Reading Response- Girl, Inturrupted [SPOILER ALERT]

I recently finished the memoir Girl, Inturrupted by Susanna Kaysen and enjoyed it thoroughly while I was away. I'm going to try and elaborate on this single question throughout, though- Why is it called "Girl,Inturrupted"?

In the end of this book, Susanna Kaysen tells a story to the reader a couple of years after she gets out of the hospital about her and her boyfriend (at the time) going to the Alexander Frick Museum:

     "When we got there I recognized it. 'Oh,' I said. 'There's a painting I love here.'

     'Only one?' he said. 'Look at these Fragonards.'
     I didn't like them. I left the Fragonards behind and walked into the hall leading to the courtyard.
     She had changed a lot in sixteen years. She was no longer urgent. In fact, she was sad. She was young and distracted, and her teacher was bearing down on her, trying to get her to pay attention. But she was looking out, looking for someone who would see her.
     This time I read the title of the painting: Girl, Inturrupted at Her Music.
     Inturrupted at her music: as my life had been inturrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?
     I had something to tell her now. 'I see you,' I said.
     My boyfriend found me crying in the hallway.
     'What's the matter with you?' he asked.
     'Don't you see, she's trying to get out,' I said, pointing at her.
     He looked at the painting, he looked at me, and he said, 'All you ever think about is yourself. You don't understand anything about art.' He went off to look at a Rembrandt.


This final part in the book really moved me, and I finally understood why the book's title was what it was. Susanna related to the girl in that painting. She related to her so much that they had some kind of a special connection, and she had such strong emotions towards their connection she cried over it. The little girl in the painting didn't get put in a hospital for having a personality disorder, she got inturrupted at something not so important, like practicing an instrument. But it doesn't matter- Susanna felt that girl's pain, because she knew how it felt to be inturrupted while doing something you love.

Susanna Kaysen was put into a Mental Hospital for two years for a Borderline Personality Disorder. Something that can't really be cured by pep-talks for the day and pills with funny names that make you drowsy, something that Kaysen knew all along. Yet she suffered in that home. She suffered because not only was she stuck there for two years of her life, but because she was stuck there for two years and she didn't even really need to be. Yeah, she had some issues like not talking that much or throwing a tantrum once in a while [not that other people don't], but it's not like you can just go to the doctor and have that fixed. Those things are things that are going to stick with you for life. Kaysen needed priveleges like going outside of her room, or going outside the ward. She needed to be escorted around the hospital if she needed to go to the bathroom or go to the cafeteria to eat. She was banned from the basic things in life like having a boyfriend, or seeing family.

Susanna Kaysen was a girl, inturrupted at doing...life. She was a perfectly happy seventeen-year-old, satisfied with who she was and who she thought she wanted to become. She had a boyfriend, a good family, and a life. The hospital took that all away, in the blink of an eye. It's crazy how you can just go from waking up at noon every Saturday in your own home in your own bed, to swallowing Thorazine- or another crazy pill- every night at nine o'clock because that's the mandatory time for bed everyday.

SONNET

“Untitled” by Sydney DellaRatta

Nature surrounds me like a lullaby

Whispering in my ears and singing songs

When I’m out alone I feel I can fly

But I know that time alone can’t be long

Sometimes I sit and wonder about things

On a hill, or near a tree full of life

While the sound of perfect chiming bells ring

Ridding you of all of your pain and strife

                                                   

Sitting in the forest with none but you

In the unmasked silence that blankets land

I know that I can only be so true

To reach out and give this nature my hand 

When the bright sun goes down, just as it meant,

End the day with a feeling of content

3 Poems

1. What is poetry?
Poetry is thoughts
strung together by words
Imagine flying high in the sky
A swirl of colors
The rhyme and rhythm of
future and past
to make today.


2. What happens to a dream deferred?
The angry waves of despair
sweep it away into the sea of forgotten
It sits there forever
last in line for your thoughts
Drowning in that sea next to nowhere
and no one

It will float in the sky
and never come back
And you won't even know it.


3. Edgar Degas (told by himself)
The tiny little dancer
In her pointed shoes and dress
Looks up to meet my eyes
In a moment of distress

I wonder what she'd think of me
With painted eyes so wide
She'll come and ask me who I am
I'll reluctantly confide.

Edgar Degas- "The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years"

"The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" Degas, 1881

Edgar Degas was born in July of 1834 in Paris, France as the oldest child in his family. Degas' mother died when he was only 13 years old. He came from a wealthy family who wanted him to go into law. Even though he listened to them and did go to law school, he would often skip classes and take art class instead. But not long after, Degas knew that all he wanted to do was paint. Later he became known for painting dancers and ballerinas. Some people say that he always painted young dancers because he had somewhat of an "amorous liaison" with them, always laughing at what they had to say and "excusing them for all they do." But others think he was mainly seen as a misogynist. Later in his life (around 1871) Edgar Degas' eye sight began to slowly get worse and worse. But while his eyesight got worse, he increased the intensity in his paintings and made his art with more passion, like failing eyesight had motivated him to do even more. Degas was near blind by the last couple of years of his life, and by then was very isolated from the world. Wanting his death to be "unnoticed to the world," Degas died in September of 1917.

The piece of artwork I chose was a bronze sculpture done by him in his mid-thirties or so. The sculpture is of a fourteen year old girl who dances, and I'm pretty sure she's actually in the middle of a dance. When making this painting, Degas decided he would try something different rather than just paint like he usually did. This sculpture is modeled in wax and dressed in a real body suit, tulle skirt, stockings, shoes, and a horse hair wig.

I really like this sculpture because of the unusual elements he used to make it. Degas really went outside the boundary line of what people expected him to do, using wax and horse hair instead of oils and pastels. I read somewhere that Degas made sculptures like these because he wanted to "strip the dancers of glamour and reveal them as scrawny adolescents." This is believeable because Degas was known as a misogynist. He felt a somewhat hatred feeling towards women, and I guess wanted to expose them in any bad way possible. Even though in most of his other paintings the ballerinas all look beautiful, these sculptures are rough and harsh on the eye, and bring out a different side to the dancers that you wouldn't see right away. I think that with this sculpture Degas is trying to say that even though he's painted all of these wonderful pictures of pretty ballerinas in shows looking all perfect, this is how everyone is in the real world. He's trying to say that this is the real thing underneath everyone. This little dancer still looks beautiful, but it's raw beauty.




http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/edgardegas.html
http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/degas/degas.html
http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Degas-Edgar.html