"The Angel in the House"

When you are writing, nothing must stand between you and the writing you do everyday. You must do everything within your power to make sure you do it including murder according to the writer, Virginia Woolf. When I first read this statement, I remember feeling stunned. Then reading and thinking about it I realized how important this statement was.

What Woolf was referring to was killing the "The Angel in the House". I had checked out a book, "The Virginia Woolf Writers' Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing" by Danell Jones (Bantam: 2007). It had this reference at the beginning of the book. Kill an angel? Why? Was Woolf exaggerating? Was she referring to something that only existed in her time but not in mine? The answer became clear as I read on. I discovered to my horror that "The Angel in the House" was something I have been wrestling with all of my life although I did not know the name of this entity. Woolf said: "Had I not killed her, she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing."

The Angel of the House is what drives us all to self-sacrifice, to put our families ahead of our interests. This is our spouses, children and even the house. The more we do, the more this angel demands of us. It is never satisfied. I had a friend that I grew up with who got married right out of high school. She married a U.S. Navy man and for 30 years she sacrificed everything for him, his career in the service, her children and she died unexpectedly from a traffic accident when an alcoholic driving on a suspended driver's license drove into her car. Her husband had just retired and within a year he remarried. I saw them at a party and when he introduced me to his new wife he could not remember his first wife's name.

Many women would know first hand who "The Angel of the House" is, but some men know this spirit too. These are men who sacrificed their dreams for their families and bury their canvases and paints in the attic or put away their dreams of writing poetry and put long hours in the car plant so their kids can have the college education they were never able to have.

The Angel says the writing that is done never equals the importance of making sure the clothes are clean, the dry cleaning is picked up, the dinners are prepared, the dusting is done, the vacuuming is run on all of the floors and so forth. It is important to work a job that helps pay the bills and clean the house and be the helpmate to one's spouse. At the end of the day, there is no time to spend doing what the writer wants to do.

I used to sneak time to read a book from time to time when I was married and my then husband would get irritated when he caught me doing it. He wanted me to watch television with him. I would go to bed to catch a nap but read instead. At work, I wrote during my lunches and breaks. I would go someplace where I would not be disturbed and write. I carried a notebook with me at all times. I also ran to the library to check out books. It didn't help that he did not read. I felt guilty that I was doing something he did not do.

I wanted to watch certain television programs but couldn't as my husband thought they were boring; so I didn't. I never watched "Masterpiece Theater" or "American Experience". Having a VCR and videos that I could check out of the library was heaven sent as I could watch them when my spouse went out. I also learned to get up two hours earlier than anyone else, a habit that I still do now.

My spouse was not to blame for all that I described. I let him make all of those decisions for me as the Angel of the House demanded that I do. I sacrificed everything to make my family happy and was left with nothing but bitterness and the illness without a name, dissatisfaction. When I went to see the psychiatrists at the hospitals for my sadness, the male doctors told me that I did not trust my husband enough. I needed to do more which I did. My angel almost killed me too.

Nothing must stand between the writing a writer must do everyday. If murder is a necessity, then murder that Angel in the House although from experience I can tell you that you will need to kill it over and over again because it will rise from the ashes time and time again to haunt you.