Alice in Bed

Alice in Bed by Judith Hooper

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Authors: Judith Hooper
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at the blur that was Aunt Kate in motion: taking charge, locating our trunks, finding a porter and a hansom, giving directions to the coachman. Her omniscience about practical details—how many shawls to take in a carriage, how much to tip a porter, who were the best doctors in New York—was handy when you were off in remote zones of yourself.From the cabriolet the dusky streets rolled by in a haze, as if I were dreaming with my eyes open.
    I was taken to Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street, to a narrow row house with steep front steps (surely treacherous for invalids?) belonging to Dr. Charles Lafayette Taylor, an orthopedist. With his brother, Dr. George Taylor, likewise an orthopedist, he had devised the Improved Movement Cure, considered by Aunt Kate the most advanced treatment for nerves. The basic idea, if I’d grasped it rightly, was that nervous illnesses were the lamentable result of an imbalance between over-stimulated nerves and an under-developed body. To remedy which the brothers Taylor (creatures so much of the same mold I could scarcely tell them apart) applied their medicine. This consisted of orthopedic manipulation, Swedish massage, and deadly stretches of bed-rest. The first morning I was rigorously examined by the first Dr. Taylor, who expressed concern that my “nervous excitement” might have drawn too much energy into my nervous system, leaving other bodily functions “depressed.” Were my legs and arms weak? Did I suffer from headache? Ever feel dizzy or faint? How about palpitations of the heart?
    â€œYes,” I admitted, “and just as I am falling asleep, my stomach attempts to tie itself in knots, a sensation accompanied by a feeling of unspeakable dread.” In fact, the chief benefit I was hoping for from this Manhattan adventure was some medical clarification of this malady of mine, but Dr. Taylor only nodded gravely as if he knew everything about me already.
    The shops were smarter and the women more fashionable in New York than in Boston, a fact I confirmed each morning as I dragged myself up the three blocks of Broadway to Thirty-eighth Street, to the brownstone of the second Dr. Taylor. Every morning I wondered if I had it in me to be a fashionable New Yorker, and decided probably not. “I cannot reconcile myself to the peculiarities of my clothes,” I wrote to Sara in one of many meandering letters. Carts, drays, omnibuses, carriages of all types plied Broadway, where crude sheds appeared next to marble palaces—all the sounds combining in a dull roar in my head like a waterfall.
    The second Dr. Taylor had invented a machine for limbering the pelvis, expanding the chest, and kneading the abdomen, the features of which he proudly displayed to me. Tufts of grey hair sprouted from his ears; otherwise, the Taylor brothers were nearly identical, two nondescript balding men of middle age. This Dr. Taylor predicted that I should become “perfectly well” if I submitted to his daily exercises. A woman’s nerves were more delicate than a man’s, he explained, and susceptible to stronger impressions. It followed—though I may be forgetting some of the links in the chain of his reasoning—that a woman who “consumes her vital force in intellectual activities” was diverting it from the achievement of True Womanhood. This spelled tragedy, not just for her but for her children and her children’s children—indeed, for the human race.
    â€œThe body is literally starved! It becomes perverted!” he warned, peering at me through a glass that magnified one watery blue eye. “I hope, Miss James, that you do not read excessively.”
    â€œNot excessively ,” I lied. If I read less, would I develop a keen interest in things like running a house, being married, having children, visiting the poor and comforting the sick? Perhaps I’d prefer to stick with reading. But since I was such a sorry specimen, I

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