Mark with an X

Many moons ago, when I was at university, having just come out of Catholic seminary, where I spent just over five years studying for the priesthood, I made the decision that I would, instead, be a teacher of English. Instead of focussing my attention on one Good Book, I would now be free to explore all the good books classified as Literature. Because my focus was on becoming a teacher, however, I felt I should gain some knowledge of William Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, recognising that this course would inevitably be oversubscribed, the university announced that all applicants would be entered into the computer and selected randomly. Immediately, I knew I would not be selected and I was right. But, uniquely, instead of a mere rejection, the computer mysteriously managed to enter my name on the Feminist Literary Studies course. To this day, I have never had an explanation of how this happened.

There were voices that suggested I should simply get this changed for a course of my choosing. As this was a course I would never have chosen for myself, and as I still believed enough to think that God might still have plans for me – even if not ordination – I would go with it and attend the course. The best decision I never made.

At the beginning of the year, there were two other males on a course clearly designed for females. They didn’t last long! So, I was, very soon, the only male in a class which soon made it clear that, as a male, I was part of the problem the course was designed to address. I think I only really upset the class once. I learned, soon enough, that it’d be best for all concerned if I listened attentively while keeping my male opinions to myself.

When it came time to write an essay, I struggled to find a topic. What did I know about feminist literary issues? I found my topic by realising there was a genre missing from all the books we had to read. There was no lesbian literature on the syllabus. I’m not sure whether it actually existed as a “genre” back then but it wasn’t difficult to find a sample of novels and short stories on which to base an argument.

I’d found the topic for my essay. I never did formulate a cogent argument. It was one of the two C grades I obtained at Uni.

After recovering from the disappointment, I realised it was the experience of attending that course with those women that mattered. It was reading that writing of those lesbian writers that finally woke me up to the necessity of listening to voices that were speaking a truth not taught in Catholic seminary.

It was the 90s by the time I got round to going to university. I’d spent around seven years in factory type jobs after leaving school, going into seminary in 1985. After a period of readjustment to civilian life and attending college to get the bits of paper universities like so much, I finally got to go to uni when I was thirty. By which time, I’d had plenty of experience of life, but nothing that posed any great challenge to my ingrained attitudes and opinions.

So, when they started telling me the author was dead, well, I knew He wasn’t!

Even in seminary, I’d had the odd dark night of the soul. On leaving seminary, I’d asked myself what this meant for my faith and, in all honesty, I wasn’t at all sure. But none of this caused as many sleepless nights or struggling with demons as did the theory of poststructuralism.

The dissertation I wrote for that BA Degree was an attempt to reconcile the idea of authorship with the author’s death. If I may be allowed a moment of self-aggrandisement, it was a damned fine piece of writing. But it wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t attended that course on Feminist Literary Criticism and listened to those women who voiced thoughts it wasn’t possible for me to think. I should also give due respect to Nisa Donnelly (The Bar Stories: A Novel After All) and Jane Rule (Desert of the Heart) who gave me an essay (however poorly I served them).

My ideas of individuality came from the same source so I have a lot to be grateful for.

I am never going to be a poststructuralist; I am never going to be fluid. But I understand that other people are – and I am okay with that.

It’s not okay because I think it’s okay (eh, I’m Catholic after all). It is okay because it is okay to be individual. And that is a God given right.