The setup for The Elegant Out: A Novel by Elizabeth Bartasius is that Elizabeth, the main character, already has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship. Now her son is doing well in school, she has a stable career as a grant writer, and she is in a happy relationship with a man who loves her and is a good step-father to her son.
But now she is thirty-six years old. Her IUD is about to expire. She is under the clock to decide whether to have it taken out for one last chance at a second baby, or get a new IUD put in, thus ending the chapter of her childbearing years and freeing her up to pursue her long lost dream of being a writer.
For Elizabeth, it’s a zero-sum choice—either have a second baby, or become a novelist—both are labors of love that involve tremendous acts of patience, creativity, time, and effort. She feels equally drawn to both choices, but in the math of her life, she only has enough time and energy for one. Which will it be? The delight of a second child? Or the pride of fulfilling her own long-forgotten dreams.
Throughout this slim and lyrically written book, Elizabeth’s conflicting desires slowly ratchet up in intensity. When a female friend (who vowed to never have kids) gets pregnant, Elizabeth feels a flush of desire for a second baby that is so strong readers can almost taste it. When another friend convinces Elizabeth to start a blog, Elizabeth experiences a roller coaster of emotions that slingshots between freedom, joy, vulnerability, playfulness, creativity, guilt, greediness for time, self-doubt, self-censorship, and self-sabotage.
When I read The Elegant Out, I was doing the final edits on my first novel, Candid Family Portrait. (Full disclosure: I loved The Elegant Out so much I asked Bartasius to write a blurb for my book.) In my book, my main character, June, also goes through an existential crisis where she too is striving to regain her creative career after having a child, but she experiences a fair amount of social pressure to have more children…
As I was reading The Elegant Out, I couldn’t help but feel a deep recognition of the Catch-22 Bartasius describes Elizabeth going through—how the censorship (and absence) of female voices in all levels of society is inextricably tied to those early motherhood years effort involved with rearing small children. In a patriarchal society, a woman has no worth until she is a mother. In a consumption-based economy dependent on constant growth, a mother isn’t a Mother until she has 2.5 children. There are so many sanctions put on female bodies and time that it can be hard to get out from under all that.
In the Bad Old Days (before safe, reliable birth control) women had very few choices. Their options were basically to become nuns, or to have baby after baby until they died. Now, thankfully, there are more choices available. Through delaying parenthood, gaining education and work skills, and limiting the number of children they have, women are starting to achieve self-actualization on a historic level rarely seen before this time.
This is wonderful! But it can also bring about an existential crisis. If the average female life expectancy is 78 years, and she spends 18 years being a child, and another 18-25 years as a mother (if she chooses to be a mother at all) then that still leaves about 35+ adult years she can spend living for herself, in pursuit of own happiness. The largest chunk of a woman’s life is spent Not-mothering. How to spend this precious time?
Bartasius speaks to something true in the female experience when it comes to that question of “If I’m not 100 percent mother all the time, what am I?” Is female creative power limited to making babies, or can that same generative energy be put toward other things outside the home?
Child-free women face this question. Mothers of only-children face this question. Women who are one-and-done face this question. Mothers who raised eight children and are now facing the new experience of being empty-nesters face this question. Parenting small children is so all-encompassing that when the volume of work eases off, there is avoid. Looking into that void is scary. Do I, as a woman, fill that void with another child—and thus delay (or give up on) my dreams with a socially accepted form of self-abnegation? Or should I face that void and fill it with something else? Something for me. Am I a bad mother/woman if I am anything other than a self-sacrificing martyr? Am I allowed to pursue my dreams? At what point does a woman say “Enough is enough,” and put her fulfilment on the agenda?
I loved that The Elegant Out book goes into this territory.
I also loved the voices of the other characters in Bartasius’s book—especially of Elizabeth’s son, Jack, and her partner, Gabe. These two male voices (one a child, one an adult) act as a lighthouse, guiding her through the darkness.
Throughout the book, Gabe is consistent in that he does not want a biological child of his own.
“We’ve already got a child to take care of,” he explained, “and I believe there are going to be very limited world resources in our lifetime. I want to make sure we can care for us and Jack.”
Gabe comes across as solid, rational, practical, and responsible. His voice in Elizabeth’s life has a delightful flavor of male-entitlement. He can say things that Elizabeth, as a woman, isn’t allowed to say herself. We are enough, just the way we are, he seems to say. Let’s quit while we’re ahead and enjoy the bounty of what we already have. Each time he rebuffs her attempt to discuss having another child, she seems disappointed—but also palpably relieved. She wonders “if I too was actually craving less responsibility, not more.”
And then there is her son, Jack, who has started doing creative writing at school. As she sits at his bedside, encouraging him to find his voice, it hits her how hollow her encouragements sound when she had given up on her own voice. It’s through the mirror of her son’s gaze—and through the steadfast support of her partner, Gabe—that Elizabeth realizes she needs to take ownership of her own life, reclaim her voice, and ask for what she truly wants.