As a kid, my father lovingly—and about half-jokingly—told me that I was “not like the other children.” Teasing or not, he was right; for evidence, one needed look no further than my school supplies. While other girls’ notebooks were photo collages of Britney Spears and Jonathon Taylor Thomas, mine were plain. To be honest, they were probably covered with “Niki’s Stuff!” in jell-penned bubble letters, but my point is that I was never one for celebrity worship. My heroes, my inspirations, were the stuff of literature and history. Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet. Strong women, bold women—women who defied gender roles and societal expectations. They spoke when they had something to say. They fought when the cause demanded it. They were brave, they were fierce. Yet, always, they maintained their dignity and poise. Femininity and power, they taught me, were not mutually exclusive. I learned this lesson anew from the Duchess of Malfi, as played by Laura Cole. Resurgens Theatre Company is producing The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster’s macabre masterpiece, this weekend at The New American Shakespeare Tavern, and I was fortunate enough to see the production in rehearsal. It was nothing short of a dark delight. Malfi has it all—murder, incestual desires, a werewolf, a poisoned Bible, and even a severed hand. But, at its heart, is the bright, fiery person of the Duchess. Forbidden by her brothers to marry after the death of her first husband, the Duchess takes an empowered stand against patriarchal rule and defies them. Not only does she remarry, she proposes, and to a man beneath her social standing.
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My students often tell me, after the standard first-day introductions, that they’ve never had a teacher like me before. When I first began teaching at twenty-two, just a few years older than most of my college-freshman students and younger than some, that statement troubled me. Was I doing it wrong? Was I doomed to be labeled “that weird teacher” for posterity? What I first took offense at I now take as a compliment, for such a statement usually means that I contradict, and thus work to expand, their preconceived, oversimplified notions of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be an authority figure, or what it looks like to endeavor to be both of those things at once. As I get older, though, I’m less disturbed and more gratified by the supposed contradictions that make me who I am. I am also driven to look backward in order to look forward: to explore the women in my life who modeled those beautiful complexities of feminine power and helped me appreciate their value. Chief among those women is my great-grandmother, or “Gram.” She died when I was only eight years old, but in that short time, she taught me two things above all: to work hard at whatever I chose to do, and to always have compassion for others, because you never know what they may be suffering. This essay is my way of paying tribute to her, and to those values. Even as I have gone through the process of writing it, I feel that she is still teaching and encouraging me. The essay is not exhaustive, as it doesn’t cover her entire life. Moreover. I do not claim to be adept even at the amateur genealogy attempted in it, but the knowledge I gained through this research was certainly interesting to grapple with. |