The long pilgrimage of pregnancy with its wonders and abasements, the apotheosis of childbirth, the sacking and slow rebuilding of every last corner of my private world that motherhood has entailed—all unmentioned, willfully or casually forgotten as time has passed, the Dark Ages on which I now feel the civilization of our family has been built.
“Aftermath,” by Rachel Cusk, in the essay collection, Coventry
This sentence builds and with the building comes great suspense. Where is it leading? What about the long pilgrimage of pregnancy? With each new phrase or clause that describes the subject, “the long pilgrimage of pregnancy,” we learn more.
Professor of literature at Columbia, John Erskine, wrote in an essay, “The Craft of Writing”: “When you write, you make a point not by subtracting as though you sharpened a pencil, but by adding. When you put one word after another, your statement should be more precise the more you add. If the result is otherwise, you have added the wrong thing, or you have added more than was needed.”
The essay is about Cusk’s separation from her husband and the custody of the children. She wants full custody, and her husband wants joint. This sentence is part of her rationale for wanting full custody and her realization that her contribution to the creation of her two children has gone unrecognized.
The sentence builds to the em dash and then “all unmentioned.” If you look carefully, you’ll see the verb is missing. ‘Unmentioned,’ an adjective, refers back to the subject--the long pilgrimage of pregnancy, and with the word “all” it seeps like ink into the phrases and clauses.
By omitting the verb, Cusk creates more emotion; the narrator, after rethinking the pilgrimage, is perhaps pummeled with rage, bewilderment, and sadness, and in that heightened emotion, the verb disappears. It’s a technique called ellipsis—the omission of word(s) that can be implied by the context. Here, in Cusk’s sentence, it’s almost as if the rational mind has vacated and the irrational, emotional has taken over. This sentiment is echoed by describing the early years of the marriage, with pregnancy and childbirth, as the Dark Ages, which is the antithesis of the rational.
The Making
Start with your subject. Here, Cusk’s subject is the long pilgrimage of pregnancy.
Now, modify that subject with three phrases or clauses. For your first modifier, can you invoke balance (the pairing of things) as Cusk does with the prepositional phrase, “with its wonders and abasements”?
For your second modifying phrase, don’t use balance so the rhythm is distinctly different. Here, Cusk writes, “the apotheosis of childbirth.”
For your final phrase or clause, use balance again: “the sacking and slow rebuilding of every last corner of my private world that motherhood has entailed.” There’s a hint of hyperbole (but on second thought, maybe not) with the inclusion of “every last corner.”
Normally at this stage of the sentence, you’d use a verb. Instead, use an em dash and use an adjective to describe your subject again. The adjective should apply to all the specific details invoked with the three modifying phrases or clauses.
Whatever adjective you use, can you elaborate on it, as Cusk does with “willfully or casually (note the balance of adverbs), forgotten as time has passed, the Dark Ages on which I now feel the civilization of our family has been built”?
In this last part of the sentence, she uses a metaphor, comparing the family to a civilization.
There’s room for repetition of sounds:
Alliteration: pilgrimage/pregnancy; sacking/slow
Assonance: long/wonders/apotheosis; abasement/apotheosis; slow/apotheosis (with so many words echoing the sounds of apotheosis, this word begins to stand out, rise up, almost aligning perfectly with its definition)
Consonance: motherhood/unmentioned. Consonance is the repetition of consonants, and, unlike alliteration, the consonants can appear anywhere, yet usually they are in close proximity to each other.
Try it! Let me know how it goes!
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Another wonder of this sentence is its momentum, change and movement through time and history, being reduced to nearly nothing and the long return to oneself after a sojourn in the wilderness of child birth and care, a return to selfhood but with more insight and tools and strength and power than ever before.