the angel in the house is a codependent...

the angel in the house will insist you eat the last piece of pie even if she is starving.

there is good hospitality and then there is straight-up unhealthy behavior.

more than ten years ago, i spent a bit of time studying virginia woolf. what caught my attention was her piece "a room of one's own". i was struck by the thought of killing off the angel in the house, the perfect, pious, submissive wife and mother.

i also studied kate chopin and charlotte perkins gilman, two more women who put this ridiculous ideal under a microscope and released that perfect victorian angel to the world to find freedom.

when i ran across a room of one's own, i was enchanted with woolf's discussion of women as writers and her description of what may have happened if shakespeare had a sister, and it was she instead of him, who had the inspiration to write those magnificent plays, the outcome would have most likely been a tragic loss.

between that and the suggestion that in order to write, a woman needs an income of her own, a room of her own and to first and foremost, kill the angel in the house, i was hooked on the concept. these three writers, woolf, chopin, and gilman, became my personal heroes.

from these pieces was born misfit hue... getting a hue of one's own and killing off the angel in the house one blog post at a time. if you've followed me for even a brief amount of time, you've read or heard me talk on these themes.

but, thank the heavens, learning never ends and there are always new revelations.

it was only recently that i realized why i had an immediate attraction to the characters and themes that these women wrote about. it is their efforts to break the patterns of codependency, their fight to be healthy.

i'm learning that being healthy can be the greatest lifelong endeavor, with chunks of understanding falling into place randomly.

i've never had the language, the full context and understanding of why i've defended these writers so strongly. i always thought it was simply the victorian life--the "hysteria" diagnosed by men. i thought it was the expectation of marriage and being submissive. but, it goes much, much deeper than that. one does not need to be married to be a caretaker, persecutor and victim.

i still don't understand this entirely, but can see much research and reading in my future. it would be nice to return to my roots of literature, to re-evaluate my understandings of it and the reasons certain pieces speak to me.

regardless, one more piece of my own personal understanding has been revealed and more are about to surface.

and now, i know why i really hate the angel in the house.