Why does Earl have to die?

And "sad ass songs" about women

MAJOR TW for mentions of abuse, sexual abuse, and murder.

Have you ever stood in an arena filled with 20,000 other women screaming about domestic abuse, murder and injustice? If you have yet to have that experience, I highly recommend it. It was cathartic.

That’s what my sister and I did last week in the nosebleeds of Bridgestone Arena in Nashville— jumping up and down as we sang “she put on dark glasses and long sleeve blouses and make up to cover a bruise!!!!”

It felt deliciously irreverent— all of us gleefully singing about poisoning an abusive husband and unapologetically throwing his body in the back of the trunk (“ain’t it dark? Wrapped up in that tarp?”)

But it also felt therapeutic. And powerful.

Because even if not every woman in that arena (and let’s face it, apart from a few straggler boyfriends and husbands, it was mostly women) had personally experienced the cage of an abusive marriage, a small part of us knows that it could have been any one of us. And in a larger way, anything that happens to one of us, happens to us all.

I do not know one woman who has not experienced violence or sexual violence at the hand of a member of the opposite sex. Not one. Even if it’s being cat-called or intimidated on the street (although for most that’s just the tip of the iceberg), a seemingly innocuous act, I still count as a type of violence. Because for every woman it’s not just being cat-called. It’s being reminded of “your place” in this patriarchal society. The threat of violence, the hint of it, is enough.

To be a woman is to fight for autonomy in the face of humiliation, violence, and oppression. Just because violence against women is commonplace and always has been, doesn’t make it less traumatic or sad. In fact, I’d argue that the long history of violence against women, the fact that every one of us knows someone who has been abused (or have been abused ourselves), makes it all the more traumatic. It’s all over history textbooks. It’s in the Bible. Even Abraham, the great patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sold his own wife into sex slavery, and raped his female slave.

For most of us who dare to speak out, the justice system often fails us or shames us (“Earl walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care.”)

So yeah, sometimes it helps to turn that anger into art. Sometimes it helps to take out all your rage on a fictional character in a song with thousands of other women.

But the Chicks are hardly the first female country songwriters to sing about the abuse of women. Dolly Parton’s early career was mostly a lot of “sad ass songs” (her words, not mine) about the violence she witnessed against women, the injustices they endured growing up in Appalachia. And in many ways, the songs written by the Chicks and Dolly are an answer to the tradition of violence that pervades folk, country and Americana music.

A young Dolly Parton with her family in Tennessee

If you’ve never heard of The Knoxville Girl, it’s a murder ballad sung from the perspective of the murderous boyfriend who gets his lady friend pregnant before… well. Maybe you should just look up the gruesome lyrics for yourself.

In fact, if you ever want to go back and listen to Dolly Parton’s early catalogue, the first four albums specifically, is full of the darkness endured by women.

Or as Dolly Parton expert Helen Morales puts it “Those songs [of Dolly’s] that didn’t make the charts provide an insistent witnessing of women’s lives. Women being treated really badly by men.”

The song “Daddy Come and Get Me” is a song Dolly wrote based on the true events of something that happened to her aunt. Her aunt was put away by her husband in an institution after having a mental breakdown because he was repeatedly cheating on her. It’s a heartbreaking song about the powerlessness women have historically had, and reality that many women were (and even sometimes are today) at the mercy of the goodwill of the men in their lives.

I digress, but you can understand why Earl has to die.

We need an outlet for the anger at the injustice. It doesn’t matter that Earl specifically isn’t real, he represents a system that is very much real. A system that favors men and oppresses women.

Sometimes you need to gather with a bunch of women and scream in a darkened arena because you’re not sure what else to do. If you get such an opportunity, I’d encourage you to take it.

I left that night feeling grateful for art. The song Goodbye Earl may depict the revenge women might take in their fantasies, but perhaps the real revenge is that women can take pain and turn it into a best-selling, charting song? Maybe the best revenge isn’t stooping to their level, but rising to new heights? Maybe it’s succeeding despite the odds, and reminding other women of the magic they hold within.

At the end of Goodbye Earl, the women live happily ever after. And if the death of Earl represents the death of a system of abuse against women, I think “it’d turn out he was a missing person who nobody missed at all.”

Watch the music video here

**Much of what I’ve learned about Dolly Parton’s early catalogue, the quotes from experts in this piece and the history of the Knoxville Girl come from the podcast series Dolly Parton’s America, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. **

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If you’ve made it to this point in the essay, and you’re a woman you deserve a little palate cleanser. So here’s some closing thoughts that are less depressing:

• Ann Pachett’s Tom Lake narrated by Meryl Streep is currently saving my life. I recently texted my friend Jess saying “It’s like if Fried Green Tomatoes and Little-Woman-as-told-from-Marmie’s-perspective had a baby!!!!” I can think of no higher praise.

• I bought a raspberry bush this week. It’s still in it’s potted container because I cannot for the life of me decide which corner of my yard I want to be overrun with raspberry bushes. All I know is that I really want at least one of them to be.

• Finally, if anyone has a go-to vegetarian week night meal they’d want to share in the comments, you’d be my favorite. We’ve recently transitioned to a mostly vegetarian diet and so I’m trying to pin down some new weekly staples as mine used to be oven-baked, marinated chicken thighs with rice and greens. HELP.

New Yorker magazine cover dated October 25, 1976 featuring a Halloween and Autumn theme. Based on an illustration by Arthur Getz (1913-1996).