Animus in Carcere
It has always been my misfortune to have clothes given to me. Born with a keen sense of propriety and a genuine appreciation of the fitness of things, I have never yet had the opportunity of selecting my own garments, and constantly appear before the world in plumage quite foreign to my habitat — all innate originality and all natural desires thwarted.
During my childhood I quickly learned that the outward, visible husk would never indicate the inward and veritable Me, but instead would present some older sister, some silly doll of a cousin who was held up to me as an example of what a little girl should be; or, worst of all, a shortened, taken-in and made-over aunt, addicted to musty browns. How well I recall the inevitable and dreaded Sunday which overshadowed the latter part of every week; the inevitable Sunday, with its accompanying horror of the best dress! Childish instinct rebelled from the crackling of stiff silk; small plaid legs never frisked beneath the weight of such forbidding gentility; and many were the tears shed among soft, sympathetic ‘company’ blankets, put away so carefully on the deep shelf of the spare bedroom closet.
A place of refuge was the spare bedroom closet, pervaded by faint aromatic smells, filled with old chests and mystery. Even the keyhole did strange things, admitting a little thread of light which, in the darkness, reflected a miniature window upside down. It was in the dusky recesses of this closet that I sought immunity from the brown silk, sought comfort of the little upsidedown fairy window, and, with fierce satisfaction, gnawed a lump of sugar, knowing that the uncanny phosphorescent light induced by this process would illuminate my teeth in a grisly manner. Alas, that modern sugar can produce no such satisfying effect!
The isolation of the closet was powerless to save me when the time of dressing for Sunday school arrived; the voice of authority drew me forth, and as I snatched roughly at hooks and slapped at plaitings, it said firmly, ‘Now, my dear, don’t fuss any more about it. Most little girls would be thankful to own such a handsome silk dress. I’m sure I never had anything half so nice when I was your age.’ Which so engendered revolt in me, that during Sunday school, I made up my mind to keep the large two-cent piece previously destined to foreign missions. It was only the pale horror of my best friend, to whom I had confided my intentions, which led me, after a moment’s breathless indecision, to produce the money when the plate was passed.
The best dress on Sunday was quickly followed on Monday by a maroon cashmere, elaborately trimmed with many scallops made in imitation of shells. There seemed to be hundreds of them; they clung everywhere like barnacles. An elder sister I had, whose height could well support shells; but I bore mine to school shrinkingly, strengthened only by the thought that I could multiply faster than the other girls, and was able to recite the signs of the zodiac. Fearing childhood’s critical eye and cruel tongue, I crept to my desk and busied myself with sharpening pencils, taking surreptitious nips of dry cocoa and sugar conveniently mixed in a small bottle. I felt whispered disapproval and comment closing around me, and before recess a secret note was laid on my desk: ‘None of us girls like your new dress; was it one of your sister’s?’ Even the consolation of humming ‘Aries, Taurus, Gemini’ to myself could not prevent my ears from burning, and my throat ached with longing for the kindly oblivion of the spare bedroom closet.
All this was long ago. Now alas, there is no closet in the world where I may weep for very pity of myself. The counterpart of the creaking silk sand maroon cashmeres is still mine. I am indeed what clothes have made me, everybody and nobody, a chameleon changing my shape and disposition with each change of garment; of what may have been the real Me, there is nothing left.
Do I but wake of a spring morning filled with happy animation, the spirit is exorcised as I come down to breakfast. I feel the weight of years, I am austerely gracious to those about me, eat sparingly as becomes a stout dyspeptic, glance with contempt at the readers of the morning news, and inquire in a throaty voice if anyone has mislaid my pamphlet on the New Life. Presently mother says, ’How you do remind me of your Aunt Cornelia!’ Of course I do. I am Aunt Cornelia in her very own black wool crêpe.
A box arrives by express. Aroint thee, Aunt Cornelia! Away with your gloomy crêpes, your dyspepsia and dull philosophies; I am become young again in cousin Mildred’s dotted muslins and pink lawns. I talk with girlish enthusiasm of football heroes and other noble youths; I love cream-puffs and read Clara Louise Burnham with avidity; little do I realize in my eighteen-year frivolity that I am soon to be divorced.
Yes, once I was actually divorced. Of course, she was not a relative. In our family we do not have divorces; this was merely the rich acquaintance of a poor friend, and I inherited almost directly. At once the muslin ingénue vanished and I became tall and willowy. How glad I was to be tall once more! I was sparklingly vivacious and irrepressibly gay; I grew almost witty, and startled the placidity of staid elders with my cigarettes and mad sallies.
If changes in my character are achieved so readily, the body also is amenable to change, and, with slight murmuring, acquiesces in remodeling and alteration; nothing about me can have stability. Sometimes I have the neck of an Alice in Wonderland, long enough to be swathed in folds upon folds of black satin; again, I have no neck at all, and am conscious of the jog in my collar-bone, the witness of an escapade in childhood. I am long and narrow, I am short and stout; I am broad and athletic, advocating Feminism; I am slight and frail, believing that the woman’s place is in the home. Once, oh, horror! I was almost petite — but, thank Heaven, it split up the back and I emerged like a seventeenyear locust, slightly shriveled.
The difficulties involved in a variability of physique and temperament are not the only difficulties. My sometime rich appearance, the rustling and swishing of silken underpinnings, make my goings out and comings in marked with deference. I am ushered to front seats, my contributions are watched and commented upon with disfavor; shopkeepers offer me eager attentions; I am embarrassed by falling so far short of their expectations. The theatre is attended with depression, my expensive apparel finding inexpensive seats far from its liking; together we protest against the common carrier as we push into an already over-crowded street car. ‘Jackdaw in peacock’s feathers,’ I mutter. ‘Fine feathers never did make fine bird,’ retorts the apparel; and we relapse into mutual antagonism as we take ourselves home.
Discontent seethes within me, yet my friends say, ‘How lucky you are to have all these beautiful things sent you. Just see how odd and Frenchy this is!’ Odd and Frenchy, I suffer that, too; I am the scapegoat for the sins of a New England conscience relaxing in Paris.
I cannot escape my destiny; old yesterday, young to-morrow, who knows? I dream but dimly of who or what I might have been if Fate had withheld her interfering hand and postponed my reincarnations to some more distant world.