Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin / Book Excerpt: The Feminist Question by Kim Krizan
Black Flowers is delighted to feature a chapter from the fantastic book by Kim Krizan - Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin. It also includes two photographs, the second being an unpublished photograph of Anaïs.
Was Anaïs Nin a feminist?
This is a question that trails her and those interested in her. Because first they said she was, and then they said she wasn’t. And then they said she was again – and then they said she wasn’t again.
The answer is this: to read Anaïs Nin’s diaries from beginning to end is to understand her life-long struggle for freedom and fulfillment in a world that tethers us to our time, to our society, to our personality with its capacities and limitations, indeed to our biology and mortality. But we are also tethered, as Nin was, to the social and political battles of our day. And it turns out we will also be judged, whether we like it or not, according to the standards of the future.
Anaïs Nin’s first published diary begins in medias res when she was a young woman living near Paris in the early 1930s. The force of her story is not the exciting new friends she’d met, including the then-unknown Henry Miller and his fascinating wife, June, but Nin’s own powerful personality. In her veiled, distilled, almost allegorical style, she creates herself as a character, one who seems to have appeared fully-formed from out of nowhere.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume One was published in the mid-1960s, over three decades after it had originally been written, and it was a case of auspicious timing because Nin gave the impression of having achieved in the ’30s the kind of independence women of the ’60s were just reaching for. As a result, the book was adopted as a manifesto by members of the burgeoning women’s movement and Nin was seen as a romantic feminist Messiah. In The Diary’s telling, Nin has no apparent husband. No lovers are mentioned. She has no obvious source of income and seems to have no material concerns. Indeed, Nin seems the embodiment of a glamorous freedom, a total emotional liberty from the messy world. But early on, certain facts of Nin’s life started leaking out. It turned out, though she hadn’t mentioned him, Nin had been married to and supported by a banker, with an incriminating emphasis on “banker.” Shortly thereafter, as it was determined by women who believed their political consciousness had been enlightened, Nin wasn’t a feminist after all. No, they declared, she had been too embroiled in pleasing men and therefore decidedly subjugated. Nin was seen as a muse for the likes of Henry Miller, and this made her “male-identified.” Her “soft” world of feelings (“soft” being a term of derision) made her suspect. Her interest in dreams, transcendence, and beauty was outdated. But the ultimate crime, according to Nin’s judges, was her reliance on her husband’s income.
The catch-word of the day was “liberated,” as if a woman could free herself of mortal entrapments. Total economic independence was viewed as Goal Number One. It was decided women had no need for men at all, because, as the bumper sticker said, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Once discovered, Nin’s silence about her husband branded her a traitor to and a failure of the women’s movement. As a final insult, Nin’s readers and admirers were dubbed “Ninnies.”
Photo courtesy of The Anais Nin Foundation
These are the sorts of machinations that turned off many women who came of age a few decades later, making my generation reluctant to join the feminist ranks. We were sick of being bossed around, defined, judged – by men or by women. We weren’t thrilled with being told what we were supposed to think and feel, or what or whom we could read. In fact, my generation sometimes found women of the “sisterhood” more dismissive and hostile than the men in our lives, which tended to negate their message of sisterhood. Perhaps our recalcitrance was evidence of their success, but we were not ready to swallow their party-line without some careful consideration.
After Nin died, her diaries were published minus the slash-and-burn editing and it was then that her edge-of- the-cliff sexual adventures were revealed. It turned out that, besides the friendship and writing camaraderie she’d so lavishly described, she had had an affair with Henry Miller. Then she had other affairs. She had undergone a grueling abortion. And let’s just say things got complicated when she reunited with her father. Some readers felt betrayed by these facts of Nin’s life and it became even more chic for critics to deride her. Nin’s image – like one seen in a funhouse mirror – metamorphosed from inspiring to downright sick. She was roundly attacked in an article titled “Adventures of a Superfluous Woman,” which was written by a woman. She was decimated in an inaccurate New Yorker article titled “Sex, Lies, and Thirty-five Thousand Pages,” again, written by a woman. And Nin was betrayed by her friend Gore Vidal in his book Palimpsest: A Memoir. The irony is, long before the women’s movement of the 1960s, Nin herself came to realize her life was controlled by men. Indeed, she had spent decades exploring solutions to this all-permeating problem and she did this without a sisterhood or a movement, a magazine or a label, or even a friend with whom to discuss it. It was for most of Nin’s life, as Betty Friedan described in The Feminine Mystique, “the problem that [had] no name.” Still, Nin attempted to solve it and she kept a detailed record of that struggle in her diary.
Some of Nin’s readers and critics were guilty of imposing upon her a value system that, when she was writing the bulk of her diary, had not yet been created. Lost in the mists of feminist projection was the fact Nin was born into a world still under the influence of Victorianism. Lost was the fact Nin wrote her diary when there was scant expectation women could take real control of their own lives or stories – or should want to. Lost was the fact that Nin, who had left school at sixteen to help support her family, had few opportunities for gainful employment. Lost was the rather crucial detail that Nin married a young banker at age 20, partially to save her family. And lost was the terrible truth – the inescapable fact – Nin lived at a time when women very rarely enjoyed authority or independence on their own terms.
Nin’s diary quickly became a screen onto which we project our evolving perceptions. Her work became a Rorschach inkblot test onto which we reveal our own unconscious, a “Rashomon” in which different characters recount differing versions of the same event, a palimpsest on which we rewrite our changing story. And Nin was misunderstood by the feminists who had originally cast her in the role of firebrand. They had hoped her diary was a set of marching orders, instead of seeing it for what it was. As Marilyn Monroe said shortly before she died, “You’re always running into people’s unconscious,” and our perceptions of Anaïs Nin change according to a continual re-focusing of our lens, our view of things, our unconscious needs.
In reality, as a female born into a Catholic family at the turn of the last century, Nin made a number of dramatically independent moves. In her teens, she stepped away from the Church. In her twenties, she questioned Puritanical sexual restraints and decided to have sex with whomever she pleased. In her thirties, Nin “rebelled” (one of her favorite words) against societal taboos. In her forties she graduated to flaunting the laws of the land. Finally, nearing age 50, Nin declared in her diary, “I am tired of the entire relationship to men.” But instead of blaming what we would call the patriarchy, Nin did something characteristic of her, which was to take full responsibility, writing, “I give the man the reins and then feel trapped in his patterns.” It dawned on Nin that in spite of all her efforts to be free, her painful dependence on men (as well as her attempts to make them dependent on her) boiled down to exactly the sort of banal detail she would later excise from her published diary:
I am terribly tired of the enormous price one pays for protection. I should have started to build up my independence long ago. I revolted against my mother turning me into a kitchen maid and went to work. When I married, I should have worked so that Hugo would not try to enslave me to the bank. The status of a wife is worth nothing. If I had worked, I would be free and not afraid to stand alone, as I am today, for Hugo’s attitude towards money is medieval.
Nin’s use of the word “protection” is most interesting, because our modern word would be “support.” Both have fascinating connotations, Nin’s of being shielded, guarded, and defended, while our contemporary term infers that the one “supported” is propped up and given additional strength and freedom. Nin’s term implies vulnerability and it is certainly true that, in the world Nin was born into, women were vulnerable. Nin had experienced first-hand the powerlessness of her mother who, once abandoned by Nin’s father, had no legal recourse. After Nin married, her mother was reliant on Nin’s husband’s income. Later, Nin’s mother lived with Nin’s brother.
Photo courtesy of The Anais Nin Foundation
But if granting monetary support or protection became a currency for power, Nin attempted to turn the tables and become the one with the power. Over and over, she was attracted to men who needed her money and seemed to have no qualms in taking it. Nin very literally supported and protected Henry Miller, setting him up in a flat, giving him food and wine, and even giving him her typewriter so he could write his novel. Would-be revolutionary Gonzalo Moré, another of Nin’s lovers, relied on her generous monetary gifts for many years. She even attempted to give Moré a means to earn a living by creating a printing business. Later, when Nin was involved with both her husband and Rupert Pole, Nin would take the money her husband had given her and hand it over to Pole to control; Pole then doled it back to her, questioning her every purchase.
Nin was painfully aware of the absurdity of these transactions and wrote about them obsessively in her diary. She had believed freeing herself would be accomplished by throwing off Puritanical sexual restraints, but, in the end, her sexual freedoms had only enslaved her to multiple men. Finally, Nin came to a painful conclusion: “I cannot reach a mature control of my own life.” She asked herself plaintively, “Will I ever be free?”
Interestingly, Nin had found much that was positive from the men in her life and she did not view them as enemies. Hugo had given her the safety, adoration, and devotion her faithless father never granted her. Henry Miller had introduced her to sexual satisfaction, while also cheering on her writing. Gonzalo Moré had given her back her Spanish sensuality, something she felt was lost when she was uprooted to America. Gore Vidal gave her brilliant discourse and professional connections. Rupert Pole gave her a fulfilling lifetime passion. Still, in spite of constructive and satisfying experiences with men, by the 1950s Nin’s intensive efforts to make a living as a novelist and build a life of her own had – in her own word – “failed.” And this realization was enough to crush her.
Nin believed the only thing that saved her sanity was her diary. Within its garden walls she could see her life through a lens of her own making, and then bend and craft that life into a beautiful story. This is the essence of art. Nin wrote, “I have only been able to bear the cruelties of human life by transfigurations: art, poetry, fantasy.” Then, when her diary was about to be published, Nin did what writers do, which is to edit. And this is what we all do when we try to create meaning in our lives, because, ultimately, meaning – that is, our creation of it – is not reality but, rather, our construct.
In Nin’s case, she edited out a husband, she edited out his money, and she edited out her affairs. In short, Nin edited out of her story that which she wouldn’t or couldn’t yet explain, even to her self. And herein lay the trouble for feminists, because, by the 1960s and ’70s, they saw the world through a very particular perspective and they needed – or, more accurately, demanded – Nin bend the story of her life to that perspective.
It would have been constructive if Nin’s feminist critics could have had a conversation with Nin about her awakening struggle to find “liberation” – and then really listened. Nin had lived through the first half of the 20th century and could’ve offered a first-hand perspective many members of the women’s movement simply did not have. Nin and her critics would ultimately have found much to agree upon, because while feminists would have no doubt been fascinated and heartened by Nin’s solitary struggle against the problem that had “no name,” many interesting issues could have been discussed: Why had Nin believed the primary issue was sexual freedom? Why did it take her so long to accept the virtues of economic freedom? Why had she fallen so easily into caretaking and championing men? Had throwing off societal taboos been more destructive than constructive? When she finally became economically independent with the success of her diary, did she find the freedom she expected? Did she come to believe “liberation” is possible? And if liberation is possible, what does it look like?
Ironically, a generation that came a few decades later, my generation, judged Nin’s judges for what we perceived as their blindness and failures. My generation didn’t like what we felt was the literalness and the ugly conclusions of many of those in the women’s movement. We couldn’t abide what appeared to be the lack of joy. We didn’t understand why things we sincerely enjoyed had to be symbols of subjugation. We didn’t agree that men and women had about as much in common as fish and bicycles, and, by the way, which one were we? We liked men – some of them, at least. And while we liked being able to have wide-ranging opportunities, we also liked having our dreams and indulging a craving for beauty, which is where Anaïs Nin came in.
But the truth is, in the material world, we women are still engaged in a very real battle – and so is Anaïs Nin. This is because even a private diary written by a woman about her innermost life becomes, ironically, man’s property. Nin was and is controlled by men and her final efforts to get out from under their dictatorial thumbs illustrate her life- long private battle, as well as ours. Just as it is now being exposed how obscenely commonplace it is for some men in the workplace to abuse and harass female colleagues, Nin’s diary – her actual voice – has been commandeered by men with the familiar air of ownership.
Take, for example, the case of Nin’s editors, publishers, and representatives – some very good, some questionable and even unqualified, but almost all male. Nin’s first publisher was Alan Swallow, by all accounts a brave iconoclast who saw the value of a woman’s private diary and then nurtured it into a public success. But Nin was required to work with an editor, Gunther Stuhlmann. My first clue that there had been a struggle was when, while researching my Master’s thesis, I visited Nin’s home and had dinner with Rupert Pole. Nin had been dead for years and Pole was the keeper of the flame, centering his life on promoting his beloved’s writing. It was while sitting on Nin’s purple couch, Pole told me the story of what had been her increasing frustration with Stuhlmann’s editing of her diary. Pole said he once came home to find Nin crying at their kitchen table because, in reviewing Stuhlmann’s edits, she found he had removed the word “love” from one of her journal entries and thereby masculinized her meaning. According to Pole, tears flowed down Nin’s face as she asked, “Why remove ‘love’?” Indeed, why?
Years later, after Pole had died, I was doing archival work in Nin’s home, studying the content of file cabinets and boxes. There, I read letters in which Nin tried to get out from under what she felt was the control of Stuhlmann. She told her representatives he was becoming “increasingly autocratic.” Finally, she sent Stuhlmann a letter saying she was grateful for his hard work but would thereafter do the editing herself while allowing him to retain the title.
In another act of self-assertion, Nin had been scheduled to give a talk at a public event along with a male psychologist who taught a structured method of journal writing. Before the event took place, the psychologist got word to Nin he wanted her to try his techniques. Her response was swift: no, she would not try his techniques. “We are dealing with a male ego here,” she said. Later, while on stage with the man, he became agitated because Nin attracted most of the attention of the audience. Why, she had asked the event organizer, should she do things this man’s way? Why should she be a mere example of his methods? She made it clear she had her own way.
But another hurdle for Nin, another roadblock, came from women because, paradoxically, it’s been nigh impossible for many of us to get past Nin’s sex life. Let’s face it: judgments, shaming, and public efforts to minimize and humiliate are ladled out by both men and women. Even Nancy Friday, a feminist who specialized in examining women’s sexual fantasies, infamously said that Monica Lewinsky could “rent out her mouth” – truly one of the more disgusting things uttered in public about a woman. So what are readers to make of a woman who detailed decades of affairs, bigamy, even incest in her private diary – and then had the diary published? Clearly, female empowerment is not a simple matter of women freeing themselves from men. Female empowerment is a matter of freeing oneself from a prison that is constructed in the mind, then coagulates into unwritten rules of the social group, then is solidified in customs and traditions, and is finally canonized in actual law, only to travel back into the mind and emotions where all of the illogic is obscured and erased, but accepted and obeyed. Perhaps this is why Nin sought freedom on the inside, within herself.
Anaïs Nin’s diary, and really all art, is best appreciated if it stands on its own and not as part of movements or agendas or politics, because then its real value can be understood. And her story can most certainly be seen as feminist – but only if its readers avoid the rather male- identified habit of parsing details while failing to see the larger picture. Nin’s strength was that, instead of searching outside to see what the men who’d come before her had done, she looked inside herself to discover a new way. So, it must be asked, were Nin’s feminist critics inadvertently and unconsciously disavowing her work because of their unconscious subjection to patriarchal tradition?
We are now many decades down the calendar from the original publication of Nin’s diary. We are a century past its maiden voyage, when it was launched by an eleven-year-old because she was unhappy with her place in this world. The enemy Nin fought has now been given a name and women all over the world are enjoying new opportunities – and also fighting new battles. Are we more enlightened than Nin or her feminist critics had been? Or are we still beholden to the beliefs of our time, beliefs born of ancient ideas scarcely remembered, ancient ideas that gave birth to our beliefs, our culture, our sense of meaning?
In 1937, Nin described in the second volume of her diary the deep friendship she enjoyed with Henry Miller, writer Lawrence Durrell, and Durrell’s wife Nancy. Long, intense discussions were their activity of choice and Nin said they would “nourish” and “stimulate” one another, but also that Miller and Durrell often “ally themselves against me.” She went on to write, “My feeling for woman’s inarticulateness is reawakened by Nancy’s stutterings and stumblings, and her loyalty to me as the one who does not betray woman but seeks to speak for her.” She goes on to describe a painfully familiar scene:
“Shut up,” says Larry to Nancy. She looks at me strangely, as if expecting me to defend her. Nancy, I won’t shut up. I have a great deal to say, for June, for you, for other women.
We are all waging a battle for freedom and fulfillment and power, and Nin tried to find her own way. She did some things very differently from that expected of a woman living during her era. And then she kept a written record of those experiences, eventually sharing them with the world, to the world’s delight and displeasure.
Words morph and change meaning and then reverse completely. But for now: yes, of course. Anaïs Nin was a feminist.