Lidy believes “the lot of women isn’t right”—specifically that an undesired pregnancy disproportionately affects the female who will be “saddled with their mistake for the rest of her life.” This situation plays out repeatedly over the course of the novel, from Alta and Elsie to, perhaps most heartbreakingly, Birdie. Do you agree with Lidy? Or is hers a sentiment and symptom of the era? What about her tongue-in-cheek assertion that “There’d be no babies if it were up to men to carry and birth them. The end of the human race”?
I am sorry to say that I think this is still true. Women have a greater responsibility; they certainly can’t walk away from the pregnancy whereas a man can. I have always felt that women need to take the responsibility for using birth control, as they will be the one having the child rather than be passive and trust the man to use protection. (I know that women did not have the options they do today for birth control but in both time periods the woman will be the one with the child.)
I think this observation by Lidy continues to be true. It is particularly distressing that women are deprived of control of their own bodies in the absence of shared responsibility,
I was surprised, somewhat naively, that Liddy took control of getting rid of Elsie’s baby, playing God as it were. I think Lidy’s comment about men was probably true for that era - men staying clear of the birthing, and leaving the rearing to the mothers, or nursemaids in wealthy families.
Yes, the burden of an undesired pregnancy is inherently unequal. Social stigma is placed on women, not men. Lidy’s statement is an accurate reading of the system she and other women are trapped in. This is still the case today.
And (lol) I believe most women (and men too) would agree that there would be no babies if men had to carry and birth them.
Absolutely the truth. The stigma attached to unwed mothers never carries over to the men. In fact, the bravado attached to the “conquest” can be summed up in McConnell’s remarks to the physician when asked whether he’d had relations with more than one women: “I’d like to meet a red-blooded American man who hasn’t!” “I used to keep track. Notched them on the old belt, you know?”
Nobody asks if there were any children produced by these encounters. The only concern was for the possibility of sexually transmitted disease. Maybe if the men who fathered children out of wedlock were required to wear some sort of “scarlet letter” (or better yet have to bear the children LOL), they would think twice before being so casual about the whole matter.