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mE BIRTH PROJECf while lamenting the lack of it in her I think part of the problem is the pace at workers: "The women in the group were which most of the needleworkers stitch. JudyChicago. Garden City, N.Y.: Double­ ... afraid to take any responsibility and Work that would take me a month takes day, 1985. wanting strict guidelines and guaranteed them much longer. As most of them fit their success, as if being involved in The Birth work around their lives while I, like most Maryon Kantaroff Project could be as safe as working on a professional artists, fit my life into what­ needlework kit." ever time my work doesn't fill. I am pawerful, and I expressed it, and I am Again and again she expresses dismay still expressing it. The power of the new at the lack of professionalism in the Judy Chicago is every bit as smart as images is incredible. I love them because needleworkers, while stressing her own any Wall Street financier, every bit as they are an expression of who I am, and total professionalism - and thus he insist­ capable of delegating diverse responsibili­ simultaneously I fear them because they ence on total control. And over and over ties as the D.S. President, every bit as result in so many personal dilemmas. again we read of how overworked and organized as any multinational cor­ tired the artist feels, keeping up with the poration, and every bit as power driven as In the above quote from her recently gruelling and ofteninhuman pace that she - the most ambitious man. As an artist she published book, The Birth Project, Judy herself has set. is as talented as Georgia O'Keefe or Mary Chicago sums up her own sense of power Judy Chicago's driving, unrelenting Cassall. She is the Quintessential and control as an artist, while expressing ambition (so unseemly in a woman and so American Wonderwoman - and surely a her fears and insecurities as a woman. respected in a man), together with her blow to the ego of every red-blooded What makes her so different from other awesome organizational abilities, is the American Male! Addto all that, she's slim, women artists is that the fears and main theme of her writing. The lesson of attractive and"feminine." Therein lies her insecurities she expresses periodically her book is - if you want to make it in a fascination to us all. Her particular throughout the book, seem to have no man's (art) world, then you have to work androgyny is so powerfully polarized that place in her day-to-day dealings either increasingly at your art/craft, using every­ we are mesmerized by her explosive crea­ with her self, or with the vast numbers of thing and everyone in your path to attain tive femininity (her subject matter is women whom she organizes in order to your end (as men have done): always super-female) while simul­ carry out her creative projects. taneously being forced to examine our Her book is a thorough documentation I am learning alot about women's real lives own inadequacies, fears and self­ of the evolution of this project, spanning - and I hate alot of what I'm learning. I'm contempt. five years following on the heels of the discovering many of the reasons that But while her art brings us into facing now famous Dinner Party. She uses the women have so much difficulty in achieving these feelings, we see this woman, this same formula as she followed in the their goals. They may "want" to do some­ creator, achieving hereffect onusthrough Dinner Party and, although The Birth thing, and they may have the talent, but so her super masculinity. She seems to us a Project book is almost a repeat of the many women don't realize that their lives street smart operator, but her street is Dinner Party publications, the subject must be structured to accommodate their named "Power" and she travels it at a matter moves here from womeninhistory work. Moreover, so many of them have no neck-breaking pace. And so she both fas­ to woman as giver of life. As in the Dinner idea what the world is really like - most cinates and repels feminists. The Birth Pro­ Party publication, there is a rich blending women seem totally confused about what ject is a lesson in feminist theory, full of of visual and written material, both perso­ pawer means. enlightening consciousness-raisers. At nal and technical, with many vignettes the same time, it is a technical manual and from the women who did the complex also a public relations and marketing The isolation I've imposed upon myself in needlework. course of instruction to any woman want­ order to do concentrated work does not exist As The Birth Project is a large soft-cover ing to achieve anything. Yet the reader, for these women [the needleworkersJ. book of over 230 pages, it can be tedious while following her struggles and iden­ for readers not overly interested in tifying with most of them, is left wonder­ needlework technicalities. But its real At the same time there is something suspect ing about this brilliant, talented, endlessly value to all readers is the running com­ about the quality of work possible in aday energized power-driven woman. mentaries of the artist's thought process. that includes cooking, cleaning, stitching, She espouses feminist theory, yet we Again and again Judy Chicago stresses taking care of the kids, and then stitching see her operating in the same autocratic, her own complete dedication to her art, some more . .. seemingly self-serving and controlling 114 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME ways that we are used to in men. She is didn't). When people are committed to a front the same buffeting ambivalences obsessed with women and our disregard fantasy, it's hard to get them to change their within. Judy Chicago not only confronts, historically, yet she is remarkably unsym­ views (which she did) - to her fantasy she has overcome. Near the end of the pathetic to the needs of her needle­ (art). book she writes: "Demonstrating the way workers in their own personal lives that How can a feminist artist question this art has been made will, I hope, take time away from her projects. She con­ another feminist artist who is so talented suggest that there are other models for stantly refers to women's abuse through­ and so single-minded as to have achieved art-making than the 'heroic' one we've out history, yet thinks nothing of using the seemingly impossible - putting inherited from the Renaissance, when her needleworkers' volunteer skills for her woman's creativity on the map? My only men were thought to be capable of creative ends without payment. She is ambivalence towards Judy Chicago, as great art." even impatient with their own ambitions she emerges in The Birth Project, does not But the nagging fear is left, that her own and aspirations: extend to her art, which speaks for itself 'model' seems dangerously close to that They see me as powerful, and therefore they and to all women (and some men, hope­ 'heroic' one to which she refers. Every­ assume that Ican change everything - make fully). It is reserved for her methods, thing and everyone (herself included) is the world view needlework as art (which which seem hopelessly masculine to me. sacrificed to her art, and the reader begins she did), arrange things so everyone can Yet, given our history and our times, to understand the price she pays as a get paid for their work (which she didn't), could she have achieved so much any Woman. She is as sensitive anartist as she ensure that any work force is radically and other way? Knowing the art world as well is ruthless in her single-minded pursuit of ethnically balanced (which she did) - and as I do, I doubt it. Any woman looking her ends. Let us be thankful that her ends it does no good to try to explain (which she deeply into her own attitudes will con- are ourselves. THE SISTER BOND: experience. But in most of them another an intriguing read. She postulates that A FEMINIST VIEW OF A thesis would do as well: to attain profes­ sisterhood can be seen as "the model of TIMELESS CONNECTION sional prominence it is helpful for a marital happiness" in Austen's works. woman to have a "wife." Among the other essays, those on the Edited by Toni A.H. McNaron, New York: The chapters on Fanny Wright andJane sister bonds of Edith and Grace Abbott Pergamon Press, 1985. Austen are the most interesting. Their and Christina and Maria Rossetti are sisters Camilla and Cassandra provided rather flat and dry. That on Florence and Kitty Mattes them with life-long, self-effacing de­ Parthenope Nightingale is interesting, but votion. Celia Eckhardt treats Fanny and somewhat forced. All three seem not to The merits of this little book just barely Camilla to lively scrutiny, from their birth have quite passed from the note-taking outweigh its faults. The editor's focus is in Scotland in the 1790s through their end­ phase into true cohesion. In contrast, unnecessarily narrowandmostofthe con­ less travels and Fanny's burgeoning the short essay by Adalaide Morris on tributing essays are rather dry and notoriety. "The pattern of the sisters' Emily Dickinson (reprinted from the labored, but it does break ground. It will relationship was set early and traces that Massachusetts Review) is a light and bright find its way into many a bibliography in of the traditional marriage," writes cameo.

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