Just finished reading Women (1925) by Booth Tarkington, an Indiana writer of considerable note. He took on psychological portraits of some of the women of his time.
Many of his feminine characters were sturdy and strong, but others stumbled. One youngster saw herself through the immature eyes of her peers. She became what I’d call depressed and stayed so until she visited relatives in another town, where her age-mates reacted to her very differently and positively.
A couple of young women fell for young men because they were popular in their social set or because their parents disapproved (for good reasons). Fortunately they did mature and found men of real worth. Tarkington favored happy endings most of the time in this book.
But all did not always end well. He portrayed the subtle slights and self-interested competitions between women, which we identify today as covert bullying. Also he told a powerful tale of one woman who would not see something disturbing because it would be too threatening to her marriage, the center of her life.
What Tarkington saw in his woman of almost 100 years ago can still be seen today in some of us.
I would call this poem “Enjoy Yourself”:
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who loved you
all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
As suggested by my professional liability adviser, I have disabled the settings for comments in order to make less likely the possibility that the blog will be seen as a treatment method instead of as a way to present material that I personally see as psychologically relevant.
Now begins my blog about matters psychological, whether they be psycho-educational, philosophical, or literary. Most entries will be short and hopefully to the point with only occasional ramblings on and on.
finebergpsychotherapy 