Just Like a Woman

I finished reading the life of Jablonczay Lenke, a.k.a Régimódi történet, by Magda Szabó. It stopped with the birth of the future author, Szabó Mária Magdolna, and I found out that she was born on the same day as I. She also tried to calculate the date she was conceived and came up with January the 5th, which also happens to be the day her mother died 50 years later exactly. However, that was overmystification for me, I don't think it so easy to find the exact date of conception, and what does it have to do with the mother's death? Some further annoying overmystified elements can also be found in the book, for example when she describes a ball or a tea party where a certain song was played, and then explains how that song contained all the important events that would happen to Lenke. Or she recalls how Lenke pretended she was drowning one day when they were in the swimming pool, and then puts it next to her death and the way she was suffocating.
Despite these minor faults I loved the book, and there were some good tricks in it, too. For example, beginning with the year 1900 she started to put the events against a historical background. Before describing Lenke's first ball, she collects some interesting facts about that year, such as inventions, discoveries, politics, accidents. Sometimes it was funny, sometimes sad or even cruel, especially during the years of WWI. It also provided an interesting contrast because she quoted from letters and diaries of friends and relatives of Lenke, and it was striking to see how little they knew or cared about what was happening on the front.
Lenke was a very interesting character. I've already hinted that she had a difficult family background. She was brought up by her strict grandmother, Rickl Mária, and the clever but sometimes cruel Melinda-Gizella, her aunt. In addition to this there were a lame grandfather, who told her stories, and a lame great-grandfather, who gave her sweets for dancing, and who spent the day singing obscene songs about his family and yelling swear words about the king. She was Protestant after her mother, but then she was brought up Catholic because of her grandmother, and for her second marrige she became Protestant again. She studied from nuns, and two of them played important roles in forming her character. I think that the beautiful, bigot Charitas served as inspiration for the character of Zsuzsanna in Szabó's Abigél.
Formed by these contradictory influences, Lenke wanted to be independent, perhaps a writer or a pianist. She also taught at a boys' school until her first wedding. The way she considered her chances and strived for what Woolf calls "the room of one's own" is I think examplary. Another important feature is that she could always handle difficulties, made action plans, knew what to do. The novel/story is full of strange couples in which the man behaves like a lame duck and the woman takes action. And I think we experience the same thing these days, women becoming masculine and men becoming, well, perhaps not feminine, but childish and weak. A common principle in the family was to beware of males and don't let the grip out of your hands. In accordance with it men seem playful and generous, while women are strict and rational. This is what the world turns them into, and one has to see that their behaviour can only be understood in relation to each other. I mean, obviously for a child the always playful and generous male figure is much more attractive than the seemingly cruel and rigid female, but later in life we will see both sides of the issue. And here I'm not talking about the book exclusively, but what I saw in our family, too. (Although my relatives didn't behave as a lame duck.)
Sex was another crucial issue in the book, and it was strikingly different from our present practice and our thinking. Lenke found the whole "business" appalling and at the same time a right given to men by the marital bond. According to the author Lenke was genetically coded not to like sex, she didn't even enjoy kissing the man she loved. In my opinion, it had more to do with her upbringing. As her mother was a "fallen, wicked" woman, the family did everything in order to prevent Lenke from becoming similar to her. Another likely explanation is that back then there wasn't proper sexual education (perhaps it isn't proper now either), which entailed that men didn't know or care how to make it enjoyable for women as well. On the other hand, it wasn't a thing to be enjoyed. For a woman to enjoy it was a sin itself.
As you can see I gave lots of second thoughts to the book and the world depicted in it. I think it an interesting but also embarrassing situation that a writer as an adult learns such private things about her parents. For example, Lenke didn't love her two husbands, and I think it is something a child doesn't have to or doesn't want to know. At least I don't. It is also a challenging task to view her mother from outside, from the writer's point of view. She relied on the memories of Lenke's friends and relatives but there's a constant shift in the book between the outsider's point of view and that of the child of Lenke. As I said, the book ends with the birth of the future author, but there are several implications in the book about her future. For example, when she describes the stories and tales Lenke made up, she hints that these will constitute the spine of one of her (Magda's) novel forty years later.
I've found out that it was made into a mini-series and I'd like to see that too, though the viewers all said that the book is better.