Kakki, as Lori wrote elsewhere, Joni "lived, artistically, in a
Magdalene Laundry of her own making, supervised by her mother's
morality." I think that psychological point is the important one
here. The article you sent said that the Catholic hospital bound her
breasts so she couldn't produce any milk! And it doesn't say that
the adoption agency wasn't Catholic. If the hospital was, the agency
is likely to have been, although I don't know that for a fact. My
idea about self-hatred, or more accurately lack of self-definition,
comes from her early lyrics, and I wondered whether her exposure to
the Catholic hospital when she had polio may have contributed to
that, although I don't know how long she was in hospital for then.
Whatever caused it, I hear in her lyrics that she didn't think much
of herself. Put that on top of the horrible social pressures, and
there was little hope she'd feel able to keep the baby.
Sarah
At 11:14 PM -0800 02/02/2003, kakki wrote:
You are right - I thought she had been in awhile because she had commented
on how the unwed mothers were treated and it sounded like she was in for a
time. She did stay in a Catholic charity hospital almost two weeks as a
result of complications. She has spoken about this in a few articles - the
one I recalled is from the L.A. Times here
http://www.jmdl.com/articles/view.cfm?id=83 In this article, she also says
that it was the adoption agency, and not the nuns who told her to give the
back up quickly so it would be more "adoptable."
Also, Joni was not
raised a Catholic, so the premise that she may have had some kind of a
lifelong sense of shame and self-loathing from them doesn't add up to me.
