Big interviews in the newspapers, a second edition – it is not possible with Loaded house, The book by Christien Brinkgreve, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences, about her marriage to Arend Jan Heerma van Voss, especially a journalist.
Only about that marriage? That would be quite limited – and that is not the case. I suspect that especially many women, including those who have never heard of Brinkgreve and her husband, will recognize themselves in this book about a marriage that gradually goes more wrong than good. The woman in question wants more room for herself, feels impeded by her somber man and more or less accepts it. She went on with him, “alive with a man who often makes me small,” she writes. This is in contrast to the younger generation of women who are more combative, BrinkGreve is now noticing in an interview.
At the end of his life, Heerma van Voss makes some statements that have a crushing effect on his wife, because they “exposed a lot, raw, without any cover.” In the presence of a friend, he says on his death bed to his wife: “Do not always make yourself bigger than you are.” In the same period he says: “I had hoped that you would devote yourself to me completely after your dissertation.”
Together with their two writing sons Daan and Thomas, they had previously entered the public. I remembered the VPRO-TV documentary Private property From 2014 from filmmaker Pieter Verhoeff, a family friend. Did those tensions in the family already coming to the surface? It didn’t look at me and I watched this film again, which is still easy to find on the internet. Verhoeff filmed the family on a trip to their beloved Brittany and interviewed them at the table in a hotel. At first glance, that conversation would not have seemed so revealing, but it was indeed.
At a certain point Arend Jan says that he had not escaped him that Christien had problems with her university Werdegang ”. “What do you mean by that,” she asks. He: “That you had to work hard there to conquer a place.” She: “No, but the university was a breeze compared to family life.” He, with surprised smile: “Oh, I find a remarkable statement.”
It certainly was, but it didn’t stand out because after that a rather spiky discussion arose about the meaning of the word “Werdegang.” Daan remembered that it meant ‘slow downfall’, his father stubbornly held on to the neutral ‘development’.
In a separate interview fragment in this film, Christien says: “I think it is a fairly violent family to live in. Powerful people. Arend Jan sure, who commands respect, which they are afraid of, who has a sort of quiet authority, it’s not someone who reassures you most. “
In short, if ‘we’ had paid better attention at the time, we would not be so surprised about this candid book by Christien Brinkgreve. What should not be a reason to leave it unread, because it is an extremely interesting, cleverly written book about a feminist woman who pursued equality between men and women in theory, but noticed how difficult it was – and is – for it in the to realize practice of a marriage.