2023 Writing Retrospective, Part 2 – Hell Hath No Fury Like a Tree’s Scorn
Another Challenge & The Tossed Ending Finds New Horrific Life
While writing Sacred Mushroom, I had this intense visual idea of the ending – the goddess arriving out of her dimension and eventually being swallowed up by the earth, slowly sinking into the soil inch-by-inch and becoming the mushroom “tree” vibrating with her power. Heavy thoughts there. By the time I wrote the ending of this story, it was too heavy. The tone was not what I wanted it to be. I wrote something else and put it aside.
, ever the instigator, told me that the story for this tossed ending needs to be told. I agreed, but didn’t know what to do with it.Continuing William’s Psychedelic Summer, the next prompt was this uncomfortable image:
What’s happening to this woman to cause her to look like this? How could I connect my tossed ending to this poor woman? William’s challenge was essentially to explore what was outside of this image – who/what is around her causing this kind of reaction. What do the details in her face, dress, and the room tell me?
At first, this one broke my brain. I had my ending, and I had to work backward in the story’s plot to get to the moment in the picture. First, I looked her dress and researched fashion of the prior centuries. She seemed to fall into the late 1800’s for me, and the wrinkled linen looked unkept – she is experiencing something fierce. The style of a blouse/skirt combination hit right for the period, and I settled on 1875. I stepped out of the microcosm of fashion and shifted to the culture women endured at that time. It was not a good time be a woman during this time, if one were to carry any sense of intelligence or strong opinion of any kind. Women were expected to have children, stay passive, and abide the rules set by society. Those who did not follow the rules had a poor outcome, for the most part.
I researched this heavily, and it is dire, folks. The independent woman in me screams at this torrential oppression. The piece I used for this story as a cultural reference is Time magazine’s article, “Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry”. The entire article lit up my mind and it set the tone of what was happening to the woman in the picture. The gist of the article rests in this paragraph, although it gets more detailed and fury-inducing as you keep reading:
“The received medical wisdom of the age was that assertive, ambitious women were unnatural, and therefore sick. For centuries, women’s natures had been thought inextricably linked to their reproductive organs and, over time, this supposedly scientific fact had evolved into the belief that it was natural for women to be fulfilled solely by being wives and mothers. When, in the 19th century, biological-based gender roles came to the fore (work and intellect for men, home and children for women), it was one small step for doctors to declare that any woman who rejected her submissive, domestic role was medically impaired. Said one doctor after visiting a girls’ school in 1858: “You seem to be training your girls for the lunatic asylum.” Women who studied or read—or who simply had minds of their own and a determination to use them—were demonstrating “eccentricity of conduct,” which meant they were “morally insane,” a diagnosis invented by James Cowles Prichard in 1835. They were to be locked away until they conformed to more natural, feminine behavior.”
The woman in the picture, as my mind saw it, was surrounded by men consisting of her spouse and doctors who thought they knew better than her. Take her away to the asylum, they said. The look on her face is one of several facial expressions transitioning from confusion through to rage. I knew this woman, Elsbeth, was considered a poor example of womanly ways – reading, thinking for herself, rejecting her role in society, and refusing to abide her controlling husband. I liked her immediately. The title came to me, “Hell Hath No Fury Like a Tree’s Scorn”. Once this was set, working backwards from the tossed ending to the woman’s picture (which sits in the middle of the story) was smooth. It was easy to think of ways she was bucking the expectations placed on her, even if it was done by subtle means. I started writing the beginning, setting up her state of mind and all the little things she did to piss off her husband. She was careless with it at times, exhausted, and would earn the “worst wife” award of the century. I had a different start in early drafts, but settled on jumping in on a typical moment of her getting caught reading a book for pleasure rather than whatever her husband thought she ought to be doing. I needed several perspectives of life on the farm – the disobedient wife and the much older husband who had low regard for her. The husband had to be a man who was not dangerous at first glance, but stern and grumpy. She is much younger, in an arranged marriage set by her dismissive family. They handed her to him to rid themselves of a daughter who made too much trouble. The troublemaker becomes the insolent indentured servant with a womb.
The story flowed easy from that point. The walk she takes each day was essential to establish the setting and layout of the farm, as the last half of the story uses this geographical space. Despite and because of her rebellious spirit, she is stuck and wishing for a way out. This walk was her daily safe space to think and dream, but her depression took away any fight left in her. No support from her mother (who followed society’s rules and wrote off her daughter’s worries) or her spouse. She is lost in her head. The forest hears her call, in a strange way, and offers her a way out. After all, men were the cause of the disappearance of nature and it was also in despair. Men’s control of society was the cause of this poor woman’s suffering as well. The forest met her every day on her walks, and it knew her despair - they cried for her. A synchronous relationship if you will.
She is horrified by the tree’s invasion of her body. She fiercely prays as it approaches and invades her hand. The prayer is from the era. Once the dust settles and she hears the voice of the tree offering her true freedom, the horror begins. She is primal. The tree is sacred to the native populations before her. This sacred rage (from both Elsbeth and the forest) is the fuel for all the plot action thereafter. Elsbeth is now also elemental, primal. She is no one to mess with. Her transformation in the mirror - amber eyes, skin changes, and power flowing from her very being – reveals that while she is indeed possessed, there’s still some of her mind warning her to keep this change out of her husband’s view, as she knows the asylum could very well be in her future.
The rest of her transformation shows her scared of each shift in her physical being. She wants to run as the power seems too much. She can’t trust it. Once she realizes that she is the agent that spreads the tree’s seeds into the crop rows, it’s over for her. Every attempt to run is shut down, as if she ever had a chance. Acceptance is the only way to true freedom.
By the time Elsbeth is retrieved from the crop rows in the evening, the doctors have arrived to take her to the asylum. Her husband has already betrayed her, but they have no idea she is more powerful than all the men combined. Her body is transforming itself to be a hybrid tree in a human’s carcass. It’s in control now. When danger is detected at the sight of the straight jacket, we are at the moment of the final transformation, the moment of the horrific realization that she will be taken away at her husband’s command. Let the tree hands and branch murder frenzy begin. After taking out her oppressors she walks out of the house, finally free. The last moment of her taking in the night before she sheds her human carcass and merges with the earth is one of victory.
What exactly is true freedom? Is it leaving the body you are born with to elevate oneself to your primal nature? In this story, yes. In today’s day? Wwe elevate ourselves in different ways to feel closer to our true nature – meditation, drugs, love, creativity . . . whatever your thing is – and if you piss off the wrong people, things happen. In this story’s case, the forest wins and spreads it intention to the earth to spread to all other life. What happens then? Doesn’t sound good for men, that’s for sure.
Read the story here:
