Part 11 (1/2)

S: Then we must try to find the reason that you can't have a child. Do you- Here I stopped, because Mrs. C. was hiding her face from me with her hands. I gently forced them down, keeping them covered with my own while I gave her the command to remain calm and told her again to imagine the ocean. It had some effect, though she did not stop crying and in fact seemed disturbed by the image that had brought her peace only moments before.

C: I can't bear to think of it now. I have ruined things so badly.

S: Ruined what?

C: My marriage. My life.

S: Why do you say you have ruined it? What have you done?

C: If I could only be like everyone else. If I did not want so much.

S: It's no crime to want children. Women naturally- C: I don't want children.

She spoke the words baldly, and with them, her tears stopped. She looked up at me in what could have been either shocked realization or a bold challenge.

S: You don't want children?

C: No.

It is not so unusual that women in unhappy circ.u.mstances do not wish to visit those circ.u.mstances upon their children and so choose not to become pregnant. But Mrs. C. does not live in poverty; her husband does not abuse her; she has a life envied by many.

S: I'm sure you believe that to be the case. The emotions you're experiencing- C: I'm not deluding myself. I've never wanted children. I knew it when I was quite small.

S: Are you telling me that you feel no need to commit to what is considered to be woman's sole purpose?

C: To have a child is not my purpose.

S: I see. Then what is?

C: I want to paint.

I have seen this kind of displacement many, many times. Her disappointment in being unable to conceive has channeled itself into the urge for selfish expression for which there is no talent or real desire beyond the statement ”I want to paint.”

S: Hypnosis cannot give you talent. I can't create something from nothing.

C: I have talent. Or once I did. It's been so long, I don't know.

S: You have picked up a paintbrush, then? You've applied yourself to painting?

C: Yes.

S: But you no longer paint?

C: My father took my paints away when I was a girl.

S: Why?

Here she began to show distress once again. She could not keep still. I debated whether to calm her, but she continued before I could intervene.

C: He disapproved of it. He said it wasn't a ladylike profession, that I was embarra.s.sing him by pursuing it.

S: Most women learn painting. How was your pursuit unladylike?

C: He said I was too ardent. He said I would make myself ill, as I'd been before.

S: You were ill before?

C: He took my paints and he threw them into the street. The horses . . . the carriages . . . they kept on going as if they didn't see, and I couldn't save them. He threw my canvas into the fire and said . . . he said, ”You'll not get another one of those, my girl, not as long as I live. It's best you learn how to be a wife.” He said I should have children and devote myself to them. Not painting. Not poetry. ”You'll only be unhappy,” he said. ”Believe me. I know.”

During this speech, Mrs. C. seemed most inconsolable. Her hands came up as if she were trying to stop someone, and her whole body was in a state of tremendous agitation.

S: Was this the end of it, then? Did you never paint again?

C: I tried. I bribed the maid to buy me some paints, but Papa caught her and dismissed her, and then no one would take the chance. Every time I came home from shopping, he checked my bags and boxes. He searched my room to make sure. After a while it seemed best . . . not to try .

S: Perhaps he was only trying to protect you.

C: Protect me from what? Being happy?

S: Is that what you think? That your father wants you to be unhappy?

C: I don't know.

S: Your father doesn't rule you now. Why don't you paint again?

C: William would never allow it. Papa told him early in our courts.h.i.+p that I was fragile. That I should be kept from paints and poetry. They were too overstimulating. He said I had a propensity for melodrama and illness.

S: Did William tell you this?

C: I was there when Papa said it. He wanted to make sure I heard.

S: So you would not try again?

C: Yes.

S: You said earlier that you had been ill. When was this?

C: I was thirteen, and I found poetry. I quite gave myself up to Byron.

S: To the point of illness?

C: I wanted to write like him, to be him.

S: To be Byron would be to be a man.

C: Isn't it only men who live so pa.s.sionately? Who experience every moment?