Interview by Jessica Powers
Last week, we published Leslie Worthington’s short story, “The Beach House,” a story about a young woman, pregnant and unwed, and trying to deal with her emotions as the father of her baby arranges an adoption. This week, I spoke with her about the spark for her story; about the realities of young women and pregnancy both today and back in the 1960s, when the story is set; and about why writing about these issues is important.
1. What was the spark for your story?
The spark for the story came from a single sentence: “Bastard babies are born with broken hearts.” That popped into my head, and I liked the alliteration and the oxymoronic nature of the phrase “bastard babies.” We don’t use the word “bastard” in its original sense much anymore, so it added a shock to the statement. At first, I thought the sentence was a line of poetry, but it eventually became the story “The Beach House.” I wrote the story around it.
2. Setting (time and place) is critical for this story. Can you give us a little bit of historical background for women who found themselves in your protagonist’s situation (unwed, pregnant) in the 1960s, when this story is set? The 1960s are an interesting bridge between cultural mores since the so-called “sexual revolution” was happening yet it was before Roe v. Wade.
Women find themselves in this situation even today. Their options may be different, but sometimes when they are young and poor as Cecelia is, things aren’t all that different. I set the story in the 60’s partly because I wanted the reader to think about that. At first glance, you can say “oh, thank goodness it isn’t like that anymore.” But is that really true? Yes, as you say the sexual revolution had begun, but yet women didn’t have access to reliable birth control, there was no planned parenthood, and the options were, keep the child or put it up for adoption. I think most women got married whether they wanted to or not. Those who put their babies up for adoption were often hidden away as Cecelia is. These girls were kicked out of school and sometimes sent off to homes for unwed mothers or to live with family far away so they could come back and pretend nothing had ever happened. No one spoke of the child, and the girl could never speak of what had happened to her. Another option was sometimes to give the child to a family member as Cecelia’s mother had left her to be raised by her grandmother. Most of the time, these women never had a voice or avenue for release, a way to deal with their loss and pain over the huge thing that had happened to them. They just had to shove it down inside themselves.
Dr. Leslie Worthington
Despite easy access to birth control, despite additional options, despite the lessened stigma on pregrancy without marriage, women, not just girls, still find themselves in this situation. As a college English professor, I meet them all the time. They are in my classes, they miss exams to have babies, and they write essays about babies they’ve lost and given up. And society now, in the twenty-first century, isn’t as forgiving as we might like to think; these women aren’t always as forgiving of themselves.
For Cecelia, she isn’t going to get married. The baby’s father doesn’t have that in mind. Her family thinks she is, so she can’t even go home without humiliation. Can she go home to her grandparents with a baby, as her mother did? It’s obvious she doesn’t have the means to keep the baby and care for it by herself. It’s also obvious that she doesn’t want to give that baby up. She’s decided on the baby’s gender, given him a name, and a future. She’s imagined his future without her. She’s fallen in love with her child before he’s even born, as mothers do. Cecelia faces a horrible dilemma.
3. I love the ending, where we don’t know if Cecilia dies or just imagines her death and, later, makes it to shore. Metaphorically, however, she felt as though her life was essentially over. Can you talk about how you crafted the ambiguity and the metaphor into that ending?
I guess I haven’t thought much about intentionally crafting the ambiguity of the ending. I’ve displeased some readers who couldn’t believe I’d create a woman who would kill her child. I think the ambiguity comes from the fact that even Cecelia doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She doesn’t set out intending to commit suicide. She doesn’t go into the water intending it. Maybe she thinks she’s letting fate take over, and the universe will decide. She’s been in denial, not thinking about what’s going to happen. She’s a very adaptable person, as we can see from her memories of her life before the baby. She’s alone, and her future is uncertain, but she’s making the best of where she’s found herself. She’s enjoying the leisure, her reading, the beach. Being able to adapt to change and stick it out through hard times is a desirable and even admirable quality, but sometimes it hurts us. Sometimes we need to be able to say, “No, stop this” “or I want out of this. I’m not going to take this anymore.” Wes’s remark about this being over soon sets her thinking more deeply about her situation. So when she sets out for her walk that day, reality is flooding over her. She does not want to give up her baby, and maybe killing herself and taking the baby with her is the only control she’s ever going to have over her own life.
One thing I did want the story to have was metaphor. I wanted the things she sees on her walk along the beach to have meaning to her, as our surroundings take on life and meaning when significant things are happening to us internally. Yellow houses become symbols of a happy life. Birds protecting their nests become young mothers who have to give up their babies. The world around Cecelia becomes infused with meaning as she becomes more emotionally aware.
4. Why do you think it’s important to probe these issues surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood in literature?
These issues are part of our common experience, and art is a cultural experience as well as an individual one. I don’t believe literature has to be didactic, but it does need to be about something, something important. Sexuality, pregnancy, motherhood are all important to who we are as women, and the sharing of these experiences and feelings joins us. Sharing can sometimes lead to healing.
5. What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished an academic book about intertextual connections between Mark Twain and Cormac McCarthy entitled Cormac McCarthy and the Ghost of Huck Finn. It was released a couple of weeks ago. I’m currently working with a colleague on an anthology of essays about images and definitions of home in the work of Appalachian artists.
With my own fiction, I’ve been working on a collection of short stories for some time now. It will probably be called Odes of Solitude. Each piece has a female character who imagines, remembers, or hallucinates the story, yet she’s the only character who is actually present. “The Beach House” is part of the collection. And I continue to write poetry, usually about the experiences of women: career, love, children, grandchildren, and balancing all our many, many roles.
