There are “survival” movies. The ones where the plane crashes or the ship founders, and the survivors are cast into the wild with only their wits and each other and a few scraps to work with. Out there in the wild, where we mere human animals are pathetically unsuited to live and thrive, much less survive. So the drama commences.
That outdoor fighting-the-elements stuff captures the imagination, although to tell you the truth it doesn’t keep my attention for long.
I saw a film about human survival yesterday, and it’s been on my mind ever since. It illustrates survival under conditions faced by millions of people, day in and day out. And don’t kid yourself that the constraints under which Albert Nobbs lived in 19th Century Ireland are all done and dusted and dumped in the rubbish bins of history.
Albert’s a waiter in a hotel. He stands, he waits, he serves. Up in his attic room he’s been stashing his earnings and tips away under a floorboard, keeping tabs in a small notebook. Waiting for the day when he can afford to rent premises and open a shop. A tobacconist shop where, he mentions to the hotel doctor, a woman can serve at the counter. The doctor replies, “Oh, so you’re thinking of getting married?” Albert is startled.
Albert’s upset when the hotel’s proprietor Mrs. Baker lodges a (house) painter, Hubert Page, in Albert’s room for a couple of nights. Thanks to a fleabite, Mr. Page learns (as do we) that Albert is a woman. The revelations aren’t done yet, as this tale of class and sexual identity unfolds.
Albert broke my heart. Her story is revealed, a tale of survival and loneliness. In her day and place, the options open to poor young men were limited – but vast compared to those for poor young women. At age 14, she donned a used man’s dress suit to get hired as waiter for a big event, and never looked back. I admired her for the guts to carry off the lifelong deception and live decently, and I grieved for her life of fear and stunted emotions.
And I adored Janet McTeer’s work in this film. (As does David Edelstein, on NPR, in a review with spoilers, I’m just warning you.)
We American women now just happily assume that the law protects our work, our property and our person. It’s news when the system fails someone. But those assumptions rest on a contemporary foundation; sometimes I think its concrete has barely cured. Unmarried women have only recently enjoyed anything like equal status under the law, much less in societal practice. To hold a job, to live independently, to own and control one’s money, property, and one’s body – those were the birthright of men, even poor men, but privileges rarely accorded to women, and never to ordinary middle class or poor women.
Think I’m being melodramatic? In Texas, in the early 1970′s, after my father died, I was deeded a small lot. I was a recent university graduate, working and supporting myself. And single. The deed was made out to “[my name], femme sole.” Yes. In my lifetime, a woman’s marital status was noted on real estate records, although a man’s was not.
The story in this film was long ago and far away, and fiction. But fantasy? Not at all. I’ve put in a request at the library for a book about cross-dressing in the American West, now that Glenn Close and company have got me thinking about how people live, how they manage to survive, and if they are lucky, to grab a bit of happiness along the way.
