A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  We talked for a while, and I told her about Jason and Rob, and what a mess it all was. She listened carefully, but didn't offer any advice. I got the impression that human society was something she didn't understand or feel she could comment on. So after a while, I changed the subject.

  “How do female elephants choose their mates?” I asked.

  Clare looked thoughtful. “I don't know. That's something I haven't studied. I'll find out for you, if you like.”

  “And once they're pregnant, do they stay in a pair with the father?”

  “Yes and no. As I said, the baby is brought up by the whole herd, and it's a matriarchal clan, so the fathers don't take a major role. The baby feeds on its mother's milk for about four years, so it stays close to her during that time, but all the adult elephants in the herd look after it and play with it as well.”

  “Like in a commune,” I said.

  “I suppose so,” said Clare, looking baffled by this remark.

  I got up to go. “Well, I'd better be off. I still haven't started my dissertation. Good luck with the application.”

  “Thanks. Good luck with the umm …”

  I waited.

  “The umm … ab …”

  This time I didn't wait.

  “See you around,” I said.

  *

  I didn't want to admit it, but Cassie's room was starting to feel like home. I hadn't put anything up on the walls, but there were books stacked neatly on the shelves and files laid out on the desk, with pads of squared paper for making notes, and lined ones for writing essays. Beside them were Biros and felt-tip pens in black, red and blue, and thick 6B pencils that I used for marking passages in books, rubbing the lines out with a putty rubber when they had to go back to the library. There was even a fountain pen I wrote my essays with, and a bottle of blue-black Quink beside it. My father had given me the pen, and although it was messy and old-fashioned, I enjoyed the rigmarole of filling it up. And when I started writing, I liked the scratch of the pen as it crawled along the paper, and the way, when you'd finished a page, you had to stop and press blotting paper over it to stop it smudging, and the way the ink came out like mirror writing on the blotting paper. The whole process was all so deliberate, and painstaking, and unhurried. It reminded me of my father. And it helped me to think.

  I sat down at the desk and got into the pen routine, unscrewing it, sticking the nib into the bottle of Quink, squeezing the little rubber tube inside it until it sucked up the ink, wiping the sides of the pen with a tissue, and then shaking it over a piece of blotting paper to check the ink was running through properly. While I was doing it, I was thinking about my dissertation. It was going to be something about Heidegger and Kierkegaard, about “being in the world,” about the “knight of faith.” It was going to be something about this abortion too, but I couldn't say that.

  I started with a quote from Kierkegaard:

  For my own part I don't lack the courage to think a thought whole. No thought has frightened me so far. Should I ever come across one I hope I will at least have the honesty to say: “This thought scares me, it stirs up something else in me so that I don't want to think it.” If that is wrong of me I'll no doubt get my punishment.

  Three days from now, I was going to go to the clinic and have the fetus inside me sucked out. The fetus my breasts and belly had been swelling for. The fetus who was growing, day by day, into a baby. My firstborn child. My father's grandchild, who might somehow follow his trail and bring him back to me, to us. I wasn't as brave as Kierkegaard. The thought scared the shit out of me. But I knew that, if I didn't want to punish myself, I was going to have to think it.

  I wrote down the title of the essay. “The Knight of Faith: a critique of Kierkegaard's concept of faith on the strength of the absurd in Fear and Trembling, with reference to Heidegger's notion of Dasein in Being and Time.”

  It wasn't very snappy. Dennis wrote essays for Belham with titles like “Does Prayer Work?” and “What Is Time?” but I wasn't up to that level. And I couldn't very well call it “Should I Have an Abortion?” which was really what it was about. The title would just have to do for now. I could cut it down later.

  I put the pen down and looked out of the window to think.

  Right. OK. Come on, Susannah. You've arrived at the clinic. You've had the examination. They're going to put you under for the abortion. What are you going to do?

  Get up and leave.

  Why? Because you're scared of operations?

  Maybe.

  That's a bit pathetic, isn't it? You're going to bring an unwanted child into the world just because you're scared of having an abortion?

  But maybe I want the child. Maybe that's why I'm scared. Because I know I'm doing something that's not right for me.

  OK, so you want the child.

  Yes. I think I do.

  Can you imagine being a mother?

  No.

  Do you think you'd be any good at it?

  No.

  Do you know any children?

  No.

  Are you married?

  No.

  Do you know who the father is?

  No.

  Do you have a place to live, or an income?

  No.

  So what makes you think you want the child?

  Well, from my reading of Heidegger and Kierkegaard …

  I picked up the pen and began to write.

  chapter 22

  BY FOUR O'CLOCK THE NEXT MORNING I had finished my dissertation. And I had decided I was probably going to have the baby.

  It had started quite gradually, with Heidegger. I'd been writing about his notion of Dasein, being in the world, when I'd realized that being pregnant wasn't actually a problem as such. It was just part of being in the world, part of what happens, part of what people—women—do, like getting up in the morning or going to bed at night. It wasn't exactly “natural”—that was a loaded term and I wasn't going to get into all that stuff about women's biology and the nature/nurture debate—and it wasn't exactly “normal,” which was another can of worms. It was simply part of the day-to-day business of living in the world. It was a state of being that did not, in itself, require thought. As such, it was not a problem.

  It only became a problem when you started thinking, when you began to imagine the future: what you were going to do, how you were going to live, how it was all going to work out. But that, essentially, was a challenge created by the conditions of the outside world, something you were going to have to tackle: finding food and shelter for yourself and your child. Women had done that for centuries, either with men, or on their own. It was not an impossible task; in fact, it was probably easier now, at least in the world I lived in, than at any other time in human history.

  What I had to keep in mind was that there was nothing actually wrong with me. I was just doing what people—women—do. But I was living at an odd time, in an odd place, where for a young woman to conceive and bear a child was seen as an aberration, a piece of bad luck, like getting struck by lightning or falling down a manhole in the street: an interruption to the business of living, instead of part of the business of living itself.

  The other thing Heidegger was saying, which I still couldn't quite grasp, but which hovered above me like a religious vision, was that there wasn't really a difference between subject and object. As long as you drove your car along the road with no obstacles in view, you weren't aware of yourself driving and the car being driven. Only when a car loomed up at you, coming the wrong way, did you start thinking in those terms and taking evasive action. In the same way, I was moving along with the baby inside me, and it was hard to say in the end who was doing the driving. Obviously, if I looked ahead one day and saw that we were about to crash I would need to take control. But I wasn't at all sure that we were about to crash. In fact, we seemed to be running along quite smoothly.

  Now that I came to think about it, ever since I'd become pregnant, I'd stopped dreaming about cars and roa
ds and crashes. I'd been sleeping soundly, and waking refreshed. For the first time since my father had died I'd felt a sense that everything was going to be all right: that the way up ahead was clear and that we were moving along at a slow, sensible pace, for the moment at least.

  At around six o'clock in the evening, just as I was coming to the realization that there was nothing really to stop me having the baby, Cassie had phoned. She knew the number of the hall of residence, which had been her number, and had persuaded one of the inmates to come up to my room and tell me I had a call.

  When I got down to the lobby, I found the receiver of the phone hanging suspended from the booth, so I assumed the person on the other end had been cut off or given up waiting. But when I picked it up, she was still there, hanging on.

  “Hi Suse,” she said. “How's it going?”

  “Oh Cass, it's you,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”

  I was aware that I was struggling to understand what was going on down here in the real world. I'd been in the realms of Heidegger for several hours by now.

  “Are you all right? You sound a bit odd.”

  “Sorry. I've just been writing my dissertation. I've had a bit of a breakthrough, as it happens.”

  “How are you feeling about the … you know,” said Cassie, ignoring my news.

  “Oh, right. Yes. Well, I'm not sure … I don't know if I'm going to go ahead with it.”

  “Oh.” Cassie sounded confused. “Why's that? Have you made it up with Jason?”

  “Jason?” I felt as though I could hardly remember who Jason was. “No, of course not.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Rob, then?”

  “No,” I said. I thought, I should phone Rob sometime soon. I still had his numbers on a scrap of paper in my purse. He'd be expecting to hear from me now that Christmas was over. But as yet, I didn't know what to tell him. I'd phone him just as soon as I'd made up my mind.

  “So what's changed?” asked Cassie.

  “Oh, nothing really. Nothing like that, anyway. It's more … well, it's to do with the subject and the object, Cass. It's a bit hard to explain.”

  There was a pause.

  “Are you sure you're all right?” Cassie asked again.

  “Yes, I'm fine,” I said.

  “You haven't canceled it, have you?” There was a note of panic in Cassie's voice.

  “Not yet. I've still got some reading … some thinking to do. I haven't quite made up my mind. But I'm having second thoughts.”

  I heard someone come into the room at Cassie's end. Then she said, almost whispering, “I'm sorry, I can't talk now. I'll phone you again as soon as I can. Don't do anything silly, will you?”

  “No, I won't,” I said. “Of course I won't. I've never felt less silly in my life.”

  On the way back up the stairs, I forgot our conversation and started thinking about Heidegger again. There was something he'd got wrong. By the time I'd sat down at my desk again, I'd worked out what it was, and I started writing. Belham is going to like this, I thought. The tutors at Sussex always appreciated you giving the big names like Plato and Descartes and Kant a good kicking, as long as you wrote “it can be argued that” before you started saying what a load of bollocks they were spouting. Heidegger was more of a challenge, because his writing style was so insane, and it was almost impossible to work out what he was on about in the first place, but I decided to wade through the hyphens and have a go anyway.

  According to Heidegger, human beings are “thrown into the world” and have to sink or swim wherever they land. A picture came into my mind of babies flying through the air and landing in their cots, ready for action. It was ridiculous. Only a man could have come up with such an idiotic idea. As I saw it, what actually happens is that babies are part of the world from the beginning, merged with their mothers inside the womb. In a quite literal way, from the off we are never separate subjects. We are part of another person, another body, from the moment we are conceived. It's nothing to do with being thrown anywhere.

  I worked slowly and methodically, stopping to look up quotes, and thinking out my sentences before I wrote them down. Round about midnight the hall of residence quieted down. There were no voices in the corridor or thumps on the ceiling, and outside it was pitch black. I listened for the owl, but I couldn't hear it. As it got later, I thought of all the philosophers who had scratched away in candlelight with their quill pens, far into the night. I thought of the way my father used to work in his study at home, and how musty the room smelt now that no one went in there any more. I'd sometimes had the impression that he'd wanted me to follow him into medicine—after all, I was his only child—but he'd never pushed it. I wondered, for a brief moment, whether I should have, whether I could have, whether he would have died happier if I had.

  At around four o'clock in the morning, I stopped writing. The dissertation was almost finished. Although it was still too short, I knew I had enough material there for the whole thing. All I had to do was witter on a bit longer and drag out a few more quotes, possibly even start talking about “the metaphysics of gestation” or something pretentious like that. But I still wanted to get on to Kierkegaard. Heidegger had helped me work out why I felt OK about being pregnant, why I wasn't tearing out my hair and contemplating throwing myself off a bridge. But that wasn't enough. If I really was going to cancel the abortion and go through with having a baby, I was going to need more than just feeling OK. I was going to need faith. And I didn't know yet if I had it, or if I didn't, how to get it.

  chapter 23

  FIONA AND I WERE WALKING along Brighton pier. She'd turned up at my room that morning and dragged me out, “to get some fresh air,” she said. Cassie had rung her to tell her I was having second thoughts about the abortion, and she'd taken a train straight down from London, where her parents lived, to come and see me. I was touched that she'd bothered, but I wished she hadn't.

  There was plenty of fresh air on Brighton pier. As we walked into the bitter wind, our eyes stung and watered so much we had to take shelter in one of the booths that lined the center of the walkway. We sat on the wooden seat under the scratched plastic cover and looked out to sea. There wasn't much of a view, just gray fog and brown water. Even though it was Sunday, there were no other people on the pier. You could see why.

  “You're just nervous,” Fiona was saying. “Anybody would be.”

  I looked up at the sky. It was a purple, yellowish gray, like a bruise.

  “But you're only eight weeks,” she went on. “So it's really nothing. You'd hardly call it an operation. It's just like having a tooth out at the dentist's.”

  I wondered if it would rain.

  “Susannah, are you listening to me?”

  I thought it might.

  “For God's sake,” she said. “Say something.”

  I gave a sigh. Fiona had been giving me a pep talk ever since she'd arrived. I'd let her go on, but I wasn't listening. I'd really been getting somewhere with Heidegger and Kierkegaard and the abortion, and I didn't want her to interrupt my train of thought. But now, sitting on the pier with the wind lashing the booth, I realized I'd have to respond.

  “The thing is, Fiona,” I said. “I've been doing some thinking about this. It's not as though I'm going into it with my eyes closed. But I need time …”

  “You haven't got any time.” Fiona sounded irritated.

  “Don't interrupt.” My tone was sharp. “Who's having this abortion, you or me?”

  Fiona looked taken aback. I didn't normally talk to her so abruptly.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Go on.”

  “Yes, well, as I was saying …” I paused. I'd explained this to myself but not to anyone else. “I seem to be feeling happy to be pregnant. I'm not having nightmares any more. I'm waking up fine. And that makes me think that this is kind of … the right thing to do. It's an everyday, ordinary process that it makes sense for me to go through. Part of the business of living, if you know what I mean.”

  Fio
na looked nonplussed.

  “If I stop thinking about the future,” I went on, “I like the way I feel. I like being pregnant. I feel sort of …” I searched for the words. I hadn't explained this to myself before. “Sort of womanly. As though I've become an adult at last.”

  I thought of the day I'd got up early, put on the fur coat and sat watching the sun on the sea with the tabby cat. “It's quite sexy, actually.”

  The moment I said that, I wished I hadn't. It sounded frivolous, the sort of thing Cassie would come out with.

  Fiona frowned, but said nothing. Drops of rain began to fall on the plastic cover, the wind splatting them down hard like gobs of spit.

  “I can imagine,” she said. “It must be nice.”

  Her reaction surprised me.

  “I feel like somebody now,” I went on, encouraged. “Somebody with a task to do. I feel as though I have a future. I haven't felt like that since my father died.” I stopped.

  “Go on,” she said.

  I looked out to sea. “Having babies is just a normal part of living, Fiona,” I said. “It's what people do, you know. What they've always done. We're no different. It kind of takes the sting out of … I don't know. Life. Death.”

  I hadn't explained any of this to myself before. It was all new to me.

  Fiona said nothing. When I turned to look at her, there were tears in her eyes.

  “I know,” she said. She spoke quietly. “I completely understand. If the circumstances were right … but they're not. However happy it makes you feel to be pregnant now, Susannah, it's not going to go on forever.”

  I looked back out to sea.

  “The reality is that in nine months' time you're going to have a baby on your hands,” she went on. “You'll probably get through it somehow, but it's going to be bloody tough for you. The child won't have a proper father. You'll either have to look after it yourself and have no money, or go out to work in some shit job and never see it. You'll have to leave Sussex. You won't get your degree. You won't have a career. And however much you love the child, it'll all be a bit of a mess.”