Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

To be a woman is a horror I can little comprehend.

I was good for nothing but blood.

My years in that house are alive within me every day.

I thought myself unmarred by the memory, but perhaps I only run from it, and in a moment like this, the lies I tell myself become all too clear.

But sometimes, when my control slips, I think there is only safety and certainty in death.

I wished for some dear relative or acquaintance to take these grim tasks from my shoulders, but there was no one.

I was alone, as in all things. I learned: learned, then, that mastery is the gift that befalls the isolated and unhappy. There was no help forthcoming, so I learned to take complete and total control myself.

he shifts beneath her gaze like a butterfly evading the pin.

No. Henry will not send away my guest. He is wrong. This is my house.

“I am not being naive; you are being unkind.”

my body and I are unwilling prisoners together, and it makes its protest louder than my thoughts can contain.

How I dislike myself sometimes, and my own feeble will that indulges such cruel impulses.

“He is his own person. You should not be responsible for his behavior.”

When Lucifer fell from Heaven, was this how he found Hell? A cold, blank world into which no good thing could be born?

I learned quickly that my wants and needs were unwelcome, too great for any reasonable person to fulfill, and in time I came to agree with her. I was too much, too loud, too emotional, too clumsy, too self-involved. My existence was a burden to all involved with it, and I resolved to never make any demand if I could help it. Then, perhaps, I could be tolerated. Then, perhaps, I could be loved.

Silence didn’t serve me, nor did any pretty speech. All I could do was train myself in her whims and weathers and endeavor to match myself accordingly.

All I had was myself, and the weight of that burden was almost more than I could bear.

If Cora is an English rose, I am milk thistle: a weed, persistent and desperate.

“I am overrun by women. What a pleasure.

same

I think, briefly, about slapping her across the face, and shock myself into silence.

Tell me, do you keep a madwoman locked in the attic?”

I FUCKING LOVE JANE EYRE

Perhaps my capacity for shock is diminished,

if I had taken to bed with my grief, I would have starved there.

He calls me clever, tells them all how lucky he is to have a wife intelligent enough to understand his endeavors and to provide such gracious and insightful support. I understand what is truly important, he says. I am not like other women who demand flattery and coddling. Essential, he calls me, and my heart rises.