Cannibals
"Tea in the Bedsitter" by Harold Gilman is in the Huddersfield Art Gallery. An image is available on www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/tea-in-the-bedsitter-21626
Pauline noted the tension in the body language. The rest only needed a little arranging.
Here you see the scene where my mother came to tea. My father was ill and unlikely to recover, and it was my duty to return home to look after them. It was a moment that threw a harsh spotlight on things that I had begun to feel, not wanting to, and shewed clearly that they were true.
My parents are well respected members of the church and neighbourhood, and for a long time their talk of God and of duty and obligation and honour thy father and thy mother seemed normal, even natural, until I began to ask myself why I smiled so seldom. The obligation seemed to go one way, not two, and I heard no mention of joy and growth and exploration and autonomy. I do not say that she asked me to go back with her. It was my duty.
My brother saw it first. He is making a career on the other side of the country. This caused no comment, for young men are expected to make their way in the world, and there was always me, the daughter, to fill my proper place in their house. My home, they called it.
Whoever you are, your parents were not perfect. It may be that they cared for you lovingly and well, only making such mistakes such as we are all subject to, or perhaps they had pitifully limited vision, but still behaved as well as they knew how. But really for one person to take the selfhood, the freedom of choice, the chance of finding love, the youth of another is equivalent to eating them. She was blissfully unaware of this. Had she been asked, she would have said that she loved me, of course she did.
As I said, I had begun to suspect that all was not well, that in fact I was shriveling. So I got a place of my own, and a job, quite a good job too, so that I could afford it. It is not much perhaps, a bedsitter, and in one sense it is not mine. I did not choose the decoration. I should have had it lighter, even though there is beauty in the deep colours too. But it is mine. I invited mother to have tea with me. I answered the door. I gave her the address when she asked me. I should be more cautious now.
You cannot compromise with cannibals. They might gobble an arm or a leg, but they do not know how to stop, not until they have devoured all of you. One resists the idea that one’s parents are cannibals. Do you think my language is intemperate? It is as demure as I am. It is the thing described that is intemperate. If I were to kill them, Society would say that I was a bad girl and would hang me. But they are murderers, and worse than murderers, for I would kill their bodies, but they would kill my soul. They would suck back from me the life which they gave me in the first place. There is not even a law against it. If you could see the maimed and shriveled souls there soon would be. I have no reason to think that my experience is unique.
It is not that I fear death. I fear old age, leering at me across the decades to come, complacently certain that it will kiss and embrace me just for the waiting. I want to live first!
Perhaps their system is that I care for them, and in turn my children look after me. Even if I could be a cannibal myself, you can see the fallacy, for under that system I never shall have children. They begin to appear to me as generational cuckoos, sucking the life from the generations past and to come. Is there any way of being human, I wonder, other than under the jungle law of eat or be eaten? I very much want to find out, and know I never shall if I go back with her.
I am insecure about my appearance, but so are many other girls, and we cannot all be plain! If I am dispassionate about it, the girl in the mirror is not bad looking. You can see from the picture how my circle of acquaintances is growing. How carefully and lovingly the artist has depicted me and the room and the furniture and the tea things, and how schematically he has painted my mother. For he listened to me with interest, and is welcome in my room at any time. He never met my mother. In a strange way her inability to see me as an individual, with rights, before whom she had obligations, even the basic ones of acknowledgement and respect, was reflected back on her in the lack of a face.
Now that I have seen through her behaviour, her power is broken. All she can do is talk. She does a great deal of that, but at the end of it, all I have to do is nothing. And although I imagine that there are maimed and shriveled souls everywhere, I know for a fact that missing parts can be re-grown, far more easily than with bodies, and shriveled souls can fill out again, and thrive and flourish.
Pauline noted the tension in the body language. The rest only needed a little arranging.
Here you see the scene where my mother came to tea. My father was ill and unlikely to recover, and it was my duty to return home to look after them. It was a moment that threw a harsh spotlight on things that I had begun to feel, not wanting to, and shewed clearly that they were true.
My parents are well respected members of the church and neighbourhood, and for a long time their talk of God and of duty and obligation and honour thy father and thy mother seemed normal, even natural, until I began to ask myself why I smiled so seldom. The obligation seemed to go one way, not two, and I heard no mention of joy and growth and exploration and autonomy. I do not say that she asked me to go back with her. It was my duty.
My brother saw it first. He is making a career on the other side of the country. This caused no comment, for young men are expected to make their way in the world, and there was always me, the daughter, to fill my proper place in their house. My home, they called it.
Whoever you are, your parents were not perfect. It may be that they cared for you lovingly and well, only making such mistakes such as we are all subject to, or perhaps they had pitifully limited vision, but still behaved as well as they knew how. But really for one person to take the selfhood, the freedom of choice, the chance of finding love, the youth of another is equivalent to eating them. She was blissfully unaware of this. Had she been asked, she would have said that she loved me, of course she did.
As I said, I had begun to suspect that all was not well, that in fact I was shriveling. So I got a place of my own, and a job, quite a good job too, so that I could afford it. It is not much perhaps, a bedsitter, and in one sense it is not mine. I did not choose the decoration. I should have had it lighter, even though there is beauty in the deep colours too. But it is mine. I invited mother to have tea with me. I answered the door. I gave her the address when she asked me. I should be more cautious now.
You cannot compromise with cannibals. They might gobble an arm or a leg, but they do not know how to stop, not until they have devoured all of you. One resists the idea that one’s parents are cannibals. Do you think my language is intemperate? It is as demure as I am. It is the thing described that is intemperate. If I were to kill them, Society would say that I was a bad girl and would hang me. But they are murderers, and worse than murderers, for I would kill their bodies, but they would kill my soul. They would suck back from me the life which they gave me in the first place. There is not even a law against it. If you could see the maimed and shriveled souls there soon would be. I have no reason to think that my experience is unique.
It is not that I fear death. I fear old age, leering at me across the decades to come, complacently certain that it will kiss and embrace me just for the waiting. I want to live first!
Perhaps their system is that I care for them, and in turn my children look after me. Even if I could be a cannibal myself, you can see the fallacy, for under that system I never shall have children. They begin to appear to me as generational cuckoos, sucking the life from the generations past and to come. Is there any way of being human, I wonder, other than under the jungle law of eat or be eaten? I very much want to find out, and know I never shall if I go back with her.
I am insecure about my appearance, but so are many other girls, and we cannot all be plain! If I am dispassionate about it, the girl in the mirror is not bad looking. You can see from the picture how my circle of acquaintances is growing. How carefully and lovingly the artist has depicted me and the room and the furniture and the tea things, and how schematically he has painted my mother. For he listened to me with interest, and is welcome in my room at any time. He never met my mother. In a strange way her inability to see me as an individual, with rights, before whom she had obligations, even the basic ones of acknowledgement and respect, was reflected back on her in the lack of a face.
Now that I have seen through her behaviour, her power is broken. All she can do is talk. She does a great deal of that, but at the end of it, all I have to do is nothing. And although I imagine that there are maimed and shriveled souls everywhere, I know for a fact that missing parts can be re-grown, far more easily than with bodies, and shriveled souls can fill out again, and thrive and flourish.