“Breaking out of the Library”
This is a story of escape—though a slow release from sucking mud rather than a daredevil exit down castle walls on a rope. How I released my imagination, that’s the story.
It began the day I was returning from a sabbatical to the college where I’d been teaching for ten years. As I looked round the familiar setting, the sun-filled lobby lined with mailboxes, the green upholstered chairs grouped in the common room, one powerful thought—or was it intuition? –transfixed me: I shouldn’t be here.
It was alarming. I’d given my life to education. Scholarship girl, Oxford, PhD. That meant a certain limited kind of writing. Correcting papers, marginal notes, final comments to help my students. And in the vacations—only then—writing and research of my own. Ever since the day when I was given a shiny green fountain pen for my sixth birthday, in a secret, unknowing kind of way I’d set out to be a writer.
But where had writing as a professor got me? How muffled and anxious my voice was. I can see that now. My first book, Writing by Numbers: Trollope’s Serial Fiction, was about the way the Victorian novelist, Anthony Trollope, worked. He kept count of the number of pages he wrote every day, anxious not to be lazy, not to be in the wrong, anxious to please his editors with the correct word length.
Only after it was published did I begin to wonder how much of his fears I shared. And why wasn’t I writing novels of my own? For three days I sat paralysed at my desk. I wanted to write a story but I couldn’t do it. I gave up and went back—but not entirely to my old ways. I began to question the connection between my own life and the topics I was choosing to research.
That name, ‘Trollope’? Was ‘trollop’ how I’d been taught to name a woman who knew what she wanted? How I’d been taught to think of my deepest self?
What in fact did I want?
All I knew, that day back at work after my sabbatical, was that I didn’t want this, the college. I went home that night and told my husband I needed to give up my job. He was quite startled. It meant doing without my salary and we still had kids at home. For myself I knew I was making a huge decision. I’d clawed my way up to some kind of perch in a very competitive world. I’d be letting go.
But instead of a sickening plunge, it was release that followed: my voice was freed. In fact my whole body felt free. Those first days I literally rolled on the floor in my study, bubbling with joy. More mature activity followed. But it was no coincidence that I then wrote a book, Signs of Cleopatra, about the way Europe learned to condemn a woman with a mind of her own and the power to do what seemed best to her!
My new state of liberation gave me the nerve to choose boldly. I set off on research trips, to Egypt, to Venice, to Rome. I searched out experts in art history, history of costume, Egyptology. Meeting these strangers, being treated with respect by them, my confidence grew.
I began to read the literature I used to teach with new eyes. In a move to re-educate my body as well as my mind, I took actor training: a month’s intensive with Shakespeare & Company in Western Massachusetts. They taught me to find the voice that comes from deep inside. Another book followed. I wrote about Shakespeare, how he used the old stories to get his audience to ask questions about political and religious authorities: those very authorities who had subdued me and blinkered my vision as I grew up.
Writing my next book, about children and damage, in order to build my argument, I moved from the voice of the teacher into the voice of the storyteller. Perhaps, deep down, I’d been a secret storyteller all along but it had been knocked out of me at school. My old kindergarten teacher had to remind me of the day I kept our class of five year olds spellbound, telling them the old fairy story of the Hobyahs. I’d forgotten that power had once been mine.
What now? I asked myself, one day in 2003. And I remembered Rudyard Kipling, the man I’d wanted to study for my PhD, though that had been vetoed by my supervisor. Free now to explore him, I read my way into Kipling’s life. I began to realise I’d been treading in his footsteps—India, the east coast of the US, South Africa, his home in Sussex—preparing. I seemed to be on some sort of track, ready to reconnect with myself.
Deciding to follow the course of his life was one thing: choosing to write about it in the form of fiction, rather than biography, was a massive leap. I’d never written anything but criticism before. But confidence and stamina had built up in me and I was no longer looking for permission or waiting for someone else’s timetable.
And so I came to write my novel. In the end, it was not just about Rudyard Kipling. His story led me to that of his sister, Trix, also a writer, but a woman who lost faith in her own voice. Turning my back on life in college that fateful day opened a path led home, back to what I knew for myself! It worked. Kipling & Trix won the Virginia Prize for Fiction.
MARY HAMER was born in Birmingham. Educated at the Catholic grammar school and at Lady Margaret Hall, she grew up a secret rebel. Reading Kipling’s Jungle Book, in the small branch library in Harborne offered her the first hint that there was a different, more exciting way to see the world. Mary is married, with grownup children and seven grandchildren. Kipling and Trix is her fifth book and first novel. Please check out Mary’s website: www.Mary-Hamer.com
Mary’s books: Writing by Numbers: Trollope’s Serial Fiction, Signs of Cleopatra: History, Politics, Representation, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Incest: a New Perspective, Kipling & Trix.
Click on the book cover for the US Amazon link, and or the UK Amazon link.
Join Mary’s Facebook page, and on Twitter @mary_hamer
Mary Hamer’s is the first one in our second series “My Gutsy Story®” Anthology #2.
Our first Anthology is being launched in September 2013, with a SPECIAL EVENT IN ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA on September 26th, 2013. News about the event this Thursday, June 6th.
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It’s so fascinating to me to read the process of how you transformed from being a Professor to becoming an author. “I began to read the literature I used to teach with new eyes.” Thanks for sharing your story of escape to fulfill your own dreams.
Sonia Marsh recently posted..“My Gutsy Story®” Mary Hamer
It’s been a pleasure, Sonia and a privilege, making me reflect more deeply on the path I found. ‘There is no path. The pathos made by walking’
path IS made by walking–sorry about that typo!
I love how well you described the clarity of your vision that you had to leave a secure academic position. I had to smile. You got to create a wonderful new career — and a new junior faculty member had the chance to take your old job. Win/win!
Your career reminds me a bit of Karen Armstrong’s. Do you know her, by any chance?
Shirley Hershey Showalter recently posted..“You Can’t Have it All”: Part Two from Saloma Furlong’s Review of Thrill of the Chaste
Thanks so much, Shirley, for sharing so generously in my pleasure.Oddly enough, though I don’t know Karen Armstrong personally, I’m very familiar with her writing and we do share a trajectory. We even grew up in the same city!
Your “vision” of leaving academe was much like mine as I left high finance and Wall Street … happened one cold February night, and we left NYC en route to the rest of the world 7 months later.
It was the best decision I ever made.
Thanks for an inspiring story!
Mary Gottschalk recently posted..Illusion of Control – Feline Version
Gosh, Mary, leaving Wall St. must have made some of your friends really stare. The people who stay on in these high-class prisons don’t like to be reminded that there’s a world outside. And of course, not everyone is unhappy in there. But if you are . . .It’s wonderful to hear from someone who’s also flourished once they got out!
A sabbatical was also my path to clarity, Mary. The time to step away, to breathe, to think is priceless. I’m glad you made your escape. Thanks for sharing your story.
Carol Bodensteiner recently posted..How do you see the differences in writing fiction & memoir?
Isn’t it amazing, Carol, the way your mind clears once you’re not scrabbling to keep up with the timetable that goes with your job? As though a reality you’d been holding at arms’ length asserts itself. whether you want it to or not.
That post of yours, about memoir and fiction looks interesting:my novel was really biography in the form of fiction. I recently post about that on http://heartandcraft.blogspot.com/
Mary, I loved how you took what might well be viewed as a fairly benign event and told it in a way that showed its inherent tension. I could feel it. I’ve certainly left jobs I didn’t like (rather dramatically in one instance; it was the Take This Job and Shove It era) but hearing you tell yours as “a story of escape” helped me rethink mine. I just love how you wove it. You had me hanging on to every word. Thanks.
Janet
Janet, I so appreciate your response. And it was wonderful to find that you’d Liked my FB page for Kipling & Trix. Thank you for friending me!.
I only wish I could hear more of your dramatic resignation. but isn’t it great when we can reinterpret events in our past in a more favourable and benign way? Such a relief.
Bravo Mary! You did a splendid job of telling some backstory for that novel in your post on my blog last month! Now I know even more.
Sharon Lippincott recently posted..Real Writing, Rough or Polished?
Sharon! Lovely to meet you again in cyberspace. I do admire the way you are helping us to think of ways to tell our own stories and so get a richer harvest from experience. For women in particular it can be hard to see the value in what they know. Thank you.
It’s fortunate that you had the opportunities to escape the life of academia once you realised it was more a prison that you needed to escape from than a career.
I wish you well with your books.
David Prosser recently posted..The Missing Doughnut and Bye Bye Birdie.
Thanks for those good wishes, David. Yes, it’s hard to stop seeing a career that you’ve struggled for as limiting: may many more of us find a way out of jail!
What struck me about your story, Mary, is the mind-body connection: “my voice was freed. In fact my whole body felt free” and “In a move to re-educate my body as well as my mind, I took actor training…” I often see in life coaching how my client’s body language shifts as soon as they make a mental transformation. You articulate your transformation beautifully – thanks for sharing.
That’s a real thrill for me, Belinda, that you picked up on this point. I hoped at least some readers would. Fascinating to learn that you see a shift in client’s body language when something in their thinking transforms. Lucky clients to have such a wise mentor!
Mary, I’ll join the voices of all who have found through a sabbatical that it’s time to move on to something else. My departure following a sabbatical was from the world of law and attorneys. Although I wrote a great deal on the job, it was not the kind of writing that I wanted to do. I felt so giddy the day I walked away and never looked back. When people ask if I miss it, I almost laugh in their faces.
I will admit I’m not familiar with your books but will be soon, especially Rudyard and Trix. It is a story that follows a lifetime for me of being suppressed by this or that individual or circumstance.
That’s Kipling and Trix. 🙂
Sherrey Meyer recently posted..Colour – Thursday’s Children
I love it, Sherrey, that you almost laugh in their faces. Me too! You took your life back, we both did. Of course it’s not easy, finding the new way forward and certainly in my own case I’ve really not made a cent. I was terribly lucky to be married to a man who could keep me in groceries and wanted me to be fulfilled. ( Both crucial!)
I’d love to read your work too–will look out for it.