#so clearly i've PRE-GRIEVED (no i haven't)

[saint-cecilias]

claudia 2.0 diary entry: i'm just a girl, what's my destiny? || a claudia de pointe du lac playlist || songs curated by @saint-cecilias || edits by @bluetiefling

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[kojoty]

I don't, actually, want to discredit people for utilizing the very literal 'laundry list' as an indictment against Thoreau. While I disagree with the way it's utilized, I can't fault people for reading history and realizing the fundamental fact that our Historical Greats-- specifically men-- are often only possible because of the achievements of the hidden women and forced labor thereof to grant them the freedom to be 'revolutionaries.' It is a real factor that we must contend with when lifting up historical voices of liberation-- if you crow and profess to liberation, who's liberty are you infringing upon to make this possible? For most historical figures, I think it is vastly important to talk about it, discuss it, bring up the spectre of labor that creates this.

But Thoreau is an odd one.

One of the most radical voices of his generation, one of the most obvious follow-throughs of his philosophies (going to prison for tax avoidance to prevent himself supporting, monetarily, an unjust pro-slavery war is the easiest point of reference for the way he 'followed through' on his philosophies, and very materially created the concept of Civil Disobedience in political parlance), one of the most obviously outspoken anti-capitalist voices, abolitionists, etc, it does make me wonder-- Who does it benefit to air out the dirty laundry on Thoreau?

Rebecca Solnit says pointedly, "“There is one writer in all literature whose laundry arrangements have been excoriated again and again, and it is not Virginia Woolf, who almost certainly never did her own washing, or James Baldwin, or the rest of the global pantheon. Only Henry David Thoreau has been tried in the popular imagination and found wanting for his cleaning arrangements.”

And it's something I've found wanting whenever I discuss Thoreau-- I will try to discuss his philosophies, his experiments, his activism, and be met with the 'laundry' quandary, as a way to discredit him wholesale. Usually, this is from people who very clearly haven't read Thoreau, but even people who have, but are swept up in the many 'take downs' of Thoreau that have circulated online for the last fifteen years.

As the previous post I reblogged speculates on, there is a very real undertone of historical weaving to make that indicates depression, grief, etc. But more concerned am I that, yes, perhaps his mother did his laundry-- but is it not in the very nature of transcendentalism to utilize and currate community? The question isn't 'was Thoreau a male pig who utilized women's labor'-- something that most of us, as children of mothers, have invariably done to varying degrees of misogynistic normalization-- but rather, 'What are the ways we can support one another in an ideal, non-capitalistic society?' 'How do we care for those we love?' 'What is appropriate labor to perform for others, and what isn't?' 'Does a mother doing the laundry of a grieving son indict and diminish his very ethos?'

Does a mother doing the laundry of a son discount the writing of someone who, by many accounts-- and there are criticisms to make of Thoreau, like any person, and especially any person from his living situation and era of pre-Civil War America-- followed through more succinctly than many other radicals at the time? Does the philosophy of transcendalism fail because he leaned upon the people in his community to make his two year experiment work? Was he ever claiming to be so self-sufficient that he was lying? Was Walden, the I in Walden, Thoreau, or the persona of Thoreau as he wished his philosophy to be reached? Is it inherently vile to let someone do your laundry?

I don't know. Your mileage may vary. And certainly, the leaning on labor is a conversation to have. But the indicting the idea of anyone doing labor for another person ever is a failure of ideology, in my opinion. To make community, we perform labor. To see the beauty of the earth, we must take solace in the love and gifts from others. That said, I think Thoreau could have stood to do his goddamn laundry. But hey, I've been there.