A Rose by Any Other Name

that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

- Juliet (Romeo and Juliet)

I think the thing that has shocked me most about Rachel Cusk's writing is not her use of similes and metaphors, is not her distinct writing style as a novelist, but rather in blatant choice in omitting names. Cusk in her first chapter explaining why she is writing tells us the names of her two daughters and the time frame in which she is writing. But after that point she never mentions her daughter's name again, Albertine.

The power of speech and the power to name others is according to the Bible the one thing that sets man above all the other creatures. There is power to a name beyond merely reference. Whenever I discuss names I am reminded of a passage in All Quiet on the Western Front and while I have failed at finding the exact quote the idea is that the main character Paul Baumer is stuck in a trench with a soldier of the opposing army. The opposing soldier moves so Paul shoots him. As the man lay dying Paul approaches and looks at the man's ID card to discover his name. Upon this discovery Paul realizes that he has not shot some mysterious monster but a man like himself. Having a name humanizes you, likens you to everyone else. In my mind for Cusk never to again mention her daughter's name is a form of distancing herself and I think the reader.
In the first half of Cusk's book she refers to her daughter as "creature" and "it" never as a human. In the second half Albertine is referred to in the possessive "my daughter" or "my baby" but never as an entity of her own. Even as Albertine begins to move around and walk and play Cusk still refers to her in the possessive "my..."

Cusk seems to refer to everyone except her own family by name. It is as though she prefers to remain in isolation. I understand that she felt the purpose of her book was to write about motherhood, but is motherhood truly that lonely? Cusk even in the second half does not mention her husband or what form of help he was offering. She goes through elaborately documenting all the different nannies she tried Rosa, Celia, and Stefan. She goes into detail about each of their histories but never her own. Even other parents' children have names. "Cordelia! trilled the child's mother distractedly. Cordelia!" (pg. 170). It is as though the only people Cusk chooses to name are people who have either failed or committed some treason against her. For Cusk to not once mention the names of those in proximity of those whom she might love, Cusk heightens this sense of loneliness.

In her chapter Breathe Cusk mentions her friend Miranda and son Alexander. At first I was shocked to see Cusk admitting into her life a friend, someone who in her mind is experiencing the same thing and can be seen on the same page as herself. I was for a moment proud of Cusk. Until: "When Miranda and I were pregnant I thought that we were in it together, that we were somehow doing it together, but in fact it hasn't turned out like that. When I spoke to her after Alexander was born I knew straight away that it wasn't going to be like that. After the conspiracy of pregnancy, having the baby amounts almost to a betrayal" (p. 195). Cusk views her own friend as a villain and although Cusk continues to speak with her and phone her she does not feel a bond, "her life was in agreement with them where mine was not" (p. 198).

But I think the heart of the issue of why Cusk never refers to her daughter as Albertine is for the following reason... Cusk believed her daughter to be part of her. "My relationship with her is like my relationship with anybody: it takes the form of a search for oneness, a oneness lost but haunting with the prospect of is recapture" (p. 209). Cusk could not and would not refer to her daughter by name because that admitted that her daughter was not a part of her. Allowing her daughter to have a name gave her daughter an identity of her own which Cusk was not ready to do. By the end of the book I am still not sure that Cusk is ready, but she is clearly on her way.