Trouble
in Love and Wrong Dissatisfaction
In
1917, Wood did this drawing for the Dada "Blindman's Ball," which, with
its lively, sweeping, cheerful lines, I feel gave useful form to something
which was going on in a not beautiful form in her life (p. 33, I Shock
Myself). The man she was close to at that time, the writer Henri-Pierre
Roche, tried to tell her gently that he cared for another woman. Furious
with him, she left New York and went to Canada. There, she writes:
My
mother was writing me frantically ordering me to come home....The manager
of the theatre was Belgian...Paul....The last thing I had in mind was marriage.
Paul was merely a refuge from loneliness and the torment of my mother....
Though
Paul--she never gives his whole name--kindly took her in when she had no
money and they married, she writes of him with enormous contempt, telling
us "his lack of taste annoyed me." There were certainly things to be criticized
in her husband, but I believe in her drive to use a man to punish her mother
and the world, Wood gave herself what she called three years "of despair,"
a time in which, she also had to do with other men. But a woman can get
a tremendous amount of power looking down on a man. Explains Mr. Siegel:
People...would
rather have a bad time than a good time, because sometimes a good time
makes one feel unimportant and a bad time makes one feel important....A
child...can go to a gathering of thirty children and say, "I was the only
one that didn't like it. I had an awful time!"
In her
consultations we saw that Selena Tyler was in danger of using the man she
was engaged to, Jerry Stein for this miserable victory. Miss Tyler told
us that Mr. Stein had encouraged her very much when she had been laid off
and he had helped her find another job. But she complained he was "complacent,"
"mixed-up," and only loved himself. We said:
You
speak about Mr. Stein with scorn: he's complacent, he uses you....Do you
want to see yourself as a hurt person--always misunderstood? Would it be
hard for a man to meet your hopes, if you didn't tell him what they were? ST.
Oh! Yes!
A woman
can get a spurious satisfaction out of being disillusioned with a man.
We said:
There's
something you want, and Mr. Stein wants it too--to respect himself for
how he sees the world. You should want to encourage him to meet that hope.
ST.
Thank you--this is so useful!
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