57 pages • 1 hour read
The Argonauts
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Pages 77-100Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 77-100 Summary
Nelson criticizes philosophers like Baudrillard for portraying IVF as “the suicide of our species, insofar as [it] detach[es] reproduction from sex, thus turning us from ‘mortal, sexed beings’ into clone-like messengers of an impossible immortality” (78). Nelson argues that this view is rooted in an outdated understanding of gender as binary, but also describes the frustrations of her own experiences with IVF.
By the time Nelson finally became pregnant, Dodge had begun taking testosterone. His mastectomy took place when Nelson was four months pregnant, and thus while her own body was changing as well. One “principal feature” (83) of Nelson’s pregnancy was constipation, and she discusses the fact that many women worry about their partners seeing them defecate during labor: “[The] description of labor did not strike me as exceedingly distinct from what happens during sex, or at least some sex, or at least much of the sex I had heretofore taken to be good” (84). Nelson explains that she wants a more candid discussion of “women’s anal eroticism” (85) but notes that pregnancy and childbirth did change her experience of sexual pleasure: “[E]ven now—two years out—my insides feel more quivery than lush” (86).
Another unexpected effect of pregnancy was Nelson’s discovery that carrying a male child made the “difference between male and female body melt even further away” (87). This segues into a broader discussion of how people relate to one another on the basis of gender. Dodge—who typically passes as a man—“lets [Nelson] in on a secret: guys are pretty nice to each other in public” (88). This easy camaraderie grows strained, however, whenever a man discovers that Harry isn’t biologically male. Nelson also recounts her experiences of being pregnant in public spaces: She was treated with deference, but also more subject than ever to sexist assumptions—e.g. that her book The Art of Cruelty was an inappropriate project for a mother-to-be.
Although Nelson herself had hoped for “cheerier” work while pregnant, she says that “pregnancy itself taught [her] how irrelevant such a hope was [because] babies grow in a helix of hope and fear” (92). At 28 weeks, she was hospitalized for a suspected placental problem. The condition was potentially life-threatening, which reaffirmed Nelson’s views on abortion:
Never in my life have I felt more prochoice than when I was pregnant. And never in my life have I understood more thoroughly, and been more excited about, a life that began at conception. […] [Women] aren’t idiots; we understand the stakes. Sometimes we choose death (94).
Finally, noting her own fear that she wouldn’t be able to breastfeed, Nelson discusses Kaja Silverman’s theory that children grow disillusioned when they realize their mothers can’t satisfy their every need, and “[turn] to an all-powerful patriarch—God—who by definition cannot let anyone down” (95). Silverman argues that children need to be exposed to more realistic depictions of motherhood, but Nelson isn’t sure she herself wants to “represent anything” (97) in her writing.
Pages 77-100 Analysis
One of the movies Nelson and Dodge watched during Dodge’s convalescence was X-Men First Class, which sparked a debate between the two on one of the central themes in The Argonauts: the choice between assimilation and revolution. As she recounts this anecdote, however, Nelson suggests that the choice is itself a false one—or, as she puts it, “a needless binary” (82). This hearkens back to an idea that Nelson has raised earlier—namely, that the choices and behaviors society views as normal aren’t inherently problematic or oppressive, but only become so because they are valued at the expense of whatever is seen as deviant. In this case, Nelson explicitly ties this binary (and perhaps all binaries) to the limitations of language itself:
We bantered good-naturedly, yet somehow allowed ourselves to get polarized into a needless binary. That’s what we both hate about fiction, or at least crappy fiction—it purports to provide occasions for thinking through complex issues, but really it has predetermined the positions […] rendering you less able to see out, to get out (82).
Although Nelson hedges on whether this is a problem with all fiction or simply “crappy fiction,” it reflects what she says elsewhere about language’s tendency to render everything more definite and absolute than it is in reality. Nevertheless, Nelson tries to preserve a sense of ambiguity even as she puts her experiences into writing. On a stylistic level, this often involves undercutting or at least complicating an argument she has just laid out, as when Nelson criticizes the misogyny of “the old patrician white guy [calling] the lady speaker back to her body” (91) with a question about her pregnancy, only to admit that she had also “hoped to be done with [her] cruelty project and onto something ‘cheerier’” (92) by the time she conceived.
Nelson also works to avoid simplistic binaries at the level of theme. In this section, she blurs the lines between conformity and deviance by treating her pregnancy and Dodge’s transition in tandem with one another:
Our bodies grew stranger, to ourselves, to each other. You sprouted coarse hair in new places; new muscles fanned out across your hip bones. My breasts were sore for over a year, and while they don’t hurt anymore, they still feel like they belong to someone else (86).
Nelson challenges the assumption that the physical changes of pregnancy are any more “natural” than those of gender reassignment.
The changes Nelson and Dodge undergo in this section also reflect how identity is created and recreated over the course of our lifetimes. For Nelson, the experience of being pregnant challenges the very idea of an identity that exists in isolation from others, in part because pregnancy itself is a state in which two selves overlap and grow alongside one another; Nelson says that when she was carrying a male child, she “kept thinking […] about something poet Fanny Howe once said about bearing biracial children, something about how you become what grows inside you” (87). However, pregnancy is also a reminder of the limits of our ability to intervene in the growth or transformation of others:
You are making the baby, but not directly. You are responsible for his welfare, but unable to control the core elements. You must allow him to unfurl, you must feed his unfurling, you must hold him. But he will unfurl as his cells are programmed to unfurl (92).
This is equally true of relationships beyond that of mother and child. It also describes Nelson’s role as Dodge underwent testosterone injections and surgery, or Dodge’s role as pregnancy changed Nelson’s body. Nelson once again underscores the symbolism of the Argo, suggesting that what makes lasting relationships possible is the ongoing recognition and affirmation of one another through various changes:
I had always assumed that giving birth would make me feel invincible and ample, like fisting. But even now—two years out—my insides feel more quivery than lush. […] Can fragility feel as hot as bravado? I think so, but sometimes struggle to find the way. Whenever I think I can’t find it, Harry assures me that we can. And so we go on, our bodies finding each other again and again, even as they—we—have also been right here, all along (86).
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