INTERVIEW: Sommer Schafer by Laurel McCaull
The Women
Sommer Schafer
Unsolicited Press
Interview by
Laurel McCaull
In Sommer Schafer’s debut collection The Women, the domestic realm takes on a mythology all its own as each heroine struggles against the ties that bind her. One woman stuffs herself into a womb-like machine designed to lull her baby to sleep. Another casts a shrinking spell on her husband. A feminist book club goes terribly awry, and a beloved pet turns into a secretary’s waking nightmare.
Schafer is a senior editor at The Forge Literary Magazine, a fact which did not surprise me after reading The Women. Tight, suspenseful, and darkly funny, these pieces are clearly the work of someone who knows what makes a story tick. Schafer tests the very fabric of reality, subverting the reader’s expectations at every turn. And it is this ambiguity that grants each woman her power—to escape, to shapeshift, to be recast in her own image. Apart from a fun read, this book is a brilliant illustration of Andrea Dworkin’s theory that “Woman is not born: she is made.”
Hungry for more “girl talk,” I contacted Schafer to set up an interview. On a gloomy Tuesday morning, we met over Zoom to discuss internalized misogyny, being alone, and, of course,witches.
Laurel McCaull: I read your piece "On Mary and the Machine'' in the North American Review, and I was fascinated by what you said about how you see horror and surrealism as a way of drawing the reader's attention to something that really "matters," and how even your more realistic stories have a magic of their own. The stories in this collection are a mixed bag—some are distinctly fantastical, others more mundane (at least on the surface). What do you think distinguishes one story from the next in terms of whether it needs an overtly magical element? Is that something that you decide beforehand, or does it reveal itself as you write?
Sommer Schafer: It’s not something I determine ahead of time, it just kind of comes out as I write. In my mind there’s a distinction between the more satirical stories, which are perhaps a little more realistic, and the more magical stories, which are also realistic but in a less satirical fashion. I think they are just meant to be magical. There's really no design behind them, they just come out that way. Being a woman in the world can sometimes be a very magical, harsh reality, and tapping into that sense of surrealism actually feels very real to me. Like this truth is so strange that the only way I can convey it is via this strangeness.
LM: I want to talk about the opening epigraph of the book. You quote Deborah Levy in The Cost of Living: "It is so mysterious to want to suppress women. It is even more mysterious when women want to suppress women." None of the women in these stories seem to have any kind of support system or close female friends, and when they make attempts at connection with other women, they are either wholly ignored, looked down upon, or, in the case of the eponymous story "The Women," literally eaten alive. How do you see the forces of isolation and competition at work in your writing?
SS: The patriarchy is so pernicious. It’s become such a rotten, engrained part of society overall. I think women over the centuries have tried to use the patriarchy to benefit themselves by putting other women down. Even today if you see a “strong” woman who has her own opinions, who’s ambitious, it's difficult for other women to support that. Which is such a shame, and so I think women really have to be careful of our own misogyny. Even in my thinking, my patterns, I have to constantly be assessing myself and allow women to have those weird opinions, or to be a little cantankerous sometimes, and also to speak up if I hear a woman say something that might be less than supportive of someone else. It's complex, right? I feel like within our own circles, we have a lot of work to do. Just among ourselves. Forget about the men.
LM: Right, the call’s coming from inside the house.
SS: Yes, exactly. And honestly it starts with me, it starts with us, individually, and how we allow women to be the spectrum that we are.
LM: "The Gorge" is the only story told from a non-female perspective. Of course, the mother character plays a major role, but we see her only through the eyes of her young son. Can you talk about your decision to include this story in the collection, and why you felt this story needed to be told from that point of view?
SS: That particular one is so much about the mom, her hidden issues, and how that affects the kids. Even though it's told from the point of view of a little boy, I wanted to center the mom because the story is about subterfuge and how difficult it is for women to be open. It’s really easy to center the dad’s infidelity and forget that, actually, the mom has a big part in that and has her own infidelities. I think that was the point of including that story, plus it's just one of my favorites. There's something so mystical about the gorge.
LM: As we’re talking, I’m realizing there is this recurring dynamic of younger generations wanting to look at the truth head-on, and older generations not knowing how to. In “My Little Pet,” a woman adopts an animal that ends up ravaging her home and body. But when her mother and sister come to visit, they’re completely charmed by the pet and refuse to see the harm it’s causing. In “The Trappings,” the protagonist begs her mother to do something about the giant stain spreading across her wall, but the mother denies it exists at all. Finally, the son has that line at the end of “The Gorge”—“it seemed to him…That everything everywhere just wanted to be understood.” Do you see that desire and capacity to understand as an intergenerational conflict?
SS: Yes, and specifically I think for women. That has been their way to survive, by not being truthful. Because when they are, they’re shunned by their husbands or by the religious establishment. You know—a good woman doesn't do that, doesn’t think that, and because they aren't able to be their full selves and express the truths that they’re ashamed of, they push them down and they become these kind of cancers. I think after so many generations of that, women are trained not to even see the truth, right? Because it's considered not female enough, or womanly enough, as far as what the world says is womanly. Like a good mother wouldn't be feeling those things, because it would be bad for her kids, and so it's shunted down, not understanding that the shunting down is actually what’s bad for the the generations to come. But kids are smart, they can always sense all that.
LM: Yes, you see the real consequences of denial in these stories, how the truth comes out sideways. And in that way, again, the magical realism just makes sense and works so well because these forces have been hidden, and by being hidden they take on this otherworldly power. I’m thinking of “The Snake As Big As Their House,” in which a girl lives in constant fear of the giant snake that haunts her family’s home. She tracks it out of the corner of her eye, always prepared for its next attack. Yet, ultimately, the only way to get rid of it is to face it head on.
That leads into my next question. Although these women are dealing with domestic problems, they often turn to the surreal for solutions. Stuck in their mundane roles and responsibilities, it seems they can only access power by subverting reality itself. There's almost a sense of refuge in the monstrous and the grotesque, as if these kinds of "othered" spaces are the only ones big enough and wild enough to hold the truth of these women's experiences. Do you see the surreal as tied to this kind of subversive power? Or is it more escapist?
SS: I think you’re right, that magical world is their power. I dont think it's escapist, I think it might be a coming into. Like this is the real world, this magical world, and in this magical world, I can be fully myself. And in that sense yes, there is the power to be a full human—ironically, as a nonhuman. I'm wondering if there’s a natural connection between being a woman writing about women's issues and fantasy or sci-fi, or whatever genre you want to call it.
LM: I mean it's very witchy. There’s been this real resurgence of the witch in popular culture recently, possibly in response to everything that's going on politically. As our rights are being rolled back, people are like “okay, well I guess I have to worship the moon now!”
SS: Yes, and it's funny you bring that up because for the longest time, in my mind, a witch was such a bad term. I would never call a woman a witch, and now these days I feel like it's such a great term. It’s such a compliment.
LM: I think there is real power in reclaiming that term. It feels very radical and pagan to me—it's this return to the body, return to the earth, to the physical elements of the world. That comes through in the way you write about nature throughout the collection. There is this deep connection to the environment that feels very essential to these women’s stories.
SS: I firmly believe it's the women who will save the world. We have this connection to the earth that the patriarchy has completely obliterated. But we will be the ones leading the way back home.
LM: As I was reading, I kept coming up against this question of “how do we love the things that hurt us?” Often women are expected to be unconditionally loving and forgiving, even if that means enduring great harm and sacrifice. How do you understand the role of love in these stories? Can it survive under such immense societal pressure, or is it, in fact, the only source of salvation?
SS: Because even now I've had some women respond to “My Little Pet” by saying “well you know, love can be hard.” That's the point of the story—that isn't love, and I don't think I even realized that until I read bell hooks’ All About Love a few years ago.
LM: So good.
SS: It just opened my eyes, she's such a genius. Love is not painful, love is not hard, love should be nothing but supportive and put people at ease. For some reason, under the patriarchy women have had this notion that love should be hard. Or love can be abusive. It’s just completely wrong. That’s actually not love, and I think that's a difficult concept because it means that sometimes you have to cut someone off, understanding that you can be more powerful alone for a while, learning to love yourself, and then go forward. There's this fear component that “if I’m not with this person anymore, then I'll have nothing.” Which is not true. It is scary to be alone for a little while, but then it's pure bliss. I think the whole notion of love is a big part of the collection—what is love and what is not love.
LM: Is there a particular story or relationship that you feel is an example of that kind of real love you’re talking about? Or is it purposefully absent from the collection?
SS: I think Lindy, in the last story.
LM: I was just going to bring that up.
SS: I think she finally ends up falling in love with herself. Which is such a weird thing, right? She’s alone, she's got a tiny, action-figure husband, and she's not 100% resolved in her emotions, but I think she's on her way to being fully at peace with and in love with herself.
LM: Is that why you chose to end the collection with that story?
SS: I think so, yes.
LM: It’s interesting that she’s the only woman who returns to her career and a life outside of the home. Do you see the professional world as a space where women can self-actualize, or is that just specific to Lindy?
SS: I do think it's really important that women stay active in the world outside the home, just for their own well-being. For Lindy it's a tough one because I think if she had had agency as a child, she would be in a different spot. Even though she's coming to love herself in her current situation, the sad thing is that if she hadn't been raised the way she was, she wouldn't even be there.
But then she casts a spell on her husband, and you have to wonder—if she can do that, maybe she has other powers to manipulate the world around her. It’s not that every woman must be a professional, but that she’s given the opportunity to do it all. The important part for Lindy is that she finally gets what she wants. She really gets it.
