KILLING POLLYANNA


Niceness is a plague upon women. Society places a premium on it -- deeming niceness as an unmitigated and necessary virtue. This has resulted in generations of women pretending to be nice at the expense of their own integrity; women violating their selves lest society do it for them.

Pollyanna, the heroine of a 1913 children’s lit classic, plays the glad game – always finding something in every situation to be glad about. The glad girl serves as the poster child for philosophical statements such as: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” “Silence is golden.” “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.” That one works really well if the goal is the accumulation of the most flies! Pollyannaism has been defined as “excessive optimism to the point of naivety; a refusal to accept facts.”

Back when I was married I tried to keep myself in line using the comparison game. Telling myself, at least I’m not as bad off as Louise. Or, regarding my husband, at least he doesn’t drink, or smoke, or beat me. I should be glad for my many blessings. Ignoring the fact that I was miserable. Ignoring his verbal abuse of me, and our children. Ignoring the fact that he had no respect for women in general, and no respect for me in particular.

At that time I had no way of sticking up for myself; I had grown up in a religion of lonely women; my mother simply took to her bed if things didn’t go her way. Besides it was a different time in society as a whole. One result for me was that I squandered my lifetime quota of pity on myself. Wallowing for months at a time, drowning in inarticulate grievances. Struck mute by abysmal self-esteem, and a sense of deserving no better.

There is something to be said for the power of positive thinking and all that crap, but not here, not now. I find it interesting these days that people are often more interested in my rants (of which this is an example) than they are in my occasional lyrical or descriptive efforts.

Ironically, ranting aside, I know myself to be a genuinely kind person – fundamentally good. I abhor hurting people’s feelings. Despite the fact that I’m uncomfortable when I’m accused of niceness in general, I admit that, in particular, my kind behavior can seem to fall into that category.

However, being referred to as “nice” these days is a damning-with-faint-praise cliché. Call me boring, call me rude, call me tacky, just don’t call me nice. For a long time I’ve known that, for women writers, niceness needs to take a backseat to truth telling anyway. Therefore, I think killing Pollyanna – that false niceness inside me still – is a continuing worthwhile goal.