Dreaming for Freud by Sheila Kohler

much time reading. I am not allowed to read in the morning, for example. Can you imagine? I have to sew or do something equally dumb,
dumb
. Otto never really takes my part against Mother or even Father. In the end he is just like Father—and as much as I love him, I have to admit he says one thing but acts differently. He and Father are both such hypocrites!
Hypocrites!
Or anyway they are too timid to stand up for what they believe,” she says angrily. Her brother does not dare act in a rebellious way; he does not like a fight, particularly with her mother. He is always the conciliator in the family.
    But she could speak most frankly to her French fräulein, about so many things—intimate, womanly things
.
She says, “In some ways it was easier speaking in another language. Do you know what I mean? And women speak a different language from men, don’t you think? It would be much easier, yes, and less frightening to talk to a woman who would understand,” she concludes triumphantly and crosses her arms on her chest.
    “But not to your own mother, I gather?” the doctor suggests, knowing the answer there.
    “No, not Mother,” she is forced to concede, but then, annoyingly, takes the pretext to complain at length about her mother.
    “I have never really been able to talk to Mother, which is so sad. She doesn’t seem very interested in, well—matters of the mind,” she says in her pretentious way. “I know she loves me, and she
says
she wants the best for me, and perhaps she really believes she
does
,” she says, obviously trying to be fair, “but she doesn’t understand my interest in books and the way the mind works, or the answers to so many questions about life that trouble me. I once actually told her we had nothing in common, which was cruel, I know, and she was very hurt, and I’m really sorry for that.
    “Poor Mother—it’s not really her fault at all, you know. She was given so little education, and she can hardly spell and is often so sick herself with—whatever it is she’s got, and she hardly ever opens a book, or only the kinds of books that tell you nothing about life,” she says. “It may not be her fault, but she is very ignorant about so many things and she prefers to believe what is convenient, to maintain that everything in life is for the best: ‘
Tout pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes.’”
    “Voltaire?” the doctor hears himself ask.
    She rambles on about her mother. “In the end Mother is just as bad as Father, perhaps she’s even worse. She never challenges what she
must
know are Father’s lies! Why does she not stand up for me, when she
knows
what I say is true! How
can
she be such a coward! Why do women never stand up for one another?” she asks, sitting up in her anger, waving her hands around wildly, her cheeks flushed.
    All her mother cares about are the household chores and her own illnesses. When she thinks certain rooms need cleaning, she locks their doors, and makes the servants open the windows, even on the coldest of days. “You would hardly believe my poor brother. He hates to confront Mother. He’s such a coward! Once I found him cowering in his room studying, all muffled up in his coat and hat and gloves with the windows wide open in the middle of winter! And when I said, ‘What
are
you doing? Are you mad?’ He just said, ‘It’s not so terrible! I’d rather not make a fuss.’ At least I shut the windows for him!” she says.
    He thinks of his own wife, who has a very similar preoccupation with household cleanliness. He allows her to rule over her domain and does not interfere with the rigid rules for the hours of the meals. He gives her all his earnings to keep in a strongbox and must ask her when he needs money for his cigars or his purchases of antiques, of which she disapproves. He accepts her scolding meekly, if he ever spills or breaks anything or soils the carpets with his muddy shoes. He is a henpecked husband, he considers, though her