On Becoming a Crone [or, Maybe, a Yente]

This is a guest article by Barbara Martinsons, a member of the SHJ affiliate, Secular Jewish Circle in Tucson, Arizona. Barbara reflects on the different aspects of being a woman (and a Jewish woman) at various life stages. This is an excellent and apt article for Women’s History Month.

Of the many ways to talk about, and therefor think about, women, the yente comes to mind.  For some reason Carl Jung never suggested a yente archetype.  Maybe it had something to do with having a Protestant minister for a father.  Sigmund Freud, on the other hand, in spite of the apparent ambivalence about his Judaism, might have acknowledged the central role of the yente if he had not had his vision obscured [as is often the case with men] by sex.  Because there is no doubt that the figure of the yente is deeply entrenched in Western culture.

Yenta, a gossip and busybody, is not to be confused with Sholem Aleichem’s Yente, the name of the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof, or Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yentle, sung by Barbara Streisand.  No, a yente is not the flimsy stuff of musical entertainment.

If you are female, it is possible to be a yente at any age.  There are young yentes, old yentes, and those in between.  Some other female appellations are equally hard to pinpoint.  A “Queen Bee” could be a popular teenager,  a middle aged Silicon Valley executive or an elderly Royal.  And both Susie Homemaker and Soccer Mom, firmly situated in or just past their procreative years, could range from 20 to 55.  Personally, I think of these as the K-Y Jelly years.

Yet while some terms cover  the adult lifespan, many words that describe women are age related.  Consider “spinster.”  Never anyone young; consider a woman who is a “battle ax; ” she has been around for a while and is certainly never young.   One of my personal favorites, which I learned only recently, is “cougar:”   also someone who is not only older, but older than the man in her life.  A trophy wife, on the other hand, is always young, or at least younger than the man in hers.

Still other words for women focus on their degree of “womanliness:”  virago, for example, another favorite of mine, describes a woman who is too much like a man.  It comes from the Latin Virago, from “Vir,” manly, as in virile, as in virtue.  But in modern usage virago is about gender transgression.  It is about women who don’t suit men because they are not “womanly” or agreeable enough.     Or a shrew, as in The Taming of:  — aggressive and disobedient [often with short velvety fur].  Derived from the Proto-Germanic “scraw” or “skreu” which meant “to cut.”   Hmmmm.  Take a minute to think about that….

Of course, there is always Hag, which shares its etymology with the adjective “haggard,” meaning an appearance that is both wild and distraught as well as worn and exhausted, or gaunt.  Well, some of us are gaunt, some of us are… less so.   These terms are rooted in the Old French faulcon hagard, meaning wild falcon.  Which, though not complementary, I kind of like.

And then, finally, there is a crone.  Clearly, it is possible to become a crone only after years of careful preparation and practice.   To be an “Old Wife” as in those who tell “Old Wives Tales” obviously starts only when quite old; in fact it may take generations of telling before the tale really gains [or is denied] credence.  But being a crone can occur only during a relatively short stretch of time, somewhere between “middle aged,” and  “Over the Hill”  [or, as some people think of it, in the years between “mature” and “dead”].

Being a crone does not come easily.  Not only do you have to spend many years in preparation, developing your crotchetiness [maybe better not ask about the derivation of this one]   —  —   [actually, it derives, definitively, from Arabia, {Crochet.org} China, South America, Old Norse, German and French, and means ““hook” {etymonline.com}].  If you go to the Craft, Crochet and Knitting site you will learn that    — “There are theories that crochet could have existed as early as 1500 BC, as part of nun’s work,” {Avya Craft, Crochet, Knitting}  —  [if, indeed there were nuns some 1500 before the birth of Jesus….]. You must also spend time honing your unwillingness to suffer fools —  but never your willingness to fool sufferers.

In any case, you need to be ready when it is finally time,  because being a crone is something for which you must be equipped.  You have to learn to accept that any parts of your physical being that can move downward, will;   mentally, however, things seem to move up and away. So you should learn to enjoy forgetting things, losing things, confusing things.  And it might help if you adjust to the fact that some things will thin out [your hair, your memory] while others will thicken up [but we really don’t need to go there] .

Crone entered the English language around the year 1390, deriving from the Anglo-French word “carogne” (an insult), itself deriving from the Old North French “charogne,” or  “caroigne,” meaning a disagreeable woman  or, literally, although it’s a bit of a jump in my view,  “carrion ”   — [ no, not the luggage) {source: Wikipedia}.  But you must work through this unpleasantness, step around it, as it were,  and  celebrate this long-awaited coming into your true self.

For a crone is an earth mother, filled with the sagacity of her years.  She is a wise woman who draws on her experience.  She is magical, with the wisdom of prior generations of crones.  She is sharp in more ways than one, and, [the basis of her power] —   is able to be  both objective and subjective at the same time.  At her core, she is a shaman, practicing Tikkun Olam — ready to repair and transform  the  world.   And [perhaps having practiced at some point as a yente, or maybe extending yente-dom to its fullest extent, finally, she is the “tender narrator” as Ogla Tokarczuk described the character of Yente in her novel “The Books of Jacob”].  Yente in this novel takes storytelling, narration and gossip to a whole new, life enhancing, level.  “I am more in awe of this novel’s narrative stance than its characters or plot: its faith in storytelling, its creative leaps, its freedom with Yente, its alchemical art” [from the Los Angeles Review of Books  review of the novel by Marek Makowski 3/1/23, with thanks to Anne  Schlumberger  for alerting our Secular Humanist Jewish Circle Book Group to the review].

Yentes and Crones are not quite the same; checking on Yente in Tokarczuk’s novel I find “Her father named her Yente, which means she who spreads the news, she who teaches others” [p. 798]. And Yente, crone-like, is magical, simultaneously both dead and alive.  Maybe Tikkun Olam [for teaching and healing can be interchangeable] is the province of both?  Maybe Yentes are Jewish Crones?