Art History Through the Camera's Lens Book

My interest in the "women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade" meant that Ann Fessler probably could not have produced a work on this subject that I would have begun and abandoned. Nevertheless, about one-third of the way through The Girls Who Went Away, I realized that this is a book that I would have to read in "chunklets." Although Fessler does present stats, history, and commentary to capture "the big picture," the book is dominated by the narratives of "the girls who went away" and, in many cases, years later found or were found by the children who were given away. Their experiences "reach out and touch" -- or grab -- you, but they have so many common elements that you might wonder if the cat moved your bookmark and you're reading what you've already read. I wanted to be feeling sympathy and outrage, not to be thinking, "Here we go again." I was reading about woman after woman who was not permitted to see the infant that had been developing inside her for nine months, who was given "an hour to say goodbye" to her baby (160), who had "to live with the trauma of losing [a] child and then . . . with the trauma of knowing [she] didn't stop it (163), who was not allowed to be "true to who [she] really [was]"(207), and/or who did not have the "opportunity to express feelings about the loss"(209). The pain of a loss that is not final and shame -- that most powerful of feelings -- shaped the adult lives of most of the women whom Fessler interviewed. Being sent to "homes" for unwed mothers, being pressured to believe that they could not raise and did not deserve to raise the children who sprang from their sins, being misinformed, being kept uninformed, being coerced into signing the papers that would make others the parents of their children -- let's face it -- this is stuff that will f--- you up for life. Fascinating stuff too. But how many individual experiences does one need to read to understand "the girls who went away"? Should I have felt impatient? Should Fessler have selected considerably fewer stories to include in her book? I thought so.

And then a memory stopped me from thinking so. On one of the many occasions when I have listened to a Holocaust survivor whom I think of as "our state's Elie Wiesel," Gizella Abramson told her audience about being a teenager in a camp with another teenager who, day after day, kept saying (in her native language, of course), "My name is Hana Meitnerova." The seemingly endless repetition of this statement irritated Gizella to the point that she yelled at Hana, "I know your name! We all know your name! Will you stop saying it?!!!" Only as an adult looking back on this experience did Gizella realize why Hana Meitnerova, who became one of the exterminated millions, announced her name ad nauseam: she wanted to make certain that she would be remembered. The unmarried women who felt compelled to give up their babies in the 1950s and 1960s were, for decades, ignored and silenced. Records were sealed; records were altered; letters were discarded, etc. And so I came to see what seemed like unnecessary and tedious repetition in Fessler's work as the author's way of giving each woman who wanted/needed to tell her story a chance to be "heard." Repetition is sometimes the only option when "Attention must be paid" (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman).