by Megan Chance
It was as if I hadn’t spoken. William hurried away, leaving me standing alone with Dr. Seth beneath the glare of streetlights and the icy brush of snow.
Dr. Seth turned to me. “Your husband insisted I come to your box. Otherwise I wouldn’t have surprised you that way. Apparently your father had some desire to meet me.”
“He thinks you’re a charlatan.” I had not meant to say the words, but he waved them off impatiently.
“He’ll be impressed, then, when I cure you.”
I forgot my discomfort in a rush of gratitude, and then was startled that he should so easily change my emotions. “When you cure me?”
“Yes, of course.” He stepped closer. “But we’ve discussed this before, Mrs. Carelton. I can help you only if you trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
“Then why did you leave so hastily when I came to your box? What is it you’re afraid of?”
He was too close. I took a step back. “Why, nothing.”
Dr. Seth held out his hand. “Come,” he whispered, and I felt helpless against him. I put my hand in his, and his fingers crept up, circling my wrist, pressing lightly, almost a caress. “Now, Mrs. Carelton, shall we find out what your secrets are?”
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the carriage, dimly lit from the streetlamps shining outside. Dr. Seth was sitting across from me, his arms crossed over his chest. William and my father were nowhere to be seen.
Notes from the Journal of Victor Leonard Seth
Re: Mrs. C.
January 26, 1885
During the last few days, I have happened upon Mrs. C.’s husband quite by accident. He has been most grateful about my treatment of his wife, and I have allowed him to put forth my name for inclusion in the Staten Island Athletic Club. I had not seen the harm in this before tonight, when our meeting ended in his taking me to his family’s box at the opera. Mrs. C. was there and was quite obviously distressed by my presence. She left the box in a panic. I reassured her husband and the others that, as a doctor, I could help with her admitted headache. I followed her outside, where she stood shivering in the snow, and used hypnosis in an attempt to soothe her.
Again she went into trance so easily. Again her unconscious seemed to find relief in relinquishing control. I have always believed that hysteria lies in egoism and willfulness, but tonight I had the opportunity to observe the etiology that underlies Mrs. C.’s fits, and I begin to question my own hypothesis.
Mrs. C. is depressive and highly strung. The events that triggered the attack were my unexpected arrival at their box, and her attempt to conceal her discomfort over the true nature of our relationship. I begin to think that in her case, hysteria is a form of self-blindness. Is it possible that I am mistaken—that Mrs. C. does not understand herself what her motives are or what she desires?
I was struck by the question and very much wished to know the answer.
I am astounded at the result. Though I intended to start with a simple questioning, Mrs. C. went far, far beyond my expectations in revealing an obviously painful and traumatic event. Under hypnosis, she is as open to me as she was closed before. In the trance state, details of this incident seemed as clear to her as the day they occurred, and it was evident from her reactions that she was experiencing that day as if she were living it in the present moment.
After establishing that she was deeply in trance by use of catalepsy and analgesia, I embarked on my quest for answers.
S: Imagine a clear day, the sound of the ocean upon the shore.
She calmed immediately. It was clear the image had resonance for her.
C: Yes. The ocean.
S: Is this an ocean you recognize?
C: Bailey’s Beach.
S: In Newport. Do you like this place?
C: I do. I love it there.
S: Why is that?
C: William proposed to me there.
I was surprised that she had expressed such a sentiment. In most of the female neurasthenics at Bernheim’s school in Nancy—especially in the upper classes—a proposal of marriage may be satisfying: A woman has won the man whom her family supports, or who has the financial security she craves. The proposal may even be a relief. But it is rarely an occasion for joy or tenderness, as Mrs. C.’s tone implied hers was.
S: You wanted him to propose?
C: Yes. Oh, yes.
S: The last time we spoke of this, you said that your father had forced William into your arms. Isn’t that true?
She spoke reluctantly.
C: He was my father’s choice.
S: And you didn’t resent that?
C: I did . . . and I didn’t.
S: What do you mean by that?
C: It was another choice Papa made for me [there was bitterness in her voice], but I suppose in the end it didn’t really matter. I loved William.
S: Loved. Do you still love him?
She paused here and then said, “I cannot make him happy.”
S: That is not the question I asked. Do you still love him?
She bowed her head and said nothing. I assumed she was crying and had thought to calm her again when she looked up with dry eyes.
C: Sometimes I do.
S: Not all the time?
C: [obviously saddened] No.
S: When is it that you don’t love William?
At this point she did begin to cry.
C: I don’t know.
S: You said you cannot make him happy. How so?
C: Because I cannot . . . conceive.
S: Children would make William happy, then?
C: Yes.
S: And making William happy is what you want?
She was crying so that she could not speak. She only nodded.
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 circumstances do not wish to visit those circumstances 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: B
ut 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 embarrassing 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 courtship 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 passionately? Who experience every moment?
S: Is that what you wanted, then? To pursue moments?
C: To pursue life.
S: And you can’t pursue life within your marriage?
Here Mrs. C. began to cry as passionately as she had spoken. The sobs seemed to come from deep within her chest. “Rest,” I said, and she immediately quieted.
To see such emotion in this woman was fascinating. It explained much that has puzzled me. Her hysteria no doubt comes from her unconscious confusion—to long for something and be denied that longing with no hope of ever achieving it. I began to believe that despite the inclinations of her sex, perhaps she truly does not want children, that such a circumstance might drive her to deeper levels of despair. I also understood why her unconscious mind did not grasp my suggestions urging calm. To be at peace is not what she wants. To be like other women is also not her desire, as much as she protests that it is. It is clear that she does not want to be well in this world her father and husband have made for her, a world as a wife and mother, without the passion that exists within her, a passion that has no outlet but hysteria. Any suggestion I make that more firmly urges her adaptation to this world may not be successful.
Failure is not what her husband wants; it is not what she claims to want. And yet I cannot deny the temptation such knowledge presents. In Mrs. C., I am reminded of the old questions: How much influence does the unconscious mind have over the will? How much control? If I discovered the wellspring of the inner life this woman claims not to want, and I planted the correct suggestions in her unconscious mind, would they overcome her reason? Her will?
Fascinating, but impossible that such an opportunity for research exists in this woman. This woman who is everything I’ve dismissed so contemptuously before now. I know I cannot pursue this. It is irresponsible. If my suspicions are correct, the passion she tries so hard to hide and control would ruin her were it brought to light. She would no longer be able to exist within her world, and I have no faith she could exist out of it.
Yet what could it harm to learn more?
Chapter 9
Where is my husband?” I asked Dr. Seth.
He looked at me with grave eyes. “No doubt he’ll be here soon. The opera is nearly over.”
I remembered then. Seth’s visit to our box, my escape. What I did not remember was anything after that.
“You hypnotized me,” I accused.
He didn’t deny it. He merely shrugged.
“What suggestion did you put in my mind this time?” I asked. I felt violated, as if he had somehow seen me unclothed and taken an image without my permission.
“I planted no suggestion,” he said simply. “You will not yield to me, Lucy, and I cannot fight you. We are doomed to failure.”
I was not sure which to be more stunned by, his admission of failure or his use of my given name.
“What do you mean, we’re doomed to failure? Do you mean you can’t cure me?”
“I mean you don’t want to be cured.”
“But I do. I do. I cannot go on this way.” I was desperate, my anger forgotten in the realization of what I must tell William, at what would happen to me. Another failure. Dr. Seth was our last hope, and even he could not mend the break within me. “But you can’t give up so soon. Why, we’ve barely tried!”
“I no longer believe that you want what your husband hired me to bring you.”
“But I do. I want to be well.”
“Ah.” He uncrossed his arms and hesitated. I had the sense he was deciding something. He said, “There is a difference, Lucy, between being well and being alive.”
I stared at him in confused silence. “I—I don’t understand.”
His eyes lit with a strange intensity that had me shrinking against the leather seat. He seemed driven by an excitement that animated him as he leaned toward me, so close I smelled the sage and citrus of his shaving soap. “Do you remember what we discussed while you were in a trance state?”
“N-no.”
He put his hands on my forehead, fingers and thumb pressing into my skin. “You can remember,” he said.
It was odd; suddenly I could. I remembered his questions, I remembered crying. I remembered the day my father took my paints from me, throwing them into the street, his words; and then later, William’s compliance.
I recoiled from Seth’s fingers, appalled, feeling violated again. “You stole my memory,” I whispered.
“Not stole,” he corrected. “You told me freely. I did not force you. I believe you wanted me to know.”
“It was a long time ago. I was very young.”
He hesitated. “Lucy—”
“I have not given you permission to call me that.”
“Lucy, tell me something. These things you say you want: to be like other women, to be at peace—are you certain they would make you happy?”
I was filled with a terrible fear. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“You’ve led an entire life ruled by a will not your own,” he said. “Your father’s will, your husband’s will. What if you could be the woman you were meant to be? What if you could escape from this”—he gestured futilely about the carriage—“this dull acquiescence?”
I stared at him. “Surely you’re joking. My father would be appalled if I were such a woman. William would leave me. My friends would turn from me. It would destroy me. Surely you must understand that. I came to
you for help. I want to be like everyone else.”
He stared at me for a long moment, and then he said, “I’m not sure we can achieve that, Lucy.”
“Stop calling me Lucy,” I ordered. My voice was harsher than I intended. “My husband is paying you a goodly sum of money to make me well.”
“Which I can do only if you’re honest with me.”
“Very well.” I nodded. “I’ll be honest.”
At that he smiled, but it was a disturbing smile, one I didn’t trust. I considered taking back my words, telling him it would be better not to see him again. But then I thought of William, of the asylum, and they filled me with such a terrible desperation that I said, “I don’t want to fail, Dr. Seth. Please. I know you can help me. You must help me.”