When We Lost Our Heads

by Heather O'Neill

Some of the trees didn’t behave—they ripped up the streets and stretched the sidewalks in precarious ways. And the trees that didn’t follow the rules found themselves covered in children who perched on all their branches wearing bloomers and tiny black boots and bows in their hair. The children whispered to one another, pretending they were on pirate ships and that there were vicious sharks below. And they clung to the branches of the trees as if for safety, as though the trees were their mothers. And the trees could not help but be domesticated, and found themselves longing for children in their arms.

Louis thought animals were attracted to Marie’s maternal sweetness. But it was more likely they were attracted to her wildness. The animals believed she was one of them.

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.

She held up Jane Eyre. “What did you think of this?” “Oh, I loved it of course,” George answered. “It’s all about being ugly, isn’t it? A girl who everyone thinks is ugly. But that doesn’t bother her. It’s her ugliness that makes her know she’s alive.”

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.”

“Wouldn’t it be the most marvelous thing if we didn’t have to be born from women?” “If we were found in ostrich eggs. You could put the egg on a pillow under a lamp. And when it cracks and the human came out, they wouldn’t belong to anyone.”

Because what a triumph it was for any woman to have time for herself—and to be able to do something that benefitted her imagination alone.

If he had men as his opponents, he would not be afraid in the same way. Men would fight with their fists. They would make their anger known. He could recognize the signs of an angry man. He could also understand what made them angry. But he didn’t know what magic witchcraft women were capable of. Women were capable of anything.

She inscribed the birds she spotted in her great notebook. When she was all by herself chasing butterflies and collecting insects, she became distracted to such an extent she forgot her sadness. If she could somehow have devoted herself to that world, perhaps she could have found a way out of her depression. But everybody kept interrupting her.