At the Heart of the Creche

MANGER SCENE, ACCUSTOMED . . .
NO WAIT! UNACCUSTOMED . . .
YET ODDLY CEREMONIOUS!

"And Batman said,
'Peace, good will toward all. Except Joker.' "
[Click to see many more funny nativities]

"On the bar beside the television set there was a creche, with three painted plaster Wise Men, one on an elephant, the others on camels. The first Wise Man was missing his head. Inside the stable a stunted Joseph and Mary adored an enormous Christ Child which was more than half as big as the elephant. Sarah wondered how the Mary could possibly have squeezed out this colossus; it made her uncomfortable to think about it. Beside the creche was a Santa Claus haloed with flashing lights, and beside that a radio in the shape of Fred Flintstone, which was paying American popular songs, all of them ancient." (152)

from "The Resplendent Quetzal"
in Dancing Girls and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian activist, novelist, poet
This unlikely Nativity Scene establishes the tone for Atwood's troubling story of Mother and Child. The main character, Sarah, is the pained and haughty Madonna, a figure tortured by birth on the one hand, yet smugly content on the other, and emotionally distant from her husband Edward. The "resplendent quetzal" of the title is a bird found in Mexican cloud forests that Sarah would like to see during the vacation that she and Edward are taking. She has been thumbing through his handbook, The Birds of Mexico: "Quetzal Bird meant Feather Bird . . . A jewel, a precious feather."

Sarah is sadly reminded of her recent pregnancy and stillborn child when she spies the absurdly unlikely Nativity grouping in one of the tasteless restaurants that Edward insists will supply them with a bit of "local colour." Here the confrontation between the sacred and the secular becomes almost shockingly, ludicrously complicated. In this pastiche, the religious landscape is populated by at least as many secular representatives as sacred ones. The boundaries between the two worlds have been all but erased, with abstract mythologized figures and cartoon characters worshipping side by side at the very heart of the creche.

Sarah clearly sees herself as the too - small Mary and finds it uncomfortable just thinking about the enormous baby doll. The way in which she was drained emotionally by her pregnancy and the way in which she felt neglected by Edward are the memories that make eating dinner in the squalid restaurant "even more depressing than it should have been, especially the creche. It was painful . . ." (152).

The Big Boy!

Atwood's juxtaposition of the stunted Mary and the enormous Christ Child is reminiscent of the portrayal in Marilyn French's novel The Women's Room of a tiny Barbie doll acting as mother to a huge baby doll. Much like Sarah, the character Adele struggles with issues of inadequacy and proportion. A tired wife and mother, Adele overhears her daughter Linda playing dolls. The child takes on first the voice of the mother doll, then the voice of the whining baby doll. The scenario Linda creates with her dolls is a parody in miniature of Adele's own life, and of course the dialogue of Linda's drama is drawn from her own conversations with her mother and those she has overheard. The symbolism is obvious -- that the mother feels overwhelmed by the children, whose energy and presence seems to loom so much larger than her own:

"Linda was squatting on the floor, playing with her doll.

'Now you're a bad girl, a bad, bad girl,' she was saying as she slapped the doll on its bottom several times. 'You go straight in your room and don't come out! And don't wake up the baby!' her little voice said angrily. She put the baby doll on its feet and marched it toward the couch.

'Mmmmmm,' she whined, 'I didn't mean it, Mommy,' she said in a tiny high voice.

'You did so and you're bad!' she said in her Mommy voice, and threw the baby doll down on the floor on its face. The baby doll was eighteen inches long; the Mommy doll was small, less than a foot tall. She put an apron on Barbie, and said in a calm, happy voice: 'I wonder what I should make for Daddy's supper tonight. I know, I'll make a chocolate cake with raisins, and bacon.' Then she paraded the Barbie doll around in a circle, humming all the while. 'Hello, dear,' she said in an artificial voice. 'How was your day today? Guess what I've made? Chocolate cake with raisins!' There was a silence, in which presumably the father answered. 'Oh yes, it's been one of those days. After you eat, I want you to go in and spank that baby, she was so bad today! Isn't this chocolate cake delicious?' " (135)

from The Women's Room
by Marilyn French (1929 - 2009)
American feminist and author

See also: Margaret Atwood & Marilyn French
@ The Quotidian Kit

~ CONTINUED NEXT TIME ~

Batman makes another appearance ~ this time as Joseph!

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 14th ~ At the Heart of the Well

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