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Bland Ambition
Catherine Connors
CanadaGALLERYCONVERSATION
I had just gotten married and had my husband's future to consider as well as my own. He had just made the frightening leap from...
What I didn't say to her that day, couldn't say to her that day, was that I simply didn't want a doctoral degree from Cambridge badly enough to risk compromising my husband's livelihood and/or happiness. He had made it clear that he would happily go wherever I wanted to go.
But I didn't say this to Ms. Professor. I didn't want to reveal any ambivalence about what everyone was insisting would be an academically star-blazing future. I said: 'Going to Cambridge would be very challenging for my husband.
That professor - who I have enormous respect for as an academic - launched into a passionate speech about the tyranny of men over women and the institutionalization of this tyranny in marriage and the responsibility of young women like myself to demand more from the world and to not let ourselves be tyrannized by men and to rage, rage against any constraints that men might impose upon us. And then she said: 'I thought more of you.
But that femino-defensive ass-kicking didn't sway me. I didn't go to Cambridge. Nor did I go to any other World Famous Aren't We Special University that was located off the my-marital-happiness track. I opted for a slightly-less-famous-but-respected-in-my-field graduate program, in a department that was home to a number of renowned political philosophers I yearned to study with, in a big city with a thriving film industry.
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