So I want to explain why Una Hawthorne is important to
me. I came across her after I read
The Scarlet Letter. She was
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter, and she was isolated in her youth for behaving
more masculine than feminine. She was also pressured from a young age to find a
husband, but apparently had no desire to marry. Eventually she was diagnosed with hysteria, spent years in
deep depression, and died at age 33.
Stories about hysteria interest me because of their tension. It reminds me of the uncomfortable line
between crying and laughing. A
book project I made a few years ago called, “I never liked you anyway” was made
in the spirit of that line. I collected stories from friends about that precise
moment. And when I try to imagine
a hysterical woman, the only thing I can come up with is a woman who doesn’t
know whether she should cry or laugh. Which is what led me to feeling so
certain that Una Hawthorne was not hysterical. She was restrained from expressing herself entirely, and she
went a little bonkers, is all.
After reading all the vague details of her childhood, I could imagine
her so clearly.
I can only speak for myself here, but some of the smartest women I have had the privilege of knowing are totally nuts. Not because they’re being restrained by men, but because every day there is a choice made to prioritize parts of themselves, and choosing which of those parts the world should see. A woman can be made up of a million different traits, but if she’s not prioritizing her appearance, then she’s risking something.
What I’m trying to say is that these things bring women to
confusion because it’s like a loss of identity. After I read about Una, I saw that she must have been present
in my work for a long time.
