The Feminine Urge to Care

We sat in the dark, our noses, the tips of our fingers, half-drunk bottles illuminated by firelight. It was my friend’s birthday and he had gathered us in a circle to drink and sing sea shanties. I actually didn’t know any at the time and so mumbled my way through. But since that night, I have curated a whole playlist. My favorite song is called The Witch of the Westmorland by Stan Rogers.

The song features a knight wounded in battle, who must find the Witch of the Westmorland for healing. Upon seeing her, the knight raises his shield and calls his hawk and hound.

In response, the witch commands

Pray, sheathe thy silvery sword. Lay down thy rowan shield

For many males, or at least one male at the party, the emotional part of this story is when the knight obeys, when he lets down his shield, calls off his hounds, and allows himself to be healed. It is a moment of true vulnerability — he both leaves behind all protection and admits his need for help, realizing he cannot do it all on his own.

The emotional resonance for me, however, came from the witch’s point of view. Here’s the end of the song

And she's bound his wounds with the goldenrod, full fast in her arms he lay
And he has risen hale and sound with the sun high in the day
She said "Ride with your brindled hound at heel, and your good grey hawk in hand
There's none can harm the knight who's lain with the Witch of the Westmorland.”

In these verses, the Witch of the Westmorland takes over as the protagonist of the song that bears her name. She is a lover, caretaker, and healer, and aware of her power. In Book I, Grimes also tries to capture and bring to light the power in these women. Her songs feature Calypso, Persephone, the black swan, Anne Boleyn, courtesans, concubines, and geishas. In a Vanity Fair interview, Grimes exclaims, “These weren’t just hot girls…They were the smartest girls, some of the most educated women of their time…I’m super inspired by the way women get pulled into orbits [written off as some rich guy’s sidepiece] in this manner.”

In traditional mythology, women are either an accessory to a male, or powerful and therefore scary and unearthly. They are mothers or lovers, witches, monsters, or goddesses; painted from the male’s point of view. I remember when Danielle Allen, Professor of Political Theory at Harvard, was asked whether the greatest contributor to racism lay in institutions, she said no, it lay in history (the cultural narrative). At the time, I disagreed with her. But as time goes on, her argument has resonated more with me. How do we move forward if we do not acknowledge how we have wronged people in the past? When traditional mythologies are told from the male’s point of view, what stories about women are we carrying forward?

Recently, I have been fascinated with mythological retellings that acknowledge the female point of view. On Penelope, known in Greek Mythology as the wife who stayed loyal to Odysseus, Madeleine Miller writes

Loyal, songs called her later.  Faithful and true and prudent.  Such passive, pale words for what she was.  She could have taken another husband, borne another child while Odysseus was gone, her life would have been easier for it.  But she had loved him fiercely and would accept no other.

Penelope didn’t passively wait for Odysseus — she actively loved him and additionally fended off suitor after suitor that came for her. Similarly, in Norse mythology, Angrboda is passively known as “the mother of monsters”, bearing children Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungandr, the monsters responsible for the end of the world. In The Witch’s Heart, Genevieve Gornichec fleshes out what it means to be a mother of monsters — when Hel is born with deficient legs, Angrboda goes to every length to find a cure. When Odin threatens her children, Angrboda expends power in spells to hide them. Gornichec turns mothering into the hero’s journey — different content but the same quantity of clever problem-solving, politicking, and physical fighting as any other quest.

What has startled me about reading these feminist retellings is the intensity of feeling in them. The driver in all these stories is love, and caring deeply for another person gives these women the strength to defeat insurmountable obstacles. It reminds me of real life stories, where mothers have been able to lift cars to save the lives of their children.

This may be an over-generalization, but I have noticed that male protagonists are driven by their destiny to save the world. Frodo must carry the ring to defeat Sauron, Paul Atreides must choose the right path to revitalize Arrakis, the men of Foundation must strategize to follow Hari Seldon’s forecasts. In contrast, females have historically not been chosen or expected to save the world. What women have been expected to do (and biologically programmed for in the case of children) is care.

In The Winternight Trilogy, a retelling of Russian folklore, Vasilisa sacrifices herself for her father, her niece, and the immortal God she loves. In Uprooted, a retelling of Polish folklore, Agnieszka is motivated to save her best friend.

I cried out in rage, and threw myself back down at the ground, and where my fists hit, the ground rose and swelled like a river rising with the rain. Magic was pouring out of me, a torrent: every warning the Dragon had ever given me forgotten and ignored. I would have spent every drop of myself and died there, just to bring that horrible tree down: I couldn’t imagine a world where I lived, where I left this behind me, Kasia’s life and heart feeding this corrupt monstrous thing.

Perhaps we could craft more stories where a female is the chosen one, driven less by emotions than by destiny and a duty to fight evil. After all, in many cases women are coerced to care due to societal expectations or a lack of anyone else doing it. (I know my title is “the feminine urge to care” but it is as an ironic reference to the popular meme). Perhaps we should also craft more stories about men who perform caregiving, men driven by love.

The TV series called The Witcher does a good job of this. It’s funny, because the first time I heard about The Witcher from a man, he convinced me not to watch it. “It’s not for you…I’ll just watch it by myself”. Fast forward a year when I made it through the first season. I bet this was written by a woman, I thought to myself and sure enough it was. I don’t want to say that subtle feminism is better than direct feminism, but sometimes it is more effective. Direct feminism often only draws in people who are already feminist, but subtle feminism draws people who need it. The Witcher seems like a total dude show — it’s about a dude fighting monsters. However, it casually has women in most seats of power. It has women helping women. The protagonist does not save princesses — for the princesses are monsters from Eastern European mythology. Instead, he helps others see that the monsters are princesses. The Witcher also has strong themes of motherhood and fatherhood, and the protagonist’s story arc is in fathering.

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So I’m not a mythology writer,

but here are my own intense feelings.

Here is my ode of love — for those who care, who do care work.

For my mother — who graduated summa cum laude from Berkeley and would drop it all to care; who raised my sister and I; who navigated the hospital system, advocated for care programs, and performed cognitive and therapeutic exercises with her mom as she watched her decline over a period of sixteen years.

For my father — who flew to D.C. every other week to sit by his mom when he heard she had cancer.

For the nurses, who went into the job caring and have since been overworked.

For the home health aides, mostly immigrant women, who bathe and clean and cook and mostly do not receive benefits.

The average caregiver in America is a woman in her late 40s.

For my friends in service roles.

For my friends who are brilliant and driven, who notice and navigate and handle the feelings of others, who make less than 60K a year.

One of my friends is a manager at Whole Foods, and when the grocery next to me closed, Whole Foods sent her there to reassure the employees and convince them to work at other locations. I am in awe of her abilities.

Another one of my friends is a public school teacher. I have watched for years as she notices the feelings of others and adjusts her response accordingly. I’ve seen her proactively prevent someone from being embarrassed when they step outside their comfort zone. In her classroom, she thinks carefully about how to develop the character growth of children.

They are all the Witch of the Westmorland — they care, they listen, they develop others, and they heal.

They problem-solve the needs of others and they think about the consequences.

This work is hard, it is powerful, it is laudable, it is worthy

and it is valuable.