Becoming Duchess Goldblatt: A Memoir by Anonymous starts in a place I’ve been — a woman befuddled by technology. Fortunately, I have not also been in the author’s place of social devastation caused by the loss of her marriage, her social circles and full custody of her child. She has an inkling that social media might give her back a sense of belonging; but, she thinks, she just wants to hear about other people’s lives, not engage with them. She accordingly creates an account on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter using the fictional name of Duchess Goldblatt and uses a centuries-old portrait of an elderly lady that hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. as her profile picture.
The fictional Duchess Goldblatt is an 81-year-old writer with a strong sense of her own beauty and worth and no hesitation in sharing her opinions. Her one self-imposed social-media restriction is that her posts must be kind. The author of these entries may have wanted to remain aloof, but her alter ego, Duchess, can’t resist commenting on others’ posts and addressing people as “pumpkin,” “sweets,” “poodle” and the like.
Duchess always responds to public and private messages with encouragement. She comments on the world at large with a jaded wit that skirts the edges of sarcasm and is never mean but always quirky. To anyone who asks during Lent, for example, she assigns mindful sacrifices, such as “whenever you see the color orange you will find a kindness in your heart for your mother-in-law.” Duchess’s followers befriend each other over coffee and take group photos under her portrait.
Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is not the story of a divorce but of a recovery from divorce. Deeper than that, it’s a contemplation of love — not in the sense of romantic love between a couple but of how to love one’s neighbor and act with love in community.
The author, we discover, grew up in an extended family plagued by addiction and mental illness. Her father was the only member of the family who did not suffer from such afflictions, but as a deeply faithful Catholic was thoroughly dedicated to agape, the selfless love of others. He loved the author’s older brother so unconditionally that he allowed his family to warp around the brother’s darkness. The reader might even conclude that the father died young as a martyr to that unconditional love — and was willing to martyr his daughter to it as well. Nonetheless, she adored him and learned his lessons of loving your neighbor well.
As Duchess Goldblatt, the author follows her father’s example of love and acceptance — but with boundaries. Scarred by her family’s neglect and the waves of rejection that followed her divorce, she goes to extraordinary lengths to protect her identity and, thus, her young son’s life from the ramifications of Duchess’s unconditional kindness to any stranger who approaches her on Twitter. She even recruits friends in other towns to offer decoy addresses to receive gifts from Duchess’s followers. As Duchess Goldblatt the author finds a safe way to cultivate agape in a community and use her voice. In person she is hedged in by hesitancies, but as Duchess she is straightforwardly kind and witty.
Thus a Twitter account meant only to alleviate extreme loneliness becomes a middle ground between the author’s desire to love her neighbor and her understandable fear of loving too much. In becoming Duchess Goldblatt, she heals herself through helping others.
As a memoirist Duchess Goldblatt/Anonymous has helped me in a time of turmoil. Reading the book provided an immersive, witty delight at a sad time. It also reminded me not to wallow. “Sweets,” I can imagine Duchess telling me, “that’s a hard break, but get out there and help someone else.” So, I’ve been volunteering at a food bank. I’ve sent out Christmas cards. I’m not ready for Twitter, but those are baby steps I think Duchess would approve.
Megan Koreman lives in Petoskey, Michigan. She is a historian and author of The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-1946 and The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe. A young adult novel, Dark Clouds over Paris, is forthcoming. Read more at dutchparisblog.com.