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Brenda Bowman at Dinner with Judy Chicago: Feminism and Needlework in Carol Shields's a Fairly Conventional Woman

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Brenda Bowman at Dinner with Judy Chicago: Feminism and Needlework in Carol Shields's a Fairly Conventional Woman Brenda Bowman at Dinner with Judy Chicago: Feminism and Needlework in Carol Shields's A Fairly Conventional Woman Wendy Roy, University of Saskatchewan, has previously published essays on fiction In 1979 the North American art by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, world was galvanized by the unveiling of and Carol Shields, and a book on women's Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party at the San travel writing in Canada, Maps of Difference: Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Chicago's Canada, Women, and Travel. collaborative ceremonial table honoured often-forgotten women through such Abstract traditional women's arts as ceramics, Like Judy Chicago's 1979 installation The weaving, embroidery, quilting, lacework, Dinner Party, Carol Shields's 1982 novel A needlepoint, knitting, and crocheting. Fairly Conventional Woman has been Although much of the effort of Chicago and criticized as too middle class, too domestic, her collaborators had gone into the and not truly feminist. This paper argues, in production of fabric table runners that contrast, that like Chicago's installation, commemorated thirty-nine women, critics Shields's novel broke ground by exploring focused on the accompanying ceramic gendered aspects of the arts-crafts divide plates, which celebrated women's sexuality and the role of domestic activities such as through stylized representations of vulvas. quilting as impetuses for social change. Conservative politicians called Chicago's Résumé plates "pornographic." Art critics condemned Comme dans l'installation de Judy Chicago the exhibit as domestic "kitsch." Theoretical The Dinner Party en 1979, le roman de feminists criticized the work as essentialist Carol Shields A Fairly Conventional Woman in the way the "central-core" imagery en 1982 a été critiquée en tant que trop reduced diverse women to their sexuality classe moyenne, trop domestique et pas and thus their biology (Jones 1996c, 36; suffisamment féministe. Cet article discute, Kubitza 1996, 158; Meyer 1996, 48). But en contraste, que tout comme dans Chicago's Dinner Party was praised in l'installation de Chicago, le roman de almost adulatory terms by the hundreds and Shields fut révolutionnaire en explorant les thousands of women who viewed the aspects de la différences entre les sexes de installation in art galleries throughout North la division des arts et de l'artisanat, et du America and Europe and who focused on rôle des activités domestiques telles que le the work's collaborative recuperation of a ouatage comme des élans pour le variety of women's arts and women's changement social. histories. Indeed, many women who lived too far away to visit the exhibit purchased Chicago's books, The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (1979) and Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (1980), and pored over their photographs and accompanying text. www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 125 My mother, a needleworker and quilter in by embroidering both her first and last name rural Saskatchewan, acquired one of those on a Centennial quilt (1987, 160). In contrast books for herself and the other for me, a to these brief mentions, quilting and other daughter who was then just out of her traditional women's needlework take centre teens.1 stage in A Fairly Conventional Woman. The plates and table runners of By making the predominantly Chicago's Dinner Party were still very much feminine craft of quilting the core of this in the North American political and artistic novel, Shields places her work within a consciousness when Carol Shields's A continuum of other fictional narratives that Fairly Conventional Woman was first use quilting for political and historical published in 1982. Shields's fourth novel, it purposes, including Alice Walker's 1974 evoked little analytical comment, especially story "Everyday Use," Whitney Otto's 1991 by Canadian critics, perhaps because it is How to Make an American Quilt (and the set in the United States rather than Canada 1995 film adaptation), and Margaret (unlike earlier and later novels) and is a Atwood's 1996 Alias Grace. The companion novel to the earlier metaphorical use to which quilting is put in Happenstance (1980). Aside from initial these narratives is by no means reviews, all published articles discuss A homogenous. In Walker's story, quilts stand Fairly Conventional Woman in the context of in for African-American heritage; in Otto's Shields's other work.2 However, like many of book they suggest women's cross-cultural her other novels, this fourth book makes bonds; and in Atwood's novel they represent detailed and evocative comments about the the pieced-together nature of the historical coming to consciousness of a woman artist. record. In A Fairly Conventional Woman, Exploration of this idea is evident in Small quilts provide an avenue for discussion of Ceremonies (1976) through biographer and women's histories and women's place in the aspiring novelist Judith Gill; The Box Garden arts-crafts divide, as the novel's protagonist, (1977) through poet Charleen Forrest; a conventional woman from suburban Swann (1987) through multiple women Chicago, flies to a handicraft convention in writers, including the title character poet Philadelphia. Mary Swann, academic Sarah Maloney, and Brenda Bowman appeared in the failed poet and editor Hildë Cruzzi; The precursor Happenstance mostly as a kind of Republic of Love (1992) through folklorist ghost figure: the absent wife whose Fay McLeod; and most evidently and attendance at an out-of-town meeting forces autobiographically, Unless (2002) through her historian husband to be temporarily novelist and translator Reta W inters. But in responsible for household and parenting contrast to all these novels, in A Fairly duties. A Fairly Conventional Woman, in Conventional Woman that artist is a quilter contrast, focuses on Brenda's experiences rather than a writer. Shields's only other at that convention as she becomes descriptions of needlework make up minor unconventional about her approach to parts of her novels, and involve men as well quiltmaking. She is compelled to reinterpret as women: in Small Ceremonies, academic quilting as an art rather than a craft and to Martin Gill creates a tapestry to demonstrate view the resulting quilts as feminist the themes of Paradise Lost; in The Box statements rather than just "warm, attractive Garden, Charleen's mother expresses bed coverings" (1982, 102). At the herself by sewing curtains and slipcovers for conference, Brenda figuratively "has dinner" her house; and in Swann, unmarried with Judy Chicago, who is never mentioned small-town librarian Rose Hindmarch in the book but whose politically motivated highlights gender relations as she sets art informs the discussions about herself apart from her neighbours, "Mrs. quiltmaking in which Brenda participates. Henry Cleary, Mrs. Al Lindquist," and so on, Indeed, Shields's book rearticulates and at 126 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis times humorously critiques Chicago's coherent, feminist, reading" (Barrett 1986, arguments about women's domestic lives, 162-63). She suggests, further, that The artistry, and sexuality, and at the same time Dinner Party illustrates that "women's art is comments on women's place in the not necessarily feminist art'" (1986, 163). In historical record. In the process, the book a similar manner, Groening dismisses draws on feminist theoreticians as diverse Shields's own claim to be a feminist when as Virginia Woolf and Betty Friedan and she writes that "to call Shields a feminist...is anticipates feminist art critics such as to place her distinctive fiction in an alien Rozsika Parker. land. Although her novels celebrate the In remarkably similar criticisms, world of a certain kind of woman who is works by both Chicago and Shields have perhaps under-regarded in today's world, been dismissed as too middle class, too they most certainly do not welcome domestic, and not truly feminist. Feminist art feminism as a way to alleviate frustration or critic Amelia Jones notes that one of the powerlessness" (Groening 1991, 14). The persistent criticisms of Chicago's place subhead of Groening's article states this settings is that they show "a unified conclusion more bluntly and in wording womanhood that...is implicitly white, similar to that of Barrett's: "Writing about heterosexual, and middle or upper-middle women doesn't make an author a feminist" class" (Jones 1996b, 35). Similarly, in an (1991, 14). article about Shields in Canadian Forum, One of Groening's most pointed Laura Groening criticizes Shields's novels criticisms is that in both A Fairly for their almost uniformly middle-class, white Conventional Woman and Swann, Shields protagonists, arguing that "Class renders mocks 1970s and 1980s feminist rhetoric these people completely homogeneous" (1991, 16-17). Groening argues that Shields (Groening 1991, 14) - this despite the fact "defuses the seriousness of any kind of that Happenstance and A Fairly engaged behaviour by consistently coupling Conventional Woman refer to at least one it with the ridiculous" (1991, 16). Just as in joint character who is not middle class: Swann Shields satirizes some aspects of Brenda's mother, an unmarried working feminist literary criticism (and indeed literary woman. Jones quotes art critics' dismissal of criticism in general), in A Fairly Conventional The Dinner Party because it is not only Woman she makes fun of some of the "popular, loved by the masses" but also excesses of feminist art criticism of the kind "associated with women's tastes and with provoked by Chicago's Dinner Party. But domestic crafts" (1996c, 88), while in a what Groening fails to acknowledge is that parallel argument Maria Horvath complains while critical rhetoric may be mocked in about the "unnecessary attention to Shields's books, the value of feminist minutiae," the "tedious detail," and the explorations of historical limitations on "banality of real life" in A Fairly Conventional women's lives and women's artistry is Woman (Horvath 1982, 18-19).
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