After On the Couch

Tessa Young: from femininity to maternity

A few days ago, I posted an article I had always wished to write about as soon as I got to know the character Hardin Scott. To have him on my couch and carry out an analysis of the Hessa relationship was such a delight. I was surprised by the feedback I got from the readers. There's no greater pleasure to write than to see that someone identifies oneself with your ideas. The big discovery was seeing that lots of people would be interested in more analyses of other protagonists from Anna Todd's work. In a Facebook group, a reader suggested that I write about Tessa Young's impasse against maternity - needless to say, one of the most shocking scenes in After Ever Happy. Encouraged by the support of other readers interested in the subject, I decided to write another text from the series (who knows?) "After on the couch".

Anna Todd's text is a generous gift in several senses. Besides being a pleasant reading, it touches on some fundamental human impulses. I also attribute the success of the series to this factor. She tells what each of us wants to live to narrate, in an incredible way. In the peculiar singularity between the reader and the book, we go to bed with Anna to delight ourselves with her bare sexual instincts, in a way that we get to envy her, especially due to our society's 'social rules'. (Well, this is a subject for another text as it has legs!). In addition, Anna addresses some crucial issues related to femininity, as well as maternity. Thus, from my point of view, it explains why her work attracts mostly female readers. It is not just because of its romantic touch or an absolutely sensual and enigmatic Hardin. It's also because it follows a feminine path, it's about what it is like to be a woman.

Right on her first book, Anna suggests this tone when Tessa hears herself be called a 'woman' by Kimberly when she arrives at her first job as a trainee at Vance Publishing. Up to this point, she hadn't seen herself that way, as she had always been infantilized by her mother. On this passage, we can clearly see Tessa's transition from an adolescent to an adult, as it goes beyond that moment when she questions her mother Carol Young's authority. From then on she becomes a woman, as she is called by the other. And throughout her life story in After, the protagonist comes across a key question in psychoanalysis, 'What is it like to be a woman?'.

Tessa's discovery of her sexuality transforms her. Hardin arises on her what was seen as unacceptable according to social rules imposed by her family, her childhood sweetheart, her neighbors from the city where she lived with her mom, etc. You see, Hardin doesn't transform her; he reveals Tessa to herself, the woman who she really is. The 'girl's secrets' are eventually lost while someone else starts to have access to her intimacy and provokes real pleasures confessed by the woman. It is not the girl who has an orgasm, it is the woman who starts to accept her impulses to the point when she shows them to her partner. And it is this way that Tessa begins to establish new rules to whom she used to see in the mirror: a woman dressed according to some social standards (having make-up, lingeries that are going to be seen by someone else etc), but most importantly, a woman who is able to desire and assume her own choices. I dare to say that what makes her fall in love with Hardin so suddenly is the image of herself that he makes her see. Tessa falls in love with herself before loving Hardin. Just like him, who confessed to her that the thing that he loved the most in the world was himself - until he started to love her. And isn't it what we love in the other? The way s/he sees us and how s/he makes us see ourselves? It hasn't been different from Hessa.

In the case-study of Dora, one of Sigmund Freud's most famous studies, the psychoanalyst faces the patient's anguish who asks herself what it's like to be a woman. During an important intervention by Freud, the issue of maternity is brought up by him and Dora does not come back to the sessions. This clinical point gives Freud enough elements to develop his study about hysteria and, to other psychoanalysts like Jacques Lacan, long discussions about 'What does a woman want?'.

I felt really grateful to Anna Todd for touching on the issue of the construction of femininity by Tessa throughout her story life. She addresses maternity in a chronological way (probably unintentionally), but it suggests the femininity that will inevitably shape the woman's choice - even if her choice isn't to become a mother, as Freud concludes after Dora quit her analysis process. And just like the tip of the iceberg representing one of the many unhappy moments in Tessa's life at that point, it makes what she called 'her biggest dream in life' to come apart.

Dealing with her 'real' impossibility to become a mother makes Tessa blossom, literally. From that moment we can notice how she manages to stand for her choices against the other and against her own wish not to irrationally give herself over to Hardin. In the case of Tessa, maternity fails to keep up with the vicious circle in which her relationship was trapped in.

From the moment when she moves away from the other to think over her life, she finally manages to assume the relationship she had always wished for. It is not Hardin who makes Tessa realize that. Maternity encourages her to act on herself, to abandon society's labels, her university degree, the city where she lived and even the probability of becoming a mother. She becomes a woman before becoming a mother, which only happens when she has to face the impossible. After some attempts, however, Tessa finally becomes a much more mature mother of two children and continues to be a woman. One of my favorite happy-ending scenes is when Tessa is busy with work and tells her daughter that she isn't available for her. It is like as if she said, 'Sweetie, besides being your mom I'm also a woman who is trying hard to keep up with my own professional choices.'

At the end, we discover a woman and a man who only revealed themselves to each other after becoming a couple. And it's them, with their own individuality, who we fall in love with.