When I was at university we had a professor who
surprised everyone by saying that, if it were possible, he might like to have
‘The Pillowman’ banned. The play, which features a series of brilliant but
brutal scenes and stories of abuse, had changed for him fundamentally as he
grew older. He mentioned having a child as a turning point, a softening. The
suggestion was that by becoming responsible for a tiny life, your view of the
world could shift. Art which you had previously tolerated, even liked, could
suddenly take on a new meaning, your tastes changing as your perspective
shifted. At the time I didn’t fully understand what he meant – I think as a
class we prided ourselves on our ability to handle quite shocking drama and
subjects – but I am beginning to now.
It goes without saying that the first
few days of motherhood are emotionally overwhelming, and that new mothers cry a lot. What I hadn’t really bargained on was the longer
term effect it would have on how I saw the world, and particularly the children
in it. I have had what feels like a huge shot of empathy mainlined into my
system, and it doesn’t seem to be wearing off.
It started when I watched an episode of ‘How to Get
Away with Murder’ when M was three weeks old. It featured a still birth, and
watching it (unsurprisingly) made me cry my eyes out. So far, so obvious – it
couldn’t really have been any less suitable. But in the weeks and months since
then there doesn’t seem to have been any let up in the number of things on TV
that I almost cannot watch, and several books I am loath to pick up (hello,
Kate Atkinson). My friend J had a baby at around the same time I did, and the
other day we had a brief online chat about how difficult we have both found
watching ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. By difficult, I mean emotional in an almost
crushing sense. I know it is brutal TV, and it has been divisive in households
across the land according to a recent article in Times 2, but in general I am
pretty happy with brutal. I like unflinching storytelling, even when that
includes violence and scenes which are difficult to watch. But not at the
moment.
I think what is happening is kind of a version of
the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, a syndrome in which ‘a concept or thing you just
found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere’, but the concept I have
just found out about is some form of maternal empathy, and the thing is
children who need help. And it doesn’t just apply to things I have been coming
across now; sometimes when I’m falling asleep I find myself thinking about
abused babies, both real (Baby P) and not real (the baby in Trainspotting) and
it makes me feel worse than I’ve ever felt about anything in my life. It feels
like by having and knowing my own baby, and being responsible from saving her
from harm, I am starting to understand the utter perversion of a person who
could be driven to inflict it instead.
This probably all seems trite at best, and naive at
worst, but it is a genuine mental shift that has come with motherhood. I have
been told by my own mother that it doesn’t last – obviously like any other
person I will continue to find awful events and stories difficult, but I will
not find them so potent as to make me feel my insides have turned to lead. I
still really like ‘The Pillowman’, but I’m going to hold off reading / seeing
it for a while.
And up my monthly donation to the NSPCC.
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