A Lady’s Duty to Submit—Then And Now
In 1956, my Grandma Claire gave birth to the first of her five children and soon after divorced the father, an Australian who turned out to be a drunk and besotted loser. Her father was so embarrassed by the divorce that he banned her from the family home. Claire refused to submit and shortly after being disowned, she moved west. Her second child was born to her (and my grandfather) in 1959, at Grace Hospital in Vancouver. This time, she was not married at all. And the nuns in attendance were so disgusted to see an unwed mother that they refused to give her a pillow during labour. She never legally married my grandfather, an Irish-Catholic-altar-boy-turned-atheist, and once again put the shame behind her. She lived her life uncowed by the stigma and shame that divorced women faced in that time. As far as I know, she was never bitter. Instead, the misogynistic bigotry of the Catholic Church was a source of amusement, and she regularly mocked the church. I’ve seen photos of her waiting …