“I Need You More and More”

Emily Dickenson

Emily Dickinson is one of several poets who lived a very unobtrusive life. She both lived and died in the small village of Amherst and was a recluse there for the last few years of her life. However, she was not a demure woman, as she intimated later in her life that she “had been anything but a model child” (Habegger 116). Emily was personable and formed strong emotional attachments to those that were closest to her like her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Emily Dickinson would not have achieved the notoriety she has today without the aid of Susan Gilbert Dickinson, not only posthumously but also during the author’s lifetime. Susan played a pivotal role in the formation of Emily Dickinson as a writer because of their shared intimacy with each other, as demonstrated by their correspondence, although this was a strong aromantic relationship. 

It is easy to perceive Emily as an introverted and antisocial woman, but that is not the case. More recently, the perception of Emily Dickinson as a flamboyant ‘Belle of Amherst’ has become a more accepted image of Emily Dickinson. A recent film from Madeleine Olnek, “Wild Nights With Emily” decided to take this a step further by exploring Dickinson’s sexuality. The film posited that Emily was having an affair in a homosexual relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan. While the film may have strongly explored this relationship, this was not the first time the topic had been broached.

Every biography is incomplete without including some reference to the importance of Susan Gilbert Dickinson. It was Susan’s “entry into the family that would change it forever” (Habegger 269). Susan was only nine days younger than Emily and had had a hard life. Orphaned after the death of her father in 1841, Habegger says that her letters seem to indicate a nature that was “less distinguished for qualities of flight than for polish and self-possession” (266). She met the Dickinson sisters around 1848 and began her correspondence with Emily around that time. Emily wrote her voraciously from 1851 until Susan married Austin in 1856, even sending her some of her first poems. Although her letters grew increasingly shorter throughout the years, Emily remained close to Susan until the time of Emily’s death in 1886. In turn, “[h]er sister Sue recognized her genius from the very start and hoarded every scrap that Emily sent her from the time they were both girls of sixteen. Their love never faltered or waned. (Bianchi 64). Many of these letters express an intimacy that was deeply shared between the two women. 

Rebecca Patterson was the first to propose that Emily Dickinson was a lesbian in her book The Riddle of Emily Dickinson, which was published in 1951. Her hypothesis is based on a handful of letters and one poem dedicated to Catherine Mary Scott Turner Anton or “Katie”. This was a time that was generally unfavorable towards lesbianism, especially in a community as small and intimate as Amherst. If Dickinson was a lesbian she would have had to have kept it secret. According to a book review by John Ciardi, “[o]bscurity, however, is Miss Patterson’s preferred clue: she plunges into her detective work like a vigorous and ambitious prosecuting attorney building a case of circumstantial evidence” (Ciardi 94). Although Ciardi is generally impressed with Patterson’s ability to extrapolate information to fit her hypothesis, he does not believe that her hypothesis is founded.

Criticism is generally ambiguous about whether Emily Dickinson was a lesbian or if her feelings could be placed under the category of “romantic friendship” (Comment 167). While her physical desires would always remain unrequited and not acted upon, she may have been hiding her sexual orientation. The nineteenth century was not accepting of homosexual relationships nor was it socioeconomically plausible. Even if Emily was a lesbian, there would have been very little benefit to openly expressing her sexuality. Her relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson was emotionally intimate, which led some scholars to believe that she was sexually attracted to her sister-in-law.

Critics have become more accepting of the seemingly subtle homoerotic tone that is found in some of her poems. Dickinson’s Poem 84 has especially come under severe scrutiny due to its supposed homoerotic subtext. Emily had sent the poem to Susan in 1859 in a letter:

Her breast is fit for pearls,

But I was not a “Diver” –

Her brow is fit for thrones

But I have not a crest.

Her heart is fit for home –

I – a Sparrow- build there

Sweet of twigs and twine

My perennial nest

The poem could be maternal imagery, but there is the idea that the speaker is lost in the ‘her’ of the text. Habegger says that this is the “lost sister to who waits for Sue” and that there is a great disparity between Emily and Susan; Emily “diminishes herself so drastically that anything like reciprocity becomes unimaginable” (Habegger 366). This could be merely expressing how Emily found an affinity with a kindred soul. However, it is thought that the original “manuscript thought to be sent to Bowles has ‘Sue’erased from its verso” (Comment 172). The expression to build a nest is an expression of sexual desire and a future with an individual.

There are other insights into the assumed homosexual relationship with Susan Gilbert Dickinson. There was a lull in Emily’s correspondence with Susan from 1855 to 1857 which was around the time of Susan’s marriage to Austin in 1856. There were no letters shared between them in 1856 which could be indicative of a strong emotional turmoil or “it is also possible that correspondence to Susan, along with other work, has been lost or was destroyed” (Hart 256). Bianchi also seems to indirectly acknowledge this hiatus by saying “[Austin’s] marriage to the “Sister Sue” of Emily’s lifelong adoration brought an outside element into the family, which bred some critical hours” (12-13). The marriage of Austin and Susan did put a strain on their relationship, but this could have also been due to the changing of familial roles. 

Faderman made the argument that Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the niece of Emily Dickinson and the daughter of Susan Gilbert Dickinson, went to great lengths to “convince us that Dickinson had ‘normal’ girlhood involvements with young men ” (Faderman 202). Faderman says this may be because she wanted to hide the ‘truth’, or that her mother may have told Bianchi that she was not romantically involved with Emily Dickinson to lead her astray (202). In her book called “Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson,” there is a strange omission of the three hundred letters that were exchanged between her aunt and mother. 

Picture of Emily and Susan

A few of these more ‘passionate’ letters are referenced in other anthologies of Emily Dickinson’s letters. Emily’s letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson from June 11, 1852, was omitted in Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s collection of her letters. The letter itself is romantic:

I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider . . . every day you stay away — I miss my biggest heart; my own go wandering round, and calls for Susie […] Susie, forgive me, Darling, for every word I say — my heart is full of you none other than you in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something, not for the world, words fail me. If you were here – and Oh that you were, my dear Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us […] I shall grow more and more impatient until that dear day comes, for til now, I have only mourned for you; now I begin to hope for you. […] I add a kiss, shyly, lest there is somebody there!”

(Ward and Dickinson 211-212). 

There is an undeniable passion that is found within this letter that Emily had a strong attachment to Susan. It is also important to note that this was before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother, Austin. As one critic said, “[t]his was no girlhood crush. Emily was a woman in her twenties. To say that she was ‘in love’ with Sue is to describe her emotional state accurately” (Fadermann 209). The passage speaks of both an emotional and also physical intimacy with each other, which Emily seems reticent to openly express.

Bianchi does not entirely conceal their relationship. Bianchi chose to reference a portion of a letter to Susan at the beginning of the biography, “I know I was naughty to write such things, and I know I could have helped it if I had tried hard enough, but I thought my heart would break and I knew of nobody here that cared anything about it – so I said to myself- we will tell Susie” (Bianchi 20). She tries to demonstrate that this was only a platonically affectionate relationship. She is careful to stress that it was a “perfectly normal young heart responding to natural wondering of impending maturity” and at the “stage [in her life, Emily] sentimentalizes as all young girls do and should” (Bianchi 20). Unfortunately, Bianchi does not include any letters from her mother to her aunt for us to conceptualize this relationship further. At first, it may seem heavy-handed but the correspondence could be otherwise misconstrued.

The language of many of the letters also seems to emphasize a strong romantic connection. In two letters that Emily wrote to Susan, she said “And I do love to run fast -and hide away from them all; here in dear Susie’s bosom, I know is love and rest, and I would never go away” (Ward and Dickinson 84). At first glance, it is plausible that this could be read as a romantic desire to be with her love. This is further emphasized in another letter in which Emily writes, “Why, Susie, it seems to me as if my absent Lover was coming home so soon — and my heart must be so busy, making ready for him” (Ward and Dickinson 215). Here Susan takes on the personification of an absent lover returning to their love. The content of such passages undeniably shows that Emily felt a strong love for her sister-in-law.

In 1854, she sent Sue a series of poems that are despairing and almost desperate (Bianchi 194-198). A common theme through all these poems is solitude, despair, and the condition of the soul. She writes in one of these, “There is another Loneliness/ That many die without, / Not want or friend occasions it, / Or circumstances or a lot” (Bianchi 195). It is not exactly clear what type of loneliness that Emily is referring to, but this letter only seems to demonstrate the intimacy that Emily seems to have felt towards her sister-in-law.

Picture of an excerpt of Emily Dickinson’s letters

Although the language of many of her letters may be sentimental, it does not mean that she held romantic sexual feelings for her sister-in-law. Such passages might seem to indicate a homosexual relationship, but nineteenth-century America was largely homosocial. The majority of society was divided into categories for both men and women to form strong emotional and platonically physical relationships. It was not uncommon and “social configuration encouraged intense emotional attachments which were often acted out by kissing, caressing, fondling, and passionate pronouncements of love” (Faderman 208). Such relationships were not uncommon during that period. 

Susan also in many ways represented an extension of the sisterly bond that Emily held in her family. Although Emily was close to her sister Lavinia, ‘Vinnie’, Susan stood as a complementary foil to Vinnie. One scholar posits that “Sue represents for Emily the other pole of womanhood: the antidomestic [sic] woman, tempter, betrayer, narcissist, and visionary, the woman in touch with power, possessed of secret knowledge, dangerous, reviled, and perilously desired” (Morris 325). Susan was able to provide an intellectual and social prowess to their relationship that complimented her relationship with her sister. Susan was her sisterly muse in which Susan stood “as an emblem for the heavenly, [while] Vinnie represents the earthly” (Morris 327). Emily shared a deep connection with Susan that was an extension of the family.

It is because they were intimate friends that Susan was trusted with reading and editing many of Emily’s poems. Bianchi writes that Susan was one of the first to ever read any of Emily’s poems. Emily “never told her family of her writing, and this is the only mention of any secret ambition or having her work known even on a day “a long way off.” The first poem dated, that she sent to Sister Sue, was in 1848” (Bianchi 65). Emily trusted Susan with her poems first among many of her friends and relatives and she would continue to play this role throughout Emily’s life. Susan was “probably more important to Dickinson as a reader, friend, literary collaborator, and editor” since they were “so close that writing was almost a mutual project” (Mitchell 218). Perhaps the two women assimilated each other’s styles. Mitchell quotes a passage of Susan’s writing to demonstrate her “own skill as a writer, partly because many details of her description are circumstantially similar to Emily Dickinson’s” (25). It was because she shared so much in common with Susan and trusted her that she was able to publish some of her poems during her lifetime.

Emily wrote to Sue in one letter, “Except Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than anyone living- To say that sincerely is strange praise-” (qt. in Habegger 614). The note seems to imply that Susan had contributed greatly to Emily’s knowledge and confidence in her writing abilities. Emily allowed Susan to edit many of her poems and “[s]he was always eager to respond to Susan’s criticism” (Bianchi 78). Emily trusted Susan with her writing and subsequently published ten of her poems during her lifetime, some under Susan’s edits and promptings.

 Susan was Emily’s editor and trusted collaborator for most of Emily’s life. Susan understood that Emily’s love was “generous, but it was also exacting and uncompromising, the expression of a powerful ego demanding that that friendship live up to a high standard” (Habegger 265). Emily Dickenson has truly been the “woman in white” who has graced the pages of literary history both unobtrusively while simultaneously making a large literary impact. While her poems are what have made her so immensely popular, it is her letters that truly give some insight into the character of Emily Dickinson. Although she appears to be quiet and demure, her letters and poems show a woman who was strong and emotionally passionate. 

Although the assertion of Dickinson’s lesbianism may be erroneous, Comment posits a valuable point. In critical readings of conversations between males and females, “with or without proof of physical intimacy, readers tend to assume similar writing addressed to a man automatically signifies ‘heterosexual’ desire” (Comment 168). Even if her claims are incorrect, she at least brings valuable insight into the erroneous reading of the author’s letters. “The history of the emotion is everything. The poems live in their own desperation: the identification tag is nothing” (Ciardi 98). While it is important to view the author’s history in light of the text we must be careful in misreading the source material. Susan remained a pivotal friend, mentor, and intimate companion for Emily. Without Susan Gilbert Dickinson, we would not know Emily as well as we do.

Bianchi, Martha, Dickinson. The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

Ciardi, John. The New England Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1, 1952, pp. 93–98. JSTOR,            http://www.jstor.org/stable/363036.

Comment, Kristin M. “Dickinson’s Bawdy: Shakespeare and Sexual Symbolism in Emily Dickinson’s Writing to Susan Dickinson.” Legacy, vol. 18, no. 2, 2001, pp. 167– 181. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25679386.

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Little, Brown and Company, 1960.

Domhnall, Mitchell. Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception. University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.

Faderman, Lillian. “Emily Dickinson’s Letters to Sue Gilbert.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 1977, pp. 197–225. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25088726.

Habegger, Alfred. My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. Random House, 2001.

Hart, Ellen Louise. “The Encoding of Homoerotic Desire: Emily Dickinson’s Letters and Poems to Susan Dickinson, 1850-1886.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 9, no. 2, 1990, pp. 251-272. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/464224.

Morris, Adalaide K. “Two Sisters Have I: Emily Dickinson’s Vinnie & Susan.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 22, no. 2, 1981, pp. 323–332. JSTOR,    http://www.jstor.org/stable/25089144.

Ward, Theodora Van Wagenen, and Dickinson, Emily. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Belknap     Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.

“Wild Nights With Emily: Synopsis.” Wild Nights With Emily, Greenwich Entertainment, 12 Apr. 2019, http://www.wildnightswithemily.com/synopsis/.

What Women Are

The seeds for International Women’s Day were planted in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York demanding shorter working hours, better pay, and the right to vote. A year later, the Socialist Party of America declared the first National Woman’s Day.

International Women’s Day has become a date to celebrate how far women have come in society, politics, and economics, while the political roots of the day mean strikes and protests are organized to raise awareness of continued inequality.

Somehow every year there seem to be some feelings of general discomfort surrounding the day, and I personally think it stems from a lack of understanding of what women are.

I am neither a hard-core feminist (“bra-burners” as they were affectionately called in college) nor support male chauvinism. Female oppression seems to lie somewhere in between misogynists and misandrists.

I believe that women are equal to men, but the reality is that women are not men. That is the crux of the issue.

Equality goes beyond female reproductive organs, estrogen, psychological differences, and sexual preferences and yet somehow these are all still important factors. There is a reason that people choose to identify with different genders instead of being lumped together under the broad banner of “human”. Differences do matter, but they are also the reason why people are treated differently.

So, how do you reconcile obvious differences? Are we really just looking for equity? Why do these differences matter? This is a duality that I believe many people struggle with to reconcile and where some people fail; women deserve honor and respect, but they deserve to be treated like everyone else.

The Philosophical Answer

Since it is not enough to say that women are equals, it is necessary to turn to philosophy for answers. It is often during this time of year that I turn and reflect on the great wisdom of philosopher and saint, Edith Stein, particularly her Essays on Women. While she comes from an overwhelming Judeo-Christian standpoint, she somehow balances the dichotomy.

An article from Catholic Education was particularly helpful in breaking down Stein’s feminist philosophy.

Edith Stein approached the question of whether there is a specifically feminine “psyche”, or whether a woman’s being is determined primarily by her biology. Stein agrees with Aristotelian logic that states that the soul is the form of the body. In essence, this means that the soul is what makes material be a living natural body; without the soul, a body is just a body. Stein concludes that there must be a feminine principle in the soul to determine a body as feminine. Feminity, therefore, is not just a biological construct but also spiritual.

In Stein’s philosophical analysis, she breaks down this spiritual nature in terms of three distinctions.

• Woman partakes in a common human nature.
• This nature is differentiated as male or female.
• Each human person exists as a unique individual.

These distinctions help us comprehend the complexity. Men and women share equally in all the capabilities of human nature, and women express both their humanity and their femininity in an individual way. However, Stein suggests that the individuality of each person, as well as sexual difference, originates in the soul.

Balancing Duality and Mutuality

Humanity was created in a kind of “duality”. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created both; first man and then woman to be man’s “helpmate”. Although their creation seems to set them apart from the beginning, their relationship is marked by a profound “mutuality”.

This is because the reality is that although man was created first, God recognized that, “[i]t is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” Eve completes Adam and consequently all of creation. Although she is “made for Adam” it is not because she belongs to him, rather they are two halves of a whole. Although she is made from his rib (that indicates that they are of the same physicality), there is also something different about woman that serves as a foil to man. They share a common purpose without a hint of hierarchy or subordination. Their purpose is to tend to God’s creation, be fruitful, and multiply.

However, people seem to get caught up in the word “helpmate”. The image Stein uses to help us understand the meaning of this phrase is that of a mirror. What we shouldn’t understand this to mean, Stein says, is that man is somehow sovereign over a woman. In the original language, ‘helpmate’ suggests that there is something deeply common between them; the woman reflects back at the man in his own nature. This is why Adam exclaims, “This, at last, is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!”. It is a statement about their mutuality and a common bond, not about hierarchy.

What Do Women Deserve?

Stein argues that ‘no legal barriers of any kind should exist’ to women entering whatever profession they choose. This was for two reasons: first because it wasn’t clear that some professions were more suited to one sex as opposed to the other. It is a known fact that some people are genetically predisposed to be able to lift hundreds of pounds without issue, while others seem to be more mentally adept. This has nothing to do with gender, some women have more masculine traits, and some men have more feminine traits. You can’t neatly divide the two into separate classes and exclude one gender entirely from an educational or professional experience solely based on genitalia.

Second, there is the danger that legislation doesn’t take into account life experiences. No amount of legal finagling can determine that a woman shouldn’t run a business even though she has spent her entire life in situations that have prepared her to run one. Grief, pain, caregiving, and loss can change a person and form who they are. Men and women are both equal in this.

Are Men the Head?

The woman’s soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.

Edith Stein, Fundamental Principles in Women’s Education

Women have the unique ability to create a new life from within themselves, but this is just one way that women carry this incredible ability. Not all women need to be mothers to lead happy and fulfilled lives, but only a woman can be called to this beautiful vocation. Human beings are social by nature but women form communities around them through friends, family, neighbors, and more.

Stein argues it is a man’s role is to enable the woman’s personality and talents and gifts to come to fruition. Just as women help nurture others, men’s role as the “head” of the family is actually to enable his wife to develop and grow.

If men are the head of the family unit, it is not because they command more authority. If men in any way are “over” women it should be to act as a shield to protect women. Women sustain from within, men from without, and thus they equally share the burden. No one is given precedence over the other.

It is not as though a man needs a woman in his life to be fulfilled, just as a woman doesn’t need a man in her life to be fulfilled, but when the two are brought together the two should work together to create a system that encourages their mutual growth.

What are Women

I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to state that women are beautiful and complex people. I think by embracing how women are different from men we can truly begin to appreciate who women really are.

The world doesn’t need what women have, it needs what women are.

Edith Stein

Into the Mind: Understanding Mental Illness in Literature

If you or someone you love is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK or text NAMI to 741741 to connect with a trained crisis counselor.

Crazy. Disturbed. Psycho. Unstable. Nuts. Mentally disturbed.

These labels have been used before to describe people with mental illness, sometimes by the people who suffer from them themselves. The fact of the matter is that these labels are used to stigmatize mental illness from depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and more. It is easy to “other” those with psychological difficulties because their struggles seem so unrelatable to the average person.

“It is all in your head.”

That is perhaps the single most unhelpful comment that could be made to someone suffering from mental illness. Of course, the issue is mental. It is arguably an easier task to pretend that nothing is wrong or hide the fact that someone is suffering than to confront mental illness head-on because the reality is something is wrong.

There is a common misconception that you can pull yourself up from your bootstraps and fix your mental illness, but the true reality is many times we don’t know where the straps are. While people are no longer placed into straight jackets or lobotomized as they were 60 years ago, mental illness is still not fully understood.

Literature has helped articulate some of these common issues, by putting them in a way that not only allows the reader to sympathize, but the sufferer to say, “Aha! At least someone understands!” This is done in a variety of different ways by different authors, some of who suffered from mental illness themselves.

Belonging

Image Courtesy of TOR.COM

Sometimes these descriptions of illness are straightforward. In her book, The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson created the character of Eleanor Vance, a thirty-two-year-old woman who is desperate to finally find her place in the world after taking care of her invalid mother.

“She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair. Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words.”

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

While the majority of the book follows Eleanor’s perspective, there is something painful and constrained about the way she thinks. Eleanor has been conditioned to be reserved and it painfully shows through the way she desperately wants to fit in and be loved. But Eleanor at least knows that she is trapped and ironically finds herself and her sense of belonging (albeit ambiguously and dangerously) at the haunted Hill House.

There is a telling and chilling anecdote before Eleanore reaches Hill House when she stops at a local diner. Eleanor notices a little girl who refuses to drink milk out of an ordinary glass instead of her favorite “cup of stars.” Eleanor silently cheers her on:

“Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again”

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

While Eleanor desperately wants to belong, she wants to belong as herself, not as a fragment of herself. There is something tragic in how she sees herself in this little girl. Eleanor sees a pattern of silencing which has reduced her to the quiet, shy, and abandoned woman that she is.

Depression

Image Courtesy of blueprint

I had put off reading Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar, for many years because I knew it was a book that would touch at the very heart of depression. I had known that Sylvia Plath had struggled with depression for many years and ultimately lost the battle when she committed suicide at the age of 30. As someone who has also experienced many of the things that are written in this book, it felt as though someone had taken the air out of my lungs in a tight hug.

“I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.”

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Many people who struggle with depression physically cannot be happy. It does not matter if they had a happy childhood, were presented every opportunity in the world for success, or have gotten out of a bad situation. Some people struggle with depression for decades while others experience it as a result of circumstances.

Depression can be crippling. You can feel incredibly stuck which Plath articulates beautifully:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I have purposefully refrained from saying too much about this book because it is an intense story of a woman’s mental decline, but it is a powerful book for those that are willing to read it.

Grief

Image Courtesy of Amazon

Mental illness is not just for the young or those that have had a challenging upbringing. Fredrik Backman writes a beautiful story about an old man who, after a hard life, loses his wife to cancer in his book, A Man Called Ove.

“One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead.”

Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

Ove has always been quiet and introverted. His wife Sonja was the only one who really took the opportunity to really get to know Ove for who he truly was and bring out the best in him. When she dies, he looses the strength to live and attempts multiple times to commit suicide.

“People had always said that Ove was bitter. But he wasn’t bloody bitter. He just didn’t go around grinning the whole time. Did that mean one had to be treated like a criminal? Ove hardly thought so. Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him.”

Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

Finding Order in the Chaos

While there are numerous other examples of mental illness in literature, I guess the broader question is, “why does it matter?”

Representation is important, and for many people struggling with mental illness they question, “what is wrong with me?” While no one should struggle with feelings of ending their own life, questions of self-worth, psychosis, depression, or more, people who suffer from these issues shouldn’t be viewed as abnormal.

Everyone is unique and different but the message of these books has the same message, there is another way. Death is not the answer. Solitude is not the answer. Pain is not the answer. You are not your mental illness. You are not your trauma. You are not your past mistakes.

There is no such thing as a”normal” mind.

Woman on Trial: Speaking for the Unreliable Narrator

Laurie Bembenek became infamous after she was accused of killing her husband’s ex-wife, Christine Schultz, on May 18, 1981, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Christine was bound, gagged, and shot once in the back at point-blank range in her home. Christine’s two children, aged 8 and 11, witnessed the intruder.

The original description of the perpetrator was a man with broad shoulders and a red ponytail, wearing a green top, possibly a jogging suit, and low-cut black shoes. Suspicion and evidence quickly shifted from Elfred “Fred” Schultz onto Laurie. A red wig was pulled from a drainage pipe with fibers that were consistent with the hairs found on Christine’s leg after the crime. Bembenek was arrested on June 24, 1981.

Laurie Bembenek Photo from TMJ-Milwaukee

In March 1982, Bembenek went on trial for the murder of Christine Schultz. Prosecutors alleged she killed Christine with her husband’s .38 caliber pistol because she was angry about the alimony payments Fred was forced to pay his ex-wife. She was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, but she wouldn’t remain behind bars.

After eight years in prison and numerous rejected appeals, Bembenek broke out of Wisconsin’s Taycheedah Correctional Institution on July 15, 1990. Her supporters rallied behind her with the cry of, “Run, Bambi, Run“. But she didn’t run long. She was apprehended three months later in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and was returned to prison amid further protests of her innocence.

Her protests weren’t just for the police and media. Bembenek published a memoir about the case in October 1992 titled, Woman on Trial. The Google description for the book is highly simplistic, only reading:

Lawerencia Bembeck is charged and convicted of murder. But she claims she is innocent — framed.

That description seems so neat and tidy, but things are rarely that cut and dry, especially when the narrator has so much at stake.

Bembeck starts the narrative at the beginning of her childhood from her education, her brief stint at Playboy, failed loves, and her time as a Milwaukee police officer. It is an honest and candid recounting but Laurie reveals some key facts about the police force that makes the reader begin to doubt the legitimacy of their claims against her.

Bembenek in Uniform Photo from DailyMail

Bembenek enrolled in the Milwaukee Police Academy at the age of 21 eager and willing to make a positive difference in the world, but it wasn’t easy. Bembenek talks about inherent sexism within the academy and the department. She graduated sixth in her class, but her success was to be short-lived. Bembenek hadn’t been on the force for more than a month when she was fired in the fall of 1980 after she allegedly filed a false report about an incident in which a friend was arrested in connection with possession of marijuana at a concert. She sued the department, claiming that it engaged in sexual discrimination and other illegal activities.

These allegations about the Milwaukee Police force add credence to her protestations of innocence. She seems to hint that the system has a personal vendetta against her, and there is plenty of evidence to support her claims.

On the night of the crime, Bembenek says that she was alone. No one can substantiate her claim.

There is little doubt that Bembenek had little reason to like the Milwaukee Police Department, but at a certain point we have to be skeptical of what she claims. Was the force really as bad as she claims? Did she really have not clue what happened the night of May 18th? Was she totally innocent of ALL the charges brought against her?

As the saying goes, the best lies have an element of truth. None of what Bembenek writes is too unbelieveable but the lines between truth and fiction are blurred. She may believe totally in her innocence and tries to convince her readers that she right.

That is not to place Bembenek’s book in the relam of Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, but since this book is written about true events, it is at least expected that there is a narrative bias. She has her whole reputation at stake. I think it is fair of Bembenek to want to take control of the story being told around her especially since it being broadcasted on major news channels, such as the Associated Press.

Bebembek Obituary Photo from Legacy.com

Her book is not great literature and this essay is not here to exhonerate her, but I believe Woman on Trial provides a valuable insight into the life and mind of a convicted individual. Bembenek shows that there are real people behind the bars of prison cells, some of which don’t belong there. It would take a completely unsympathetic reader to totally disregard the obvious pain and hopelessness that highlights the book. You WANT Bebembek to be telling you the truth, but even more desperately you want justice.

What happened to Christine Schultz was horrible, but if Laurie is telling the truth, than there hasn’t been any justice served.

Although Bemebenek is convinced of her innocence, unfortunately, there is no clear answer to who exactly killed Christine Schultz.

An article from the Associated Press shows that there is a middling stance. William J. Haese, a Milwaukee County circuit judge, spent 10 months in 1992 assessing the evidence and court records from the original 1982 conviction.″No fair-minded person could conclude that Lawrencia Bembenek was framed.,″ Haese said. ″[However] mistakes [in the investigation] appear to be the result of inadequate procedures and bad judgment instead of intentional wrongdoing.″

In December, after 10 years in prison, Bembenek won her freedom under a complex court deal. She pleaded no-contest to a reduced charge of second-degree murder. Although Laurie was free, it did not silence the protestations of her innocence; even with her sudden death from liver failure in 2010.

Woehrer, Bembenek’s attorney, said it was the dying wish of Bembenek and her parents to clear her name.

So what is the truth?

It is a small comfort to those who want to clear Bembenek’s name or at least want some closure on this case, that the story doesn’t end with her novel or sntaches from her court cases. For those that wish to contribute or learn more, the Shepherd Express is carrying on Bembenek’s voice. One of their recent publications states:

How do you remember Laurie Bembenek? A team of journalists is working on a long-form project looking into the life and story of Laurie Bembenek. The project explores Laurie’s life leading up to the murder case that made her infamous, and the impact the case had on Milwaukee.

The team reporting this story wants to hear from you. Do you have an enduring memory of the Bembenek case? Did you know someone involved? Did you work for the Milwaukee Police Department? Did you attend a rally supporting her escape from Taycheedah?  Do you have a strong theory about what really happened?

Give them a call:  +1 414-301-2683. Leave a message with your name, contact information and a brief summary of what you’d like to share, and the team will give you a call back to hear more. Make sure to leave your contact information (phone number and/or email).

The Shepherd Express

Review: How to Make Love to a Cancer Patient

In my junior year at Wisconsin Lutheran College (circa autumn 2018), we had the immense privilege of hosting C. J. Hribal in a discussion of his book, The Company Car. Hribal is a Marquette University English professor with numerous publications under his belt including titles such as Matty’s Heart and American Beauty. He teaches courses including Novella, Creative Writing, and Modern and Contemporary Fiction.

While the book was impactful, ultimately the most powerful portion of the evening was the dramatic reading and discussion of his recently awarded short story, “Do I Look Sick to You? (Notes on How to Make Love to a Cancer Patient)” (available to read online here).

In an article published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Hribal spoke about the basis for this short story. In 2013, Hribal’s partner and fiancée Donna Decker died from a rare, aggressive cancer of the nerve sheath. While Do I Look Sick to You? is based on his experience as her caretaker, and the emotional intimacy of caring and loving someone dying of cancer, Hribal said he wrote fiction rather than a memoir. This was partly to give himself the necessary distance to write about the subject. The piece is raw but gentle.

The short story won the Goldenberg Prize in Fiction chosen by the Bellevue Literary Review in the Spring of 2017. When Hribal read it to our class of Creative Writers shortly after receiving the award, there was something reverent about the way he read that left many of us with tears in our eyes. 

Hribal managed to capture something that is both beautiful and painful about the process of loving someone. 

As Collin Murray Parks wrote in his book Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (1972), “The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.” Instead of giving up or persisting in loving in the same way the narrator of the story learns to embrace the pain and change how he loves. Sure, at times it is physical, but “making love” includes supporting the woman he loves emotionally, spiritually, physically. Crying when you need to cry, being strong together, being quiet, and fighting the battle together. 

Love is not enough to get through the bad times, but it is the foundation for a strong relationship. Love is what directs each progressive and sometimes irreverent action in the story although it may be masked under the guise of levity, awkwardness, or frustration. Ultimately, it is enough to just be there as the story artfully closes with: 

This is how you make love to a cancer patient:

You pull her towards you as closely as you can and your thumb plays over each of her knuckles and you say, “I love you.”

You say, “I love you.”

You say, “I love you.”

She says, “I know.”

C. J. Hribal

It is a piece that I frequently revisit and that I can’t shake off, even though I first heard it four years ago. I saw bits of myself or my father in the way that the narrator cares for the woman he loves. I saw it in the way my husband cared for his mother. I see it now in the way our families are caring for aging and ailing relatives. And I believe that it is the point. Hribal humanizes and trivializes a topic that seems so intangible and horrible for anyone that has had to care for a loved one. 

Hribal encourages other caregivers to write down or record their emotions and what they’re going through, to help make sense of it. “Otherwise you just kind of get overwhelmed by it.”

Of course, you’ll start writing after you read his piece.

Inciting Incident

With any good story, there is always the ‘inciting incident’. The literary definition of an inciting incident is an event that sets the main character on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative.

Cue flashback.

When you hear the word cancer for the first time, there is an uneasy feeling of dread. When doctors take your mom into a private room and say terminal, that dread turns into a sickening fear. Even though those two words terminal cancer aren’t said to you, it awakens a visceral reaction that makes you question your own mortality and inability. It’s like a tsunami that forces you to bow to its magnitude. 

My mom’s cancer wasn’t graphic, but it crept up in subtle sad ways to remind us that it was still there the end is drawing near: shorter days, more pain, less appetite, more weight loss, and tears that seem to come more easily. Even though you know it is coming, the end always comes too soon.

The movies have it wrong. Death is not some emotional dialogue or dramatic end. Death is a painful stripping away, like when you skin a potato with a peeler. Death is not beautiful. It is raw.

As an eighteen-year-old, I knew that I was too young to lose my mom, but cancer doesn’t discriminate. I helplessly watched my mom’s heart monitor stop in that ICU unit. I felt the life go out of me. Just like that, the person I had never lived without was suddenly no longer living. 

Eighteen is supposed to be when life is exciting and fun. You leave home and come back to mom to find out she’s renovated your bedroom, talk, argue, and get good life advice. Then you get married, have kids, and take care of your parents until they eventually die of old age. That is how the story is supposed to go. Suddenly, I found myself picking out things like a coffin before I had even decided on a college. My mom was under the hill before she had the chance to get “over the hill”.

So, that was the end? 

Wrong.

As I look at all of the World Cancer Day posts today, I’m grateful that so many people can share their stories of struggle and survival. My mother is not one of them.

However, days like today are not about me, but there is a sting where cancer left its mark on my family. It has impacted me in ways that I did not think were possible, both positively and negatively. Death and cancer seem to place a new lens on how you relate to the world.

You see, life goes on despite tragedy. Painful things become less painful, not because you don’t miss them, but because you eventually become stronger than your grief. It is not quite a wound that leaves a scar, it is more like a callous that hardens over time.

The tears still flow, but that is the price of loving. Painful? Yes, but that is my inciting incident.