Dear Women,
Have you ever read The House of Mirth? I think maybe that Edith Wharton wanted me to feel, at least in part, that Lily Got What Lily Deserved, and then died happily ever after in redemptive glory. I just couldn't, though. I felt like Lily was sold down the river before she was born; I felt like I did one day when my friend was really tired and unable to cope, and she was asking her fool boyfriend for some help, in an indirect but utterly desperate way, and this person, this Man acted like he didn't understand her need, when even a stranger across a room could have read it.
Perhaps Edith Wharton just wrote it, and said it like it was, and left the figuring out what to feel for Lily Bart to the reader. There is also a chance, and this disturbs me greatly, that romanticizing the suffering of tragic women leads to acceptance of the Patriarchy, and what am I to do with that, I ask you?
The thing is, people need help from each other, all the time, for lots of things they cannot cope with alone. Let us know that, and let us offer help and seek help from each other as often as we can; taking care not to romanticize our suffering, and if we cannot, then we will keep on waiting for the man.
