On Thursday, July 21, 2011, from 7:00-8:30 pm, I attended a final recital by Della McGuire at a local non-profit women’s center in Johnson City, TN. The name of the set was “Nothing's Fair When Love is War” and it consisted of both traditional material and a piece written by the teller herself that was based, as she explained, on an amalgamation of people with whom she had worked as a domestic violence survivors’ advocate.
I found the title’s play on words fitting in that all of McGuire’s selected material was intended to explore issues of strong women facing and/or transcending the theme of injustice within intimate heterosexual relationships. One Celtic story in particular explored a war of one-upmanship between a king and queen. And I think that the worldview that the turn of phrase suggests is that equity is never achievable when men and women are brutal, unfair or “waring” with one another and that we as individuals and a society need to be less willing to excuse, accept or somehow explain away through popular sentiment discord between lovers that turns violent. McGuire reminded us that despite the oft-repeated old phrase, some things truly are unfair, off the table in fact, despite how deeply “in love and war” we may believe ourselves to be.
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