Fantasy
Dissertation
by Faune Vita
I imagine myself as a warrior, a woman dressed all in black, sharp heels on her
boots, a flaming dagger in her hand.
I will travel across time and space, fight demons and monsters in the name of
all that is good. I will have courage in the face of the unknown. I will strike
fiercely and never look back.
***
When I defended my dissertation, I carried a fiery sword in my hand, its power
radiating through me, allowing me to be in that moment, unafraid.
In actuality, I was barefoot upstairs in my office in front of a computer
screen. It was March 31, 2020, two weeks after the Covid shutdown, and I’d
barely left my house in that time.
The world was stuck in a kind of holding pattern. None of us were sure how
serious this would get or what it meant. At the time it seemed inconceivable
that the lockdown could last much beyond a few weeks. But then again, the
inconceivable had already happened, was happening all around us.
***
The doctorate had not been an easy road. I don’t think it is for anyone, but my
experience was prolonged due to chronic illness, addiction, depression and
anxiety, and the realization more than midway through that maybe this wasn’t
the right path for me after all, that maybe instead of analyzing books I wanted
to analyze people. By that point, I had invested so much—both financially and
emotionally—that I couldn’t imagine quitting, but it was equally difficult to
imagine finishing. I had what I call a ‘lost year,’ where I made next to no
progress. But somehow, I kept going.
After eight years of teaching on a graduate assistantship, I began working
full-time in a 9-5 type editing job, and this actually helped my progress. It enabled
me to put the dissertation in perspective, to understand it as just one piece
of my life rather than the only thing giving me value.
That last year I worked on it with a dedication and determination that I’d
never been able to access before. I wrote on my lunchbreaks, and after work
each day I’d go to the café near my office and revise for hours before heading
home.
There, exhausted, I’d slip into bed next to my sleeping partner and lose myself
in a fantasy novel.
***
I grew up in a cabin in the forest where I spent my days playing with the
fairies and elves that inhabited the mossy stump by the creek. I listened in
rapture as my mother read to me from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and
The Rats of Nimh, and when I learned to read, I devoured tales of
princesses and witches. The Princess and the Goblin was one of my favorites.
I still remember vividly the images this story conjured, Princess Irene
stealing along dark stone caverns in search of her beloved Curdie. She was a
force to be reckoned with, smart and quick and ceaselessly brave. I lay awake
at night and fantasized about being her. I wanted to be all of them, these
wild, courageous heroines whose lives were filled with adventure, who traversed
mountains and plains, oceans and skies in order to fulfil their destinies.
After I read The Mists of Avalon at summer camp during middle school, I
lay on my top bunk and sobbed for hours, weeping for the passage of time, for
generations, for love and loss and the lady in the lake. I wanted to stay in
that story forever, in that time of myth and beauty, not to have to return to
my own turbulent world of adolescence, the day-to-day routines of camp, first
loves and kisses that, while intense, did not touch the depths of my soul like
the loves at Arthur’s court.
These stories lived inside me, shaping my imagination, my sense of what was
possible.
***
When I reached high school and later college, I became interested in different
kinds of fantasy, in the strange world of Herman Hesse, the internal lives of
Virginia Woolf, the ghosts of Toni Morrison. I learned to appreciate what is
often called great literature. But, by the same token, I learned to devalue
work written in the spirit of adventure and fantasy, work ostensibly written
for teenagers, which I was no longer.
I gave myself up to the world of seriousness. And there was much to explore
there. I died and was reborn again reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100
Years of Solitude. I became entranced with magical realism and dove into
stories that examined the inner lives of troubled women, the works of Clarice
Lispector, of Gayl Jones.
I started, too, to learn the language of critique, to think about the ways in
which a text or author represented—that is, how they transferred what existed
in the world onto the page—complex emotions and identities. How they
represented race and gender and sexuality, places and other people. I was
learning what books could do, and being confronted by their limitations.
***
Eventually, I went to graduate school, where I studied southern literature and
tried to navigate the mess I felt myself to be.
The thing about English PhDs, at least for most of us, is that you’re often
drawn to the profession for a love of reading and imagination. But this gets
stamped out as you develop into a critic. You become trained to look at
everything with a critical eye. If you’re like me, a relentless perfectionist
with procrastination tendencies, you might find yourself no longer being able
to read for pleasure. Everything I read felt like it needed to be for the
dissertation, like it needed to have some use value. If I could take the time
to read, it better be worthwhile.
My imposter syndrome ran deep, and graduate school is not a very self-affirming
place. My peers and I learned to measure our self-worth through our
productivity and intellectual prowess, which was judged on the work we
produced.
I felt the fear curling inside me. And I sought escape through pot and booze,
through experiences that brought me outside of myself and allowed me to let go.
***
It wasn’t until the last year of my dissertation, when I had begun to reclaim
myself—with the help of therapy and a full-time job outside of academia—that I
also began to read for pleasure again.
Something else likely also contributed to this, which is that I decided to get
sober. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except that I had been smoking
regularly for many years. It hadn’t always been a problem for me, but at some
point, it had become a source of shame and anxiety, something I didn’t even
consciously want to do but which I didn’t seem to be able to stop. I was
addicted, dependent on the feeling that the high gave me, the way that it
blurred the edges just enough for me not to feel pulled under by the pressures
I was putting on myself. It was a self-perpetuating cycle, but one which I felt
powerless to stop.
Yet, as I entered into those last months of intense revision on the dissertation,
I knew I needed to be clear-headed. I wanted it so badly. And so, I stopped. I
told myself I wouldn’t consume any drugs or alcohol. Instead, I would pour all
of my energy into revision. But I still needed something to give me that
escape, a pressure valve to undo each day when I’d had enough of my brain and
needed permission to unwind.
***
That’s how fantasy came back into my life. Just as it left, I don’t quite
remember how it reappeared, but suddenly there it was—the world of YA (young
adult) fantasy (specifically Cassandra Clare, but there’s plenty to choose
from!).
It was the escape that I’d been seeking, the perfect antidote to my inability
to read for pleasure. I could lose myself in the stories again, in these vast
and magical worlds. It was reading I could do without feeling the pressure to
somehow use it for my studies—because it couldn’t be used for my studies. I
didn’t need to read it with a critical eye, only the willingness to get lost.
And in doing so, I found again the limitless bounds of my imagination.
Each night I lay in bed after spending so many hours in front of the computer
screen and I let my mind roam far and free. I gave myself up to these worlds,
where demons and angels existed, where fairies and elves lived and waters
parted to reveal hidden kingdoms.
***
The thing is, it wasn’t just about escape. These stories were teaching me
something about myself. They were teaching me something about bravery,
something about what it means to be a warrior.
It’s not necessarily something I can put into words. It was the way these
characters, often young, often women, often people (even if not exactly human)
who didn’t fit into the mold their society expected from them, channeled that
perceived weakness in order to rise up. It was the goodness that they carried,
a belief in themselves and a deep care for those around them. It was their
willingness to sacrifice, the courage that they found within themselves.
And yes, sometimes the real traumas that they underwent seemed too easily
forgotten, and yes of course there were all kinds of issues the critic in me
could hold onto if I chose, but instead I felt their light descend upon me.
They taught me to have faith in myself.
As a teenager you’re learning how to be a person, how to differentiate yourself
from others but also how to connect, how to believe in yourself and what you
have to offer the world. YA books hold these lessons, offering wisdom to their
readers, helping them grow into young adults.
But grown adults also struggle with these challenges. You might have a stronger
sense of who you are after several more decades on this planet, but it doesn’t
mean you can’t be filled with doubt sometimes. So many of us are still learning
how to love, how to be vulnerable, how to take down our walls and be brave.
***
When I went to the café each day after work, bone tired, feeling like giving
up, and I sat at my table drinking my tea, I became in my mind one of these
warrior women. My sword was my pen, and I had no choice but to write.
And I did, and I kept on writing. Every evening, I imagined myself again this
way. And as the defense date grew closer, and the voice inside me, that inner
critic, said again and again, ‘you’re not good enough, you’ll never get there,’
I imagined it as the evil demons from my books.
‘You’re wrong,’ I said, ‘I will,’ and I held my weapons high. I am strong
enough, I told myself. If these women can go into battle, so too can I, and I
can overcome.
***
Those last months, I lived my life divided between the world of my dissertation
and the world of my fantasy books. The fantasy was an escape, but it was an
escape that carried through to the ‘real’ world, that helped me make it
through.
Soon enough, my defense date was upon me. It felt as if the world was crumbling
all around, but I was lost in my anticipation. My chest grew tight as it drew
closer, and I imagined myself holding my sword atop my head rushing into
battle. I would face it head on like the warrior I knew I could be.
And I did, and it was brilliant, and for a second everything shone bright.
I had many plans for after the dissertation: hang out with all the friends I’d
been neglecting, go on trips, apply to a million jobs. But as anyone reading
this will know, the pandemic didn’t end soon after; it only became worse. I
finished my defense and went downstairs and did the dishes. I Zoomed with
friends while they tried to corral their small children as they worked. I drank
a glass of champagne with my partner and ordered pizza, which would be
delivered to the bottom of our stairs. I tried to hold onto the glory of that
moment, even as graduation was cancelled and people I knew passed away, and all
the excitement of finally finishing dissipated in the post-partum dissertation
glare.
***
I thought that I’d give up fantasy novels after my defense. That had been the
plan. I wouldn’t need them anymore. I’d be ready to go out and conquer on my
own. Instead, I held to them ever tighter.
As the world that I knew was turned upside down, I remained immersed in these
fantasy worlds, which were built upon uncertainty and precariousness. These
worlds were constantly in danger, the young protagonists always fighting to
change them for the better. As the pandemic raged, the fantasy novels were
teaching me something else—how to accept uncertainty.
They also taught me that it’s okay to seek refuge in fantasy. Sometimes it’s all
you can do to stay sane. Fantasy helped me find hope and courage. It helped me
feel connected to myself when everything around me was unsteady, reminding me
that things are always more than they seem.
Eventually, as life began to settle into some semblance of new normalcy, and I
got the job I had been waiting for, I found myself reading less and less
fantasy. I simply didn’t have enough time, and maybe, the truth was, I didn’t
need them as much as I had. I had become stronger, more resilient. The lessons
I had learned through reading these books stayed with me.
But still when I need to feel brave, I channel the characters. I imagine a
glowing sword in my hand and feel the power of myself coursing through my body.
* * * * *
Faune Vita is a writer and artist
from the Ozark Mountains who teaches writing at a college in Massachusetts.
