It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman must be...

One of the things that pulls me back to Beauport each summer is the unrequited love story. Well, that’s how I craft it in my brain. It isn’t really anything that gets articulated on our scripted tour. It’s something I reference in a push to sell copies of The Beauport Chronicle in the gift shop. (Seriously, a juicy read. Buy it.) But even between those letters dripping with emotion, there are a lot of holes. A lot of missing information.

 Well, I’m theatrical. And… as it turns out I like to craft an emotionally compelling story. So I like my history to be that way. Even though, really, history is just the expired present. And if you ask me, the present – the day to day in which I live – is kind of dull. So I let that theatrical, creative imagination take over when I try to connect the dots of history. I speculate and suppose and think I have the intimacy between two people I’ve never even met, about whom I know a couple dozen pages of detail – all figured out. Actually, it’s just me re-directing my theatrical proclivity for gossip to dead people.

I spend my lunch breaks reading commentary on The New York Times. Recently, there was a brilliant satire from Maureen Dowd on Elena Kagan. The second was an intriguing piece about the Amherst poetess, Emily Dickinson. Both paid particular attention to what label to apply to what excited their loins. 

Both women have holes in their sexual history - i.e. the lack of a marriage license to a man. So let’s fill in the gap shall we? Well… Emily has had an extra century of speculation, when sexual intrigue has gone through a reinvention or two. Hers started off with unrequited love for a man married to another. And hey – even I have to admit – that drips with romantic longing and good heartbreak. But… turns out when shifting the light on the shadows of her former life, we can speculate that longing was for a woman. Because, of course, if a woman doesn’t marry a man… that must mean something. It must mean she never wanted to get married. Which must mean, she didn’t like men.

Well, that is true for some women. I think those love stories are intriguing and romantic enough to the point that I’ll fill in missing gaps with that presupposition. But it’s still gossip. And it’s still presuming that I know the inner workings of a heart that isn’t my own.

There have always been single women. Only in years past they became maids or mill workers or applied their life efforts to some other invisible vocation like nunnery. Where chastity was a requirement, where the absence of a male partner was a mark of virtue. But in those days, women were invisible, non-entities – and died before they were forty. But if they weren’t married by the time they were twenty, they were old maids.

Unless they became a famous writer like Emily Dickinson. Or Charlotte Bronte. Or Jane Austen. None of them married. Okay, Charlotte had some ill-fated affection. And Jane… maybe… but… isn’t that… isn’t that our overly romanticized brains seeking an escape from our ordinary lives? Aren’t we creating a romance where there is none… because those women wrote romance? Maybe, maybe, they were just lonely. And they wrote their brilliant stories to escape that loneliness. 

But being single – without a partner of either gender – does that subtract from them as individuals? Does it make their contributions any less because they aren’t coupled with someone else? Why do we have to know who these women are fucking in order to decide they are accomplished? Does it really make what they do any more or less significant? Would it matter so much if they were men? 

Maybe this annoys me because I am a single woman. In my thirties. A century ago I would have earned that old maid title by now. I don’t spend a lot of time lamenting my solo status. I recognize it is my choice. But I’m sure in the lull of a dull conversation, gossip might speculate my inner motivation. It isn’t that intriguing. That’s why… well, that’s why I like to be theatrical and create stories. Because my life is so boring.

But someday… I hope to be a writer. And maybe what I write will linger long enough in the memories of my readers to make them wonder what … who ignited my heart. I understand that… and yet, I hope that the curiosity doesn’t stop the speculator from just seeing the story I write. From appreciating the skill of my creativity. That they don’t just see it as a by-product of what I do or do not do in my bedroom. 

But… sigh… people will always draw these conclusions. Every time I look at Red Roof I do. But at least I can admit to myself that it is my projection, my own craving for a love story that determines what happened on Eastern Point. It is my mind crafting a morsel of gossip. A morsel with no more validity than the novel sitting on my hard drive.