explains the female hiker, a character whom, to Gyllenhaal’s credit, I desperately wanted to slap.
“We are obliged to do so many stupid things, from childhood even,” the woman explains. “What happened to us is the only thing that’s happened to me since I was born that makes sense.” Whether Gyllenhaal meant for the mistress hiker and her deadbeat partner to seem punchably self-absorbed and cliché—or whether they’re genuinely meant to seem bohemian and admirable—is left conspicuously ambiguous. The young Leda, to her credit, initially rolls her eyes at the hikers—but later, with the help of a few alcoholic beverages, becomes genuinely entranced by their indulgent worldview.
Another character who elicits a satisfying eyeroll from the younger, sharper, soberer Leda is the cringe-inducing, academic showboat Professor Hardy (Peter Sarsgaard). Leda meets the professor at a literary symposium, where his overly stylized conference repartee seems explicitly intended to evoke a caricature of a certain type of narcissistic neckbeard who fancies himself the main character in his own movie. He is meant to be a caricature after all, right? Young Leda seems to think so—right up until the moment she sleeps with him, out of what seems to be a newfound and devastatingly sincere feeling of passion towards him.
Are we being trolled? That’s the question I had to ask myself as I watched Leda’s relationship with Professor Hardy proceed on screen. I asked it again later when a group of rowdy young men (toxically masculine, by today’s standards) started chanting “Blue Lives Matter,” and again during another moment when the young Leda avows, with all sincerity, that she won’t let her mother help with childcare since the poor woman “didn’t even finish school.” These have to be jokes, right? (Read more.)