would catch me up in my own wheel.”nBut after the disastrous experience andnthe long recovery, Agnes realizes thatn”only those who hate the real world donwhat I did. I tried to create an idealnworld.”nAgnes’s first attachment is to a “good”nman who offers her simple happiness,nsecurity, and fidelity. But she rejects him;nshe seeks out unhappiness because therenis, after all, something very noble in suffering.nShe chooses a man who has causednother abortions, other disappointments.nShe even sees the specter of her fiaturenself in a former girlfriend of Frank, anwoman who also had an abortion and isnconsumed by bitterness and self-pity,ncalled “mad” by her friends and family.nAgnes’s love for Frank, however, is notnjust romantic; it is specifically Shelleyan.nShe tells a friend that she wants “someonenlike me,” an ideal version of herselfnOne thinks in this context of Shelley’sndescription of love in his essay “On Love.”nThere he pictures love as an impulsenthat “thirsts after its likeness,” and as an”mirror whose surface reflects only thenforms of purity and brightness; a soulnwithin our soul.” For Shelley, the “invisiblenand unattainable point to whichnLove tends” is the point where “thenchords- of two exquisite lyres” become •n”one delightfijl voice.” The impulse tonFleeting TruthsnIn the section “Winners Relevant to thenRock Era” in his Year by Year in the RocknEra, author Herb Hendler writes:nAlthough directly concerned withnpopular music, the National Academynof Recording Arts and Sciences’nGrammy award winners … are notnlisted with this grouping because muchntrade opinion considers the votingnstructure adult-oriented and thenawarding group too &r removed fromnthe rock market.n”Adult-oriented”? “Removed from thenrock market”? Is Boy George of the Britishngroup Culture Club (Best New Artists ofn1983 [sic]) a representation of somebody’sndad? Or is that “mom”? Dn24inChronicles of Culturenmerge totally with the beloved is thenShelleyan ideal of love. The transformingnpower of love, the ability of love to makenone divine, these were the sacred credosnof Shelleyan eros. Adapted as a literalnphilosophy of life by people with littlenor no appreciation of the complexity ofnhuman emotions, these attitudes provednfatal.nAgnes’s dream of love is hopelesslynShelleyan, or platonic. Once she resolvesnto love Frank, she thinks: “There had tonbe another person who fit you perfectlynso that the two of you together formednone whole.” And once she has chosennFrank as her ideal, she muses that “thenfabric of this life had ripped neatly to revealnthe perfect world for which I was alwaysnlooking, and that he was the perfectnman for whom I had been looking.”nFrank is perfect not only because Agnesnimagines him to be a hero, but becausenhe is a competent stonecutter and thus,nin her eyes, an artist. She dreams of gainingnhappiness on earth by fosteringnFrank’s artwork, which she sees as “perfect”nand “permanent.” She wants, thatnis, to be a romantic muse, an EternalnFeminine who leads him to great heightsnof artistic immortality, her immortalitynensured through her guidance andninspiration.nAgnes was attracted to Frank by hisncarving of a mother and baby on a tombstone,nwhich is a fitting image, given hernvehement rejection of motherhood becausenof her disdain for the natural world.nShe proudly thinks that she will be differentnfrom her mother and aU womennwho are trapped by their bodies. Herngoal, as she describes it, is to “transcendnmy own nature.” But her lawyer drawsnthis lesson from Agnes’s fate: “we’re allnbiological creatures, and the greatest ofnus know that and work with biology, notnagainst it.” Only late in her life does Agnesnrealize that she has put her mind and hernbody in opposition. She explains:nWell, in our day it was the fashion tonneglect the mind and fulfill one’s biologicalndestiny, and in every age therennnare rebels, and I was one. I didn’t wantnchildren, or so I thought. But in thenend, not having a child was the worstnpunishment visited upon me. Today,nsome women are beginning to talk ofnthe body as if it were a mousetrap waitingnto spring shut on the mind, and 1nsuppose the body is like that, but thenmind is there, too, waiting to springnon the body.nAfter writing her farewell suicidennote to Frank, Agnes muses her mostndangerous Shelleyan thought: “I believednthat the real world was worthless, a palenimitation of the true world which ournimagination had created between us.”nSuch extreme thinking leads her to seffdelusion,nto a world where her desiresnare the only reality. But she has no sensenof her own identity; she quite literallyndoes not know who she is, and thereforenshe has sought the easy solution of findingnherself in her beloved. But she finallynrealizes after many years that it is no realnanswer: two people cannot become onenideal person, platonic metaphysics notwithstanding.nOnly as an adult, after manynyears within the asylum, does she graspnwhat she calls the reality of life: “that lifenwas hard … impermanence was at thenvery heart of things, and that, therefore,nthere was no such thing as perfection onnthis earth.” This conclusion comes as nonsmall admission to Agnes the idealist.nAgnes eventually realizes that she mustntake control of her life. As she finallyncomes to accept, “we’re animals. Deformednanimals, animals with minds.”nBut this conclusion merely involves thenauthor in the romanticism she condemns,nfor she gives us human nature only asntwo extremes—^pure spirit or pure animal.nThe work would succeed if it couldnrealistically convey a sense of the humannpersonality as it struggles with its innerncompulsions to balance mind and body,nbut instead it indicates that woman’snstruggle with head and heart tends tonhopeless extremes. Ultimately there is anfailure of imagination in this view, fornclearly the struggle can be won in a synthesisnbetween these implausible polarnoppositions. Dn