"Dream Children" illustrates some very basic peculiarities of people, relationships, interactions, and the tragedies of lofe. Our ideas of "normal" are so based on our own perceptions of reality, our belief systems, and liestyles. DePuy is too "practical" to deeply study his own spirit and resents the freedom that the main character's spiritual journey has given her. Her husband is revolted by her interest in mysticism, but decides to allow her her "escape" to avoid dealing with worse. Neither attempt to go beyond these judgements, but instead put her in the category of the "mad". Since neither know her inner, personal experiences, this judgement is based solely on their ideas of what normal activities and interests should be and anything beyond is considered "crazy".

This emphasizes one characteristic of people and relationships: we never see what's truly inside of others. We often accept the face presented without question, like Mrs. Frye's thought that Mrs. McNair is "such a personable, polite girl!". But people often have different faces in different situations - "nobody is just one person", and they often hide what's inside. Unless they choose to share them, we don't know of others' experiences, feelings, thoughts, or beliefs. It is true that "nobody knew anything . . .". So we are left to base our judgements of people on their actions, divorced from their motivations, much as DePuy's conclusion that Mrs. McNair needs children without really knowing her or of her tragedy. Through this same principle, we also see how the same person can be viewed very differently by different people, as seen through the different reactions of Mrs. Frye and DePuy. It is all so subjective, even if we desire to be objective (as her husband so desired), and we are dependant on what the other reveals of him or herself for even that much.

It is amazing what we learn to love with and how we learn to live with it. Although we find ways to survive through tragedy, some experiences affect us - and others in our lives - more deeply than can be imagined. For Mrs. McNair, the intimacy of her marriage is gone. She has lost the desire for that part of her life which existed before her double loss, except for brief flashes which only make her glad it is gone. And she still knows how to time those 30 second intervals, and the impression is that she always will know. Her tragedy is burned forever into her being at a cost to herself and to her husband, who is no longer even emotionally intimate with her.

We each find our own ways of dealing with such things, or our minds do it for us subconsciously. But what is an acceptable solution for one is not always acceptable in the eyes of others. Just her choices for passing time - the riding and the books - drew concern for her sanity. To share her innermost, deepest spiritual experiences would bring even stronger, more definitive reaction and action from those around her (which in DePuy's case could be truly frightening). And she knew this. She knew her husband would "become alrmed, he would sell (the) house and make her move back to the city . . .". So she lived a relatively "normal" life publicly, subject to habit and time, while "sending herself abroad" and "Meeeting" with the biy in the privacy of her own experience.

Is she mad? I'm not sure that is the issue. Personally, I think she has found a way to keep herself from going over the edge into unquestionable madness. She is not dangerous and is functional between her "mystical experiences" - which is more than some "normal" people can claim. She doesn't need or want explainations, she is happy. She has found a freedom. Either she is "a mother who anxiously (awaits) her child's sleep" or she is "a free spirit who (can) ride her horse like the wind because she (has) nothing to fear". But she is not concerned with which is true, or even if there's a third alternative. It is others who have a problem with the path she has found. Perhaps it is they who need to discover freedom - freedom from envy, bias, and the fear of what is different. IT is they who need to experience a touch of "madness".



Dream Children
Gail Godwin
Essay written August 27, 1996
grade: A