American Gothic

At night, the stone lions in front of the museum’s doors kept watch. Their eyes scanned up and down Michigan Avenue to make sure no one approached the building. The paintings at the Art Institute, after all, deserved their rest. Rather, the characters in the paintings deserved rest and privacy. All day long, they had been probed, analyzed, discussed, misunderstood. It was very frustrating that gawking visitors couldn’t understand their truths. Couldn’t understand the simple messages each artist tried to convey with carefully placed brush strokes.

Each time the subjects in the painting were misjudged, a little bit of their vital essence, their life force, drained away. To the human eye, this slow energy sap appeared like gradually fading color on the canvas. Colors, once vivid, lost a little of their brightness with each painting’s perceived slight. Initially, art experts theorized the problem was caused by the museum’s fluorescent lighting. They felt that harmful light rays somehow affected the pigments found in the paint, causing colors to fade.

Little did they know that lighting had nothing to do with it. The characters in the paintings just felt stifled, trapped in rigid, square picture frames showcasing equally rigid ideas of their characters. Their true colors simply weren’t allowed to shine through. It was quite maddening.

With thousands of visitors viewing the paintings each day, the days were long. The characters painted inside each picture frame were forced to comply with sometimes stated, but most often just perceived, themes or ideas for hours upon end. This made them very tired, and caused them to lose their colorful luster, their joie de vivre.

At night, however, it was a different story. It was then, and only then, that the paintings came alive. The characters in the paintings moved within their own worlds. They laughed, chatted, sang, and cried, depending on their mood. Some even played musical instruments. Pablo Picasso’s Old Guitarist liked to entertain the others. He was quite the musician. At times, he strummed lilting, rollicking tunes that made the others dance. Other times, he plucked the strings mournfully, choosing solemn, somber songs more suited to a funeral. 

The Parisians on their rainy street talked about leaving Paris and heading south to Provence where there wasn’t quite so much rain. They couldn’t seem to reach a consensus on the matter though and bickered cheerfully under their umbrellas. 

Some people in their paintings were quite content with their lot. They lived their truth day and night. The two sisters in Renoir’s painting lived a life of quiet domesticity. After long sunny days on the terrace, they were led inside the house by their mother for a quiet supper before being snugly tucked into their beds. The child taking the bath in Mary Cassat’s painting was also toweled off and escorted to her bed, although she was slightly less compliant than the sisters. Her mother read to her each night, and the little girl often begged for “just one more story.”

Like real, living children, the painted children needed their sleep in order to grow. Others, young and old, just needed to relax, argue, complain, sing, dance, and express themselves in whatever way they saw fit. They needed to be free. Free like they couldn’t be during the day, when they were held captive in their picture frames in front of an ignorant audience with preconceived notions of who they should be. Few people, or creatures, recognized their aching need for freedom and self expression. To be understood as they truly were, and not as others saw them.

Perhaps the most misunderstood painting of all was that of the stern faced farming couple in the famous American gothic painting. In the painting, the farmer with his pitchfork stood stoically next to his mate. Both of them were unsmiling, wearing plain austere clothes, looking stern and forbidding. 

The first incorrect assumption was that the couple were husband and wife. Upon close inspection, however, one could see that the man appeared much older than his mate. He was balding with a fringe of gray hair, his face drawn and somewhat wrinkled. The woman, on the other hand, had a relatively smooth countenance. Her hair, although pulled back in a tight bun, was a lovely shade of blond and her light eyes appeared clear and bright. Her eyes were an indeterminate color, perhaps green, perhaps hazel. Nonetheless, they were striking. Moreover, unlike her mate, she was not staring straight ahead, but looking slightly to her left.

Most notably, she wasn’t the man’s wife at all, she was his daughter. Everyone got that wrong and assumed they were a married twosome. The girl’s name was Mary. Beyond the narrow image conveyed in the painting of a stern faced couple, Mary was actually quite lively. She was more than an extension of some man. She had a life and a mind of her own. Perhaps her life wasn’t very glamorous and not at all what she had once envisioned, but it was a full life nevertheless. It was hers and no one’s else’s.

Once upon a time, she had been a carefree girl in a family of five – mother, father, and three fair headed daughters. She was the youngest. The oldest two girls had long since married and now, with their husbands, ran their own farms and households. Mary was the one left behind. Still stuck on the farm with her father who she was forced to help. She was the logical choice to be at his side, being the youngest when her mother had passed away three years prior, after a long painful battle with cancer.

Unlike her sisters, Mary had not yet had her own suitors, had not yet stepped out into the world. Nothing and nobody was waiting for her. Her path had not yet been chosen. Instead, her path was chosen for her. Chosen by life, by circumstances. Although she was young, she was capable. Old enough to take over the household, but not old enough to marry. 

She was perpetually stuck in her picture frame and in her life. Stuck in no man’s, or no woman’s, land. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. She had no home and family of her own. It fell to her, by process of elimination, to help her father keep the family farm running.

She tried to take pleasure in her simple life. Their acreage was somewhat small, just enough to sustain them. She and her father operated in complementary spheres of influence. Mary was in charge of the house and its immediate environs – the garden, the chicken coop, the milking cows. Her father was in charge of the rest.

Everyday was exactly like the one before. She awoke to the rooster’s crow, gathered eggs, and then made her father a hearty breakfast – a breakfast from newly hatched eggs and freshly baked bread and homemade strawberry jam. She took pride in her cooking. She had the well deserved reputation as the best bread baker in three counties. On top of her delicious bread, she spread preserves made from strawberries picked from her own garden. 

If her father sometimes took her culinary skills for granted, she tried not to mind. He had his hands full running the farm. To him, food was just nourishment, just something to sustain him while he did his man’s work, plowing and harvesting. 

Mary also had a lot to do outside of the house. She couldn’t waste all of her time baking, much as she would like to. She milked the cows and picked vegetables from her neatly tilled garden. When the weather was nice, she hung out crisp white sheets on the line. Although she was busy from sunup to sundown, she learned to take pleasure in simple things, the breezy, fresh air smell of her laundry, the feel of the sun warm on her face, the gentle mewing of the barn kittens as they lapped their milk. 

Once long ago, she had dreamed of having her own house, her own husband, her own children to feed and care for. Now, she recognized painfully that it wasn’t meant to be. Still, it hurt to realize that others thought she was an old, settled, dour faced woman. She had never had her chance to spread her wings – to run, to laugh, to dance. To kiss a man. To be held. To be loved.

Perhaps that accounted for her stern expression in the picture. Or maybe it was just the custom of the times. People didn’t smile in pictures back then. It just wasn’t the thing to do. She sometimes wondered what accounted for her father’s sour disposition. The picture actually was an accurate representation of his personality. He usually was stern and unsmiling. She rarely saw him smile. She guessed he probably was still mourning his beloved wife. Much as she tried to help him on the farm, Mary knew she was only a poor substitute for her mother. That hurt too.

She wished he and others could see her for who she truly was. She wished they could see her value, see her worth. She was more than just an iconic stereotype of rural America. American gothic. What did the painting’s name mean anyways? It sounded like something dark and foreboding, and she wasn’t dark at all. She was young. She was bright. She was hopeful. Even in her narrow world.

It was that hope that caused her to look slightly to the left in the painting. Unlike her father who was looking straight ahead, Mary was looking off and away. She wanted to see what else life had to offer.

As she thought that very thought, she heard the lions roar. It was their signal that daylight was approaching. It was time for another day. Without speaking, she handed her father his pitchfork. He held it firmly in his right hand. They both knew the drill. It was always the same, after all. She moved next to him and stood in her customary position by his side, turning her head as usual and glancing slightly off to the left.

The first visitors then entered the viewing area, a stampede of thundering feet. Mary knew she and her father were one of the more popular attractions, so she wasn’t surprised to see many people heading their way. 

“Look, George,” she heard one fat lady say to her husband, “It’s the old farmer couple. You know the guy with the pitchfork standing next to his farmer wife. You’ve probably seen that picture a hundred times.”

“Oh, yeah. They sure look like a fun couple, don’t they?” the husband laughed.

Hearing his mocking words, Mary slowly turned her head inside of the picture frame so she was now staring straight ahead, facing the world dead on. It was no use turning her head to look for things that were never hers to have. 

And as other visitors swarmed around them making similar comments, Mary painfully felt her colors begin to fade. Maybe the painting’s title was correct after all. She was feeling very dark.