a long walk with mama

In Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick explores herself through her relationships with her mother, other women from her childhood, and significant men in her life. She looks at the various attachments she formed as a result of the attachment she had with her mother, and her suffering and seeking because of it. This memoir seeks to understand the self, and understand the mother. This is often achieved through the mother rather than directly through Gornick. Often, voices other than Gornick’s tell the story. Her voice comes in to ground each memory, interpret them from her lens, and to make sense of her current life with Mama, who is essentially haunting her.

The first thing I notice is the way Gornick goes in and out of memory. The rhythm is: Memory, walking with mom in present, past, walking, past, walking. She and her mother are always walking in scene. By the end of the book, I realized the memoir was not broken into chapters. It was a seamless journey of memories and a long walk with mama. These walks are often spent arguing. I think the walks are used to show how their dynamic from childhood has carried into adulthood. We see this clearly in their hateful, mean interactions. However, in the outdoor setting, we also experience Mama in a different way. She is allowed to be insightful and exposed at times. For instance when she offers “you’re growing old together…you and what frightens you (91).” Or “I’m Jealous…I’m jealous she lived her life and I didn’t live mine (74).”

Much of Gornick’s childhood memories/scenes of her mother take place in rooms: the kitchen or the living room mainly, always in the apartment. In fact it felt as though her entire childhood took place within the same apartment building. Taking the relationship outside in the open air broadened it and let the reader see it in the world, outside of that apartment building. Confined spaces and roles are huge in this memoir, mainly as structures that contain women.

“The Kitchen, the Window, the alley. It was the atmosphere in which she was rooted, the background against which she stood outlined. ….here in the kitchen she knew who she was, here in the kitchen she was restless and bored, here in the kitchen she functioned admirably, here in the kitchen she despised what she did.” (15-16)

In this context, the craft choice for bringing the two outside, walking, serves a purpose. It offered a location outside of mama’s comfort zone, a neutral turf where she and Gornick were free to exist somewhat outside of their defined and comfortable roles.

The voice is given much of the time to mama and Nettie. We are in their heads, recalling their memories. These moments are certainly not Gornick’s voice, but filtered through her interpretation. Pages 17-20 for example where Gornick decribes her mother’s communist organizing activities. She recalls events that happened when she was a baby. Also from pages 96-101, when Nettie’s motivations are being described in detail, Nettie has the mic. For example: “She knew no other way to make herself feel better than to make people want her (99).” This is not information Gornick can actually know.

Mama and Nettie represented the torment that followed Gornick throughout the book. Mama was obsessed with ideal love, was sexless, and stayed home. Nettie also stayed home, but failed at her wifely duties; she excelled at being beautiful and attracting men. They represented the sacrifice women made for married home life, a life Gornick rejected. Though she rejected the romantized version of love and marriage that her mother and Nettie shared, Gornick grappled with the conflicting ideas of work and love and living in a way she felt they hadn’t and couldn’t (though Gornick accused her mother of having a choice and choosing not to live). She felt she had to work and think because her mother couldn’t, she also wanted Nettie’s femininity and ease in love and sex, and was tormented by not being able to achieve all of these things simultaneously; failing at one or the other, usually love. Did Gornick have a choice and also choose to suffer? Was she also trapped by men and forced to live within the confines of the “rectangle” she allowed herself? It is interesting that Gornick created her own “room” inside herself that confined her as her mother’s kitchen confined her.

Sexuality was given a lot of room in this memoir. The definition of both Mama and Nettie’s sexualities had a direct impact on Gornick. Nettie’s sexual life was given a lot of attention. Mama’s lack of sexual life was noted. Nettie would enter the room from time to time during Gornick’s marriage to Stefan and judge her intimacy and her marriage. “I saw Nettie’s face in the air before me, shaking itself back and forth in a motion of disavowal. This is not what I had in mind for you, she was saying (154).” Her mother also enters her relationships:

“However much I sought to differentiate myself, I seemed to always end up like mama, lying on a couch, staring into space. And never more so than when I realized that sleeping with Joe had been like sleeping with my father, not because he was older and married, but because he was a man whose view of life made inevitable the equation man-husband-papa, woman-wife-child.” (188-189)

This sexuality/relationship piece, along with the home, work, and love pieces, fed the narrative and created the haunting inner world. We get the sense that she is literally being haunted.

Mother and daughter’s mutual guilt and torment were so interconnected. It was painful to read. Listening to Gornick’s brutality toward her mother in dialogue often felt unfair, mean, and judgmental. I felt it was brave to allow herself to be ugly on the page and risk being disliked by readers. I also understand because I have a similar relationship with my father and in the moment, there is nothing but the trigger, there is no space for compassion for a person you blame for everything, even things you can’t name.

The moment I hoped there would be some relief was on page 202 when Gornick admits “it would be nice to have a little love….” Her mother responds with what I read as honesty and vulnerability: “…Now you can have a little sympathy for me….” I thought for sure Gornick would rush across the room and hug her mother, but instead she berates and corners her. In the very next scene mama gives Gornick permission to be free. “Why don’t you go already?” she asks. It’s an open ended way to end—she has verbal permission to let go, but is the struggle over?