Friday from the Archives: “Taking Leave” an essay by Barbara Bennett with art by Dawn Surratt in NCLR 2022
Last week to submit your scholarly writing and interviews on “Southern Gothic in North Carolina Literature” for our 2027 feature! We are looking forward to reading and hearing about authors and work exploring this rich genre. Our Guest Feature Editor, Barbara Bennett, has written for us many times and we are excited to have her take on this new role for the next year!
Most of her work has been in-depth interviews and literary critique, but in 2021, she was a finalist in our Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize Contest for her essay “Taking Leave.” In it, she tells the story of leaving her husband, Robert, waiting patiently for three days to escape the relationship.
The story starts with the everyday minutiae of a wife folding laundry: “I fold my own clothes much less carefully, not because I am a sloppy person, but because it doesn’t matter as much to me. I get no joy from opening up my assigned drawers and seeing underwear and shirts in neat little rows and stacks, but I know that something like imprecise folding could set Robert off and give him a reason to start a fight. And when he comes home, I need him to focus on the topic at hand, not some failure to comply on my part.”
Then Bennett reveals her Mormon upbringing and marriage, her fully capable self finishing college and working full-time to support their new household, and yet being under the demands of her husband, regardless. She wrote, “But now that suitcase is finally going to mean something. I am going someplace. I’m leaving Robert and the Mormon Church and going someplace else. Only no one knows it yet but me.
And I don’t really know where I’m going – except to stay for a few days at my friend Gay’s house while I figure it all out. After that? Well, I’d figure it out day to day, a risky venture I’d never undertaken before.”
Bennett has traveled the world by this point and will bring that insight to the Southern/Carolina Gothic Feature for 2027!
Read Bennett’s essay on ProQuest. Add the 2022 issue to your collection today!
