When We Lost Our Heads

by Heather O'Neill

Marie seemed not at all concerned by the amount of love she had to give. Her reach was enormous. She had the ability to make large groups of people feel loved by her. Her affection was like sunlight, and it could fill an entire room.

Every declaration of love is a magic incantation. It casts a spell on your future.

That was perhaps a definition of innocence: not knowing what one was capable of.

Perhaps the winter didn’t have anything to do with temperatures. Perhaps it had to do with distance and loneliness.

The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman’s body, you would discover it was soaked in shame.

There was a drop of women’s bitterness in anything of beauty. The headmistress nodded. The girl had realized that a smile is something forced. It is not for women to enjoy. A woman ought to be pleasing to others, even when she was at her most miserable.

“How do we deal with women’s suffering?” Jeanne-Pauline asked. “We say there must be a point to it, but isn’t the point of being human to push back against suffering? If we don’t push back, then we aren’t human beings really. There are other ways to testify to injustice than silence and pain.”

“Don’t think of melancholia as passive. Melancholia is a state of deep thought one’s body enters into when it is looking for a way to act.”

“The reason women aren’t free is because they haven’t shed the blood that allows them to be free. No matter how vehement and radical our words are, no one seems to listen. We need blood. Every revolution needs blood. Words don’t mean anything unless they are followed by actions. A woman’s freedom is the most important thing in the world. It is the end that justifies all means. One day you will figure out how to be free.”

“What do you think? Boys never learn anything, do they? They are always going to be stronger than us. That’s the nature of being a girl, isn’t it? You’re always at the mercy of the whole world.” “I’m not.” The girl shrugged. “You are though.”

“It’s interesting. Women are either one thing or the other. I am indisputably wicked and terrifying, and she is sheltered and pure. And yet we are guilty of exactly the same crime. Can’t we all just be a bit of both? I don’t think I was the one who came off the worse in the bargain, to be honest. I rather prefer being accused of being rotten. I think it has really allowed me a greater scope of freedom. I thank the heavens every day that I’m unmarriageable.

Once a woman has been off on an adventure, they are completely unknowable. They are unpredictable.”

How wonderful, Sadie thought, to have nothing to lose.

How could it be possible that grief was still there, after all these years, fully formed, waiting for him?

A parent’s death was inevitable. The heart knew how to deal with it. Even if it was the most beloved parent in the world, the heart knew how to deal with it. But when someone you love abandons you, a sort of madness sets in. And to be honest, anything painful can be pleasurable if it distracts from the madness.

The girl who had loved her father and had been so close to him had also died. She grieved the girl more.

The world is terrified of a certain type of monstrous woman. That’s why they invented these ideas of ugly and beautiful. They say we are beautiful now because we are young and stupid. But the more we accomplish and have to say, the uglier we are described as being.”

What must it be like to be admired and revered entirely for being yourself?

Mary thought about how language could crush a person. Particularly women. She recalled what it was like to be spoken down to. It hit you on the head like a hammer hitting a nail until you were nothing, only a piece of dirt on the ground.

It’s a wonderful thing. I’ve come to love being independent.”

Every family has a seed of its own destruction in it.

They loved that they were allowed to hate her.

“There are moments in time when the social hierarchy turns upside down. And those who were at the bottom are now suddenly at the top. We are at such a moment now. You should ask for what you really want. You should speak up now. There’s a megaphone already up to your mouth. People will hear you.”

To be alive is to be in a constant state of revolution. These girls would all grow up and come for the vote.