almost waddling, the hand without the fan at the small of her back.
“And don’t tell me, she’ll get better when there’s a Bourbon back on the throne?”
“We do our best,” I said sharply, turning to face Gautier. “There is much we don’t know. If you’re here to mock, you’re no better than the barbarians who used to jeer at the lunatics in chains.”
“No, no,” he said, in a soothing tone of voice, shading the melancholiac’s cloak. “You’re such a hothead, Gachet. I mean no disrespect. But you have to admit it’s funny. Walking around thinking she’s pregnant with the heir to the throne, two regimes ago.”
“I don’t agree,” I answered shortly.
“It’s not even funny that the regimes changed so quickly?”
“Least of all that. Listen, I cannot laugh at these women. There is so little separating them from us.”
He turned and looked me full in the face. “You always were very sensitive. I mean no disrespect.”
“But you find madness amusing,” I insisted, refusing to let it go.
He didn’t respond right away. Instead he sketched the old woman with the raised hands. It would have been easy to exaggerate her pose in order to mock her. A grimace here, a clenched hand there, and the women would look like hags, somehow less than human. But Gautier’s drawing did not put a distance between the observer and the observed. From the sketches he made at the hospital, he later created a painting called The Madwomen of the Salpêtrière , which was exhibited to great acclaim at the Salon of 1857. People found his portrayal of my patients remarkably sympathetic.
“I don’t find madness amusing,” he finally said, “and I don’t find any of these individuals amusing. But I’m not trying to save them. That may be the difference between us.”
“No,” I admitted, “I can see that you aren’t laughing at them.” I gestured to his drawing. “It would show.”
“Well, then,” he said, teasing the page out from beneath the clip and sliding it into the portfolio. “You can stop protecting them from me, can’t you?” He got up quickly and was gone before I could formulate a response.
I sat there for a while longer, thinking about what he had said. Perhaps I did feel protective of the women, but that did not seem inappropriate. They were vulnerable. With Gautier, I was not worried about their physical welfare. Since he lived next door to me, I knew that he was currently occupied with both a hatter’s apprentice and a barmaid. Surely the two of them (each ignorant of the other) satisfied his lust and delight in intrigue.
I perceived a different kind of vulnerability in the madwomen. Gautier had come close to it when he mentioned the women’s propositions to him. “They know exactly what they’re saying,” he’d insisted, contradicting Dr. Falret’s assertion. Perhaps both men were right, or neither was. Perhaps the madwomen expressed their truest thoughts, regardless of the audience. They had lost sight of what was expected or forbidden and obeyed impulses as they occurred. That, then, was the source of the madwomen’s frailty: They were missing the cloak of convention. Their emotions were laid bare.
I surveyed the women in the courtyard, wondering if this notion applied to them. To the melancholiac sitting on the ground, most certainly. This woman felt her very existence as a burden too heavy to bear. The woman talking gibberish to the sky was also so lost in her own world that she seemed oblivious to the world in which she lived, the way a feverish patient may kick off all coverings and expose his body, unaware of his immodesty.
Was that why I was so uncomfortable with Gautier drawing them? Did it seem like an exposure? Somehow the idea made me cringe, the idea of drawing the mad. It had been done often before, I knew, usually with satiric intent. But I had acquitted Gautier of that. Whence my anxiety?
I turned the page of my notebook and looked at the women. I drew a
“And don’t tell me, she’ll get better when there’s a Bourbon back on the throne?”
“We do our best,” I said sharply, turning to face Gautier. “There is much we don’t know. If you’re here to mock, you’re no better than the barbarians who used to jeer at the lunatics in chains.”
“No, no,” he said, in a soothing tone of voice, shading the melancholiac’s cloak. “You’re such a hothead, Gachet. I mean no disrespect. But you have to admit it’s funny. Walking around thinking she’s pregnant with the heir to the throne, two regimes ago.”
“I don’t agree,” I answered shortly.
“It’s not even funny that the regimes changed so quickly?”
“Least of all that. Listen, I cannot laugh at these women. There is so little separating them from us.”
He turned and looked me full in the face. “You always were very sensitive. I mean no disrespect.”
“But you find madness amusing,” I insisted, refusing to let it go.
He didn’t respond right away. Instead he sketched the old woman with the raised hands. It would have been easy to exaggerate her pose in order to mock her. A grimace here, a clenched hand there, and the women would look like hags, somehow less than human. But Gautier’s drawing did not put a distance between the observer and the observed. From the sketches he made at the hospital, he later created a painting called The Madwomen of the Salpêtrière , which was exhibited to great acclaim at the Salon of 1857. People found his portrayal of my patients remarkably sympathetic.
“I don’t find madness amusing,” he finally said, “and I don’t find any of these individuals amusing. But I’m not trying to save them. That may be the difference between us.”
“No,” I admitted, “I can see that you aren’t laughing at them.” I gestured to his drawing. “It would show.”
“Well, then,” he said, teasing the page out from beneath the clip and sliding it into the portfolio. “You can stop protecting them from me, can’t you?” He got up quickly and was gone before I could formulate a response.
I sat there for a while longer, thinking about what he had said. Perhaps I did feel protective of the women, but that did not seem inappropriate. They were vulnerable. With Gautier, I was not worried about their physical welfare. Since he lived next door to me, I knew that he was currently occupied with both a hatter’s apprentice and a barmaid. Surely the two of them (each ignorant of the other) satisfied his lust and delight in intrigue.
I perceived a different kind of vulnerability in the madwomen. Gautier had come close to it when he mentioned the women’s propositions to him. “They know exactly what they’re saying,” he’d insisted, contradicting Dr. Falret’s assertion. Perhaps both men were right, or neither was. Perhaps the madwomen expressed their truest thoughts, regardless of the audience. They had lost sight of what was expected or forbidden and obeyed impulses as they occurred. That, then, was the source of the madwomen’s frailty: They were missing the cloak of convention. Their emotions were laid bare.
I surveyed the women in the courtyard, wondering if this notion applied to them. To the melancholiac sitting on the ground, most certainly. This woman felt her very existence as a burden too heavy to bear. The woman talking gibberish to the sky was also so lost in her own world that she seemed oblivious to the world in which she lived, the way a feverish patient may kick off all coverings and expose his body, unaware of his immodesty.
Was that why I was so uncomfortable with Gautier drawing them? Did it seem like an exposure? Somehow the idea made me cringe, the idea of drawing the mad. It had been done often before, I knew, usually with satiric intent. But I had acquitted Gautier of that. Whence my anxiety?
I turned the page of my notebook and looked at the women. I drew a
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