Chapter 1

Some History: The Foundation of a House Divided


Annie Leonard came completely unwrapped at husband Jeff’s forty-third birthday party, and it was all because of seventeenth-century European philosophy. Not that Annie ever thinks about seventeenth-century European philosophy. During my years in academia, I’ve met people who dwell on the topic the way others dwell on baseball statistics or the story line of their favorite soap opera, but Annie isn’t one of them. She is many other things: a gracious, warm woman with a wonderful sense of humor, the mother of five happy children, the wife of a successful executive, the center of a group of devoted friends, and an astonishingly competent homemaker. In her chosen field, Annie is as high-achieving, self-motivated, and accomplished as any corporate president who ever led a Fortune 500 company. That’s why her behavior at Jeff’s birthday party was so unsettling to Annie’s family, her friends, and, most of all, Annie herself.

Everything started out just fine. Jeff’s boss had invited the four top district managers and their wives to dinner. It just happened to be Jeff’s birthday, and we thought it would be a great way to celebrate.”

Annie knew that it was a tremendous compliment for Jeff to be invited to dinner with the CEO of his company, a man I’ll call Norman Manchester. She was happy to accompany Jeff to the event, even though corporate functions were not her favorite way to spend her time. The problem started at about the time dessert was served. Norman Manchester tapped on his wineglass with a fork to draw everyone’s attention, lifted the glass, and made a toast. According to Annie, it went something like this:

“I want to congratulate everyone here on your success. You people have done more in less time than almost anyone else in the company. I’ve been told that Jeff is just turning forty-three, and the rest of you aren’t much older. Most of the men at your level are too old to be considered for further promotion, but you four are not.”

Annie looked at her husband, who was positively glowing under Manchester’s approval, and tried to smile. Oddly, she couldn’t. “My stomach felt all tight,” she told me later. “Like a fist I couldn’t unclench.” She struggled to compose herself as Manchester went on:

“Most people don’t make things happen,” he said. Most people just let things happen – and sometimes they get in the way. You people are different. You make your dreams come true. You have the loyalty and respect of your coworkers, the company, and the world. And if that’s not enough, you can always think about the size of your Christmas bonuses.”

Everyone laughed. Annie put down her spoon and gripped her hands together in her lap.

“And of course,” Manchester concluded, “I’d like to thank you ladies for the support you give us all. We know that we wouldn’t be her today without the ladies.” All the men at the table began to applaud politely.

At that moment, without any warning, Annie burst into tears. I don’t mean a little drip-and-sniffle affair. This was serious weeping, complete with loud sobbing and muddy little rivers of mascara running down Annie’s cheeks. It came on like a tornado, and with just as unsettling an effect. Everyone at the table stared, aghast, at Annie.

Oh, God, I thought I was going to die from embarrassment. I mean, can you imagine? This was one of the most important nights in Jeff’s life, and I was coming apart. It was like…I could see it happening, but I really truly couldn’t stop it. I’d been crying a lot at home, in the year or two before that, but … I could always control it. Until that one night.

Mumbling an apology, Annie got up from the table and rushed toward the women’s room. Jeff was right behind her. He adored Annie, and her sudden outburst scared him badly. He caught up with her in front of the rest-room doors.

He was so sweet, so worried. I tried to think what to tell him, about why I was crying. I realized that it was nothing he could understand. It was about my whole life…It was about getting up every day and helping Jeff and the kids get ready to go do something important, and never having to get dressed to do anything important myself. It was about listening to people like Manchester say, “Oh, all of you people are so wonderful,” and then saying, “And we could never do it without the ladies.” As though “the ladies” weren’t “people.”

I mean, I was going to be forty-three in a few months, too – and what did I have to show for it? Twenty years of dishwashing, cooking, cleaning floors that were going to be dirty again tomorrow. How could Jeff understand that? … He kept asking me what was wrong, what he could do for me. I thought about trying to explain it all, but finally I just told him what it all boiled down to. I said, “I am not sure I even exist.”

Jeff Leonard didn’t have a clue what his wife was talking about, but when she related the incident to me a few months later, I knew what Annie meant. I understood partly because I am female myself, partly because I had interviewed dozens of other women who had said approximately the same thing, and partly because I knew something about seventeenth-century European philosophy.

You see, Annie’s strange sense of invisibility, of nonexistence, did not simply descend upon her from nowhere. Nor did it come from her own mind. It wasn’t a hysterical fit, a bad mood, a severe case of PMS, or a chemical imbalance. It was a deliberate human invention, created by certain people at a certain time and in a certain place.

The things we usually think of as “inventions” are objects that we can see and touch, or perhaps processes we can use (like a new way to take the salt out of seawater). But the biggest human inventions, the ones that have the most powerful impact on our daily lives, are hardly ever recognized as human constructions. They are the systems of behavior we use to interact with one another, to get our physical, emotional, and social needs met. Every culture on earth has developed certain ways to regulate human behavior: laws, customs, traditions, and the unofficial rules sociologists refer to as “norms.”

The members of each culture begin to absorb these rules about human life almost from the moment of birth – and because the rules are so deeply learned, they often aren’t recognized as human inventions. When a child asks why she should follow these cultural rules, the only answer may be “Because that’s how it is done.” By the time we reach adulthood, we have absorbed millions and millions of “rules” about how we should behave, and we have been trained not to question them – they are just how it’s done. Should the rules ever stop working or become counterproductive, we may not even realize that other options exist. We may not be able to see that our way of life is not an immutable law of nature, but simply a set of constructions devised by human beings; an invention that may be adjusted or tinkered with just as deliberately as any mechanical device.

In Annie Leonard’s case, she, her husband, and every other person at the infamous Dinner of Tears were operating on a set of social constructs and assumptions that were “adjusted” during a particularly innovative time in the history of our culture. The time was about four hundred years ago, during a period known as the Enlightenment. The place was Western Europe, and the “inventors” were a group of remarkable philosophers, the thinkers who shape a society’s view of the world. In the next few pages, I’ll go into some detail about the way Enlightenment thinkers perceived society, because knowing how they set up the constructs of our culture then and there is the only way to understand what’s happening to women like Annie Leonard here and now.

Excerpted from Expecting Adam, Copyright© 1999 by Martha Beck. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.