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# 2025-09-27 - The Story of Mary MacLane
(IMG) Mary MacLane photo
I learned of this book from a Project Gutenberg post. Reading the
book has been a pleasant surprise. The writing felt nourishing
because it gave me "food for thought" to ruminate on. MacLane
compares herself to Marie Bashkirtseff. Oddly enough, she brought
Opal Whiteley to my mind.
(TXT) Marie Bashkirtseff
(DIR) The Story of Opal Whiteley
Mary MacLane and Opal Whiteley both grew up in remote locations.
They both felt lonely and misunderstood. They were both literate and
highly intelligent. They were both truly original. Mary's self
portrayal reminds me of the goth subculture, and she could be taken
as a shadow side from the same material that Opal was cut from.
Where Opal Whiteley grew up in beauty, Mary MacLane was a teenager
in a barren mining town where sulfur gasses killed all plants and
the flow of water was highly artificial and polluted. Where
Opal wrote about heaven, Mary wrote about the devil.
The author makes many literary references, and writes about eating
well. I get the feeling that though she grew up feeling alienated
and lonely, her basic needs were met, she had a good education and
a comparatively privileged existence.
Mary's wooden heart, strong young woman's-body, and starved soul
were on fire. The fire of her genius gave her uncommon knowledge,
but it did not give her happiness. What Mary needed more than
anything else was human tenderness and love. She did not need harsh
treatment nor to be mocked. To spoof her book would be to miss its
point.
> I wonder as I write this Portrayal if there will be one person to
> read it and see a thing that is mingled with every word. It is
> something that you must feel, that must fascinate you, the like of
> which you have never before met with.
>
> It is the unparalleled individuality of me.
What follows are quotes, with my comments in square brackets.
* * *
Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly an outlook as one
could wish to see. It is so ugly indeed that it is near the
perfection of ugliness. And anything perfect, or nearly so, is not to
be despised.
The little wild creature wanted to be loved; she wanted something to
put in her hungry little heart.
But no one had anything to put into a hungry little heart.
When my Happiness is given me, the Unrest will still be with me, I
doubt not, but the Happiness will change the tenor of it, will make
it an instrument of joy, will clasp hands with it and mingle itself
with it,--the while I, with my wooden heart, my woman's-body, my
mind, my soul, shall be in transports. I shall be filled with
pleasure so deep and pain so intense that my being's minutest nerve
will reel and stagger in intoxication, will go drunk with the
fullness of Life.
The art of Good Eating has two essential points: one must eat only
when one is hungry, and one must take small bites.
[The author describes eating a single olive deliberately and
sensually. It reminds me of another story i read about tantrics
savoring one single raisin.]
Once more is my tongue electrified. And the third stage in my
temporary transformation takes place. I am now a gross but supremely
contented sensualist. An exquisite symphony of sensualism and
pleasure seems to play somewhere within me. My heart purrs. My brain
folds its arms and lounges. I put my feet up on the seat of another
chair. The entire world is now surely one delicious green olive. My
mind is capable of conceiving but one idea--that of a green olive.
Therefore the green olive is a perfect thing--absolutely a perfect
thing.
I have acquired it by means of self-examination, analyzing...
I have lived my nineteen years buried in an environment at utter
variance with my natural instincts, where my inner life is never
touched, and my sympathies very rarely, if ever, appealed to. I never
disclose my real desires or the texture of my soul. ... When one has
played a part--a false part--all one's life, for I was a sly, artful
little liar even in the days of five and six; then one is marked. One
may never rid oneself of the mantle of falseness...
In Dublin Gulch, which is a rough quarter of Butte inhabited by poor
Irish people, there lives an old world-soured, wrinkled-faced woman.
She lives alone in a small, untidy house. She swears frightfully like
a parrot, and her reputation is bad--so bad, indeed, that even the
old woman's compatriots in Dublin Gulch do not visit her lest they
damage their own. It is true that the profane old woman's morals are
not good--have never been good--judged by the world's standards. She
bears various marks of cold, rough handling on her mind and body. Her
life has all but run its course. She is worn out.
Once in a while I go to visit this old woman--my reputation must be
sadly damaged by now.
I sit with her for an hour or two and listen to her. She is extremely
glad to have me there. Except me she has no one to talk to but the
milkman, the groceryman, and the butcher. So always she is glad to
see me. There is a certain bond of sympathy between her and me. We
are fond of each other. When she sees me picking my way towards her
house, her hard, sour face softens wonderfully and a light of
distinct friendliness comes into her green eyes.
Don't you know, there are few people enough in the world whose hard,
sour faces will soften at sight of you and a distinctly friendly
light come into their green eyes. For myself, I find such people few
indeed.
So the profane old woman and I are fond of each other. No question of
morals, or of immorals, comes between us. We are equals.
I talk to her a little--but mostly she talks. She tells me of the
time when she lived in County Galway, when she was young--and of her
several husbands, and of some who were not husbands, and of her
children scattered over the earth. And she shows me old tin-types of
these people. She has told me the varied tale of her life a great
many times. I like to hear her tell it. It is like nothing else I
have heard. The story in its unblushing simplicity, the sour-faced
old woman sitting telling it, and the tin-types,--contain a thing
that is absurdly, grotesquely, tearlessly sad.
You may think evil of me before you have finished reading this. You
will be very right to think so--according to your standards. But
sometimes you see evil where there is no evil, and think evil when
the only evil is in your own brains. [Projection.]
I feel in the anemone lady a strange attraction of sex. There is in
me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of her, arises and
overshadows all the others. ...
Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in
love?
It is admirable and beautiful beyond expression to sacrifice and give
up and wait for love of that good that gives in itself a just reward.
And only next to this is the throwing to the winds of all restraint
when the good holds itself aloof and gives nothing. ... Why do we not
take what we want of the various temptations? It is not that we are
virtuous. It is that we are cowards.
There is nothing in the world without its element of Badness. It is
in literature; it is in every art--in pictures, sculpture, even in
music. There are certain fine, deep, minute passages in Beethoven and
in Chopin that tell of things wonderfully, sublimely bad.
I long to cultivate my element of Badness. Badness compared to
Nothingness is beautiful.
Oh, for a human being, my soul wails--a human being to love me!
Oh, to know--just once--what it is to be loved!
Long and often as I've sat in intense silent passion and gazed at the
red, red sunset sky, I have never then felt this sense of the divine.
It comes only through humor.
It comes only with things like an Italian peddler-woman in a black
satine wrapper and an ancient cape.
I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate /feeling/.
I feel--everything. It is my genius.
author: MacLane, Mary, 1881-1929
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Mary_MacLane
LOC: PZ3.M222 S4 PS3525.A2655
(DIR) source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/4/3/6/9/43696/
tags: biography,ebook,non-fiction
title: The Story of Mary MacLane
# Tags
(DIR) biography
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) non-fiction