by Natasha Bell
The largest unforeseen matter, we learn, is that she was found. Marcus Southwood tracked his wife down in Greenwich Village and turned her in to the immigration authorities. The installation, however, had already been meticulously prepared on both sides of the pond. York gallery owner Don McGee explained that he received a phone call from the institution where Southwood was being held, telling him to access a locked storage facility on the edge of town where he would find all the materials and detailed written instructions to set up the installation.
“I realized right away how controversial this piece would be, and I immediately phoned the New York gallery to see what they were thinking, but we decided together that we should go ahead with it,” said McGee.
Southwood’s pleas for extradition were denied and, following a hunger strike and a suicide attempt, she was held in a high security psychiatric facility in upstate New York. Heldt’s charges included using false documents to be employed, misusing a Social Security number and using false documents with intent to defraud the US. Her plea for diminished responsibility due to mental incapacity was denied, and she was found competent to stand trial. She was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to the maximum available penalty of 15 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Her appeal date is yet to be set.
Exhibit A gives a gory tabloid account of a seemingly impossible stunt, but what neither of the exhibition spaces offers is any sense of why. For this, if there is an answer, we must turn to the novel-length document Southwood has produced from incarceration. Displayed in the original in the New York gallery, it has also received a limited print run. Available at both sites, it’s an audaciously fictional account of her family’s experiences from the day of her disappearance to the moment her husband found her in New York. Though in many ways it is yet another form in which Southwood has managed to deny her family their own voice, their own autonomy, even from the depths of incarceration, the document does add a heavy weight to the question: what is art worth? Attempts have been made to reach out to Marcus Southwood to tell his side of the story, but as of yet he has declined to make a statement to this or any other journalist. Left only with Amelia Heldt’s version of events, the viewer at either of the installations is forced to contemplate whether what they are devouring as art is a fair exchange for someone’s suffering.
Periodically, across the arts, a story surfaces that sends us into a frenzied discussion of right and wrong. In literature, we’ve seen Michel Houellebecq and Karl Ove Knausgård justify robbing their families of their privacy; in film, we’ve had reports of Alfred Hitchcock abusing Tippi Hedren and Bernardo Bertolucci confessing to camera about the lengths he was willing to go to produce a “real” reaction from Maria Schneider. Some will argue art needs to be controversial to make its point, that exploitation can itself be an aesthetic, or that the end justifies the means. But can art ever be worth inflicting pain? Is it an acceptable reason to break someone’s heart, abandon one’s children?
I ask these questions without the glib critic’s rhetoric readers are used to encountering, but with a truly uneasy feeling in my gut. For it is articles like this and all the individuals who queue to enter Exhibit A that will ensure Heldt’s place in the art books, thus effectively answering a resounding “yes” to all of the above.
Reinhardt Lang
Art Features Editor
A Note About the Art
Much of the work in this novel is real and I’d encourage the curious to explore.
With special thanks to Casey Smallwood for allowing Amelia to borrow and adapt her pieces.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t have been possible without the love and support of my friends and family. Thank you to my stupendous agent, Marilia, and to my wonderful editors, Jess and Hilary. For being patient enough to read early drafts, thank you to Anna, Bryony, Emma, Fran, Christine, Ban, Kate, Laura, Beth, Amy, Nat, Carole, Angela, and the Bayford Hill Book Club. For supporting me emotionally, morally and at times alcoholically through this whole journey, thank you to my York and Goldsmiths families, some of whom are mentioned above but also: Ollie, Nik, Charlie, Patrick, Neil, Chris, Beckie, Paul, Sam, Ellen, Stef, Martha, Cath, Heather, Nuala and Emily. Thank you to Alicia, Lucy, Francis, Linda, Kimmy and Casey for being excellent human beings. To my sister, my brother and my dad for always being my champions. To my mum for everything, especially her generosity about the dangers of having a writer in the family. And, finally, to Chris, for believing in me when I couldn’t.
HIS PERFECT WIFE
A Reader’s Guide
A Conversation with Natasha Bell
“Motherhood Does Not Kill Creativity”
An Essay by Natasha Bell on the Double Standards for Women Artists
A Reader’s Guide
1. How did you feel about Alex at the end of the novel?
2. After Alex disappears, Marc builds something of a mental monument to her, idealizing their relationship and overlooking many aspects of her life. Does Marc really love Alex, or just his idea of her?
3. Who among the characters knows Alex best?
4. Mark resents Ollie and Fran for not trying harder to salvage their marriage. Is his frustration justified considering his own relationship troubles?
5. How accurately do you think Alex’s recounting of Marc’s experience is? How well does she really know him?
6. How does Amelia view the relationship between pain and art?
7. How do you think Alex’s relationship with her daughters was affected by her own tumultuous upbringing?
8. On this page, Amelia writes that she wants to “help” Alex. Is there a clear divide between what Amelia wants for herself and what she wants for Alex?
9. Many of Marc’s friends become frustrated and worried about his ability to accept and move on from Alex’s assumed death. How well do you think he handled the situation?
10. In concealing her identity and obscuring herself from the world, do you think Amelia holds herself accountable for her art and for the harm her pieces have caused?
11. Would you judge Alex’s achievements and abandonment of her children in the same way if she were a man?
12. Is Alex more like Marc or Amelia? What is her true personality?
13. Is Alex’s double life the only way of having it all? Is her devotion to her own happiness selfish? Is it justified by her creative output?
14. Does what Marc finds out about Alex invalidate the happy aspects of their relationship?
15. Is there a line between life and art? Did Alex cross it?
16. What does it mean that Marc turned Alex into the authorities?
17. Is Amelia’s final piece (the exhibition and the written account) art?
A Conversation with Natasha Bell
Q. In the novel, you explore the dynamics of relationships, specifically that of a husband and wife. Can you speak more to this?
A. I feel like whatever else we do with our lives, the one constant is that we’re all continuously trying to work ourselves and others out. So in writing His Perfect Wife, I was trying to explore the edges of my understanding about love and marriage. What really interested me is this idea that two people can truly love each other, but that love still might not be enough to make them happy. Books and movies and fairy tales tell us at such a young age that love is everything and when you find the right person you’ll live happily ever after, but real life is much more complex. What do you do when you’re simultaneously happy and unhappy? What do you do when your relationship requires a compromise, when you have to choose between the person you love and yourself?
Q.Art plays a major role throughout the novel. Are you an artist? What inspired you to choose this particular form of artistic expression to advance the themes of the novel?
A. I’m not an artist, alas. I used to be quite involved in theater and I did an MA in my early twentie
s with a visual and performance art component. For a while after that I did want to be a performance artist, but I think I was more interested in it conceptually than in practically figuring out how and where to make works happen. So, as lazy as it makes me, I think I chose to write about art rather than make it, because writing could be done at home, in pajamas, without having to talk to anyone. For Alex and Amelia, though, performance art seemed like a natural fit. The novel explores the ways we’re all constantly creating ourselves, writing and rewriting the stories of our lives and our relationships. So, by making Amelia an artist, I got to examine those themes on a larger scale and look at the ethics of those private acts of creation when they’re made public.
Q. Alexandra once aspired to be a world-renowned artist but marriage and motherhood would become her priority. Without giving too much away, can you tell us about the questions of gender expectations and motherhood you are exploring in the novel?
A. Even in 2018, I think the subject of what women sacrifice for marriage and motherhood is a really important issue. It’s not, obviously, the same issue that it was decades ago when those sacrifices were enormously tangible and often hugely oppressive, or the same issue that it is in other places and cultures around the world. However, there are still subtle and un-talked-about ways where women in perfectly supportive and seemingly equal relationships are still doing the majority of the emotional labor and still making self-sacrificing decisions to preserve their relationships and families. I think we need to look at what we’re teaching girls and boys at a really young age about gender and relationships and ambition.
Q. The novel features twists and turns that leave readers guessing the fate of its characters. Did you know from the outset how you wanted their destinies to unfold, or did the plot reveal itself as the characters developed?
A. I’ve been working on His Perfect Wife for almost eight years now, but the one constant from the first to the last draft has been the plot. I knew from the outset what had happened to Alexandra and what Marc would need to go through to find out. The hard part was figuring out how to tell the story and some of that was about finding the right genre and realizing the necessity of those twists and turns.
Q. The novel alternates between flashbacks of Alexandra and Marc’s early romance and their tragic present-day reality. Why did you choose to structure the story this way?
A. Because I think any couple’s present-day reality only exists in the context of their past. The main story of His Perfect Wife is that Alex is missing and Marc needs to find her, but to understand what that really means and who they both are we need to go back to their beginning. Alex says of her parents’ divorce that the saddest thing was that their breakup had to erase everything that had gone before—I think that’s so often the case: We fail to see relationships as whole narratives and only focus on what’s going on in the present.
Q. His Perfect Wife explores a variety of themes, from motherhood and gender roles to artistic integrity. What do you hope readers take away from the novel?
A. I hope different people find different things in His Perfect Wife, but mostly I want people to consider the gray areas. None of these topics are black and white and I don’t think there are any definitive answers, but I do think they’re worth talking about.
Motherhood Does Not Kill Creativity
Natasha Bell on the Double Standards for Women Artists
Whether a woman can have children without losing her creative self is a subject that refuses to die. Though it was a man, Cyril Connolly, who said, “There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall,” and though we live in an age of shared parental leave and a pregnant prime minister (hurrah!), this is still a question that is asked much more frequently about motherhood than fatherhood. And in continuing to ask it we’re failing to examine the systemic sexism at the heart of both parenthood and the arts.
There’s been a great deal of discussion lately about “art monsters” and how gendered criticisms of parenting fit in to current concerns about assault and harassment in the world of cultural production. When Amanda Palmer announced her pregnancy, she received a message from a “Worried-but-Still-Devoted” fan asking if those who supported her on crowdfunding sites were paying for new music or for a new baby. She described it as “a pregnant artist’s worst nightmare,” and, indeed, it’s hard to imagine her husband, Neil Gaiman, receiving the equivalent from those who buy his books. But it’s not just fans or critics who worry motherhood will affect their favorite artists’ outputs; it’s often female artists themselves.
Feminist performance artist Marina Abramović told German newspaper Tagesspiegel that she thinks it’s motherhood that makes women less successful in the art world than men. “It’s simple,” she said, “love, family, children—a woman does not want to sacrifice all of that.” Similarly, Tracey Emin, coming from the contemporary art world, told Red magazine that being a mother would have compromised her work. While men can be both parents and good artists, she said, mothers are too “emotionally torn.” Seeking a compromise, Lauren Sandler suggested in The Atlantic that women can be mothers as well as writers, but only if they stick to one child. All three of these women have faced criticism for their statements, sometimes from high-profile artists and writers who are themselves mothers (and thus manage to prove their point empirically).
However the question is posed, the discussion quickly descends into a polarized argument about whether it’s possible to “have it all.” Those with children claim it is, while those without say it’s not. Occasionally someone from the latter camp switches sides and dramatically denounces their younger self, explaining that childbirth has delivered them from naiveté into experience. Their reversal inevitably concludes with the oft infuriating yet inarguable point that a woman cannot possibly understand motherhood until she experiences it. The defining characteristic of this argument and the thing that keeps it going is that it’s almost impossible for either side to say anything to convince the other.
Perhaps this is why it’s become such a popular topic for novelists. Fiction is one of the few places where we do get to see women struggling with maternal uncertainty. In the crime and thriller genres in particular, we’re allowed to delve into the lives of problematic, disturbed, and unsympathetic female characters. Narratives involving disappearances and murders are uniquely positioned to examine and critique traditional family roles by violently disrupting them. Recently, there have been some excellent books by female authors utilizing this genre to make us seriously question our attitudes toward maternity. In Little Deaths, Emma Flint gives us Ruth Malone, a single, sexy and sexually active mother whose appearance and behavior cause both the police and the press to jump to conclusions when her children go missing. Laura Lippman makes clear in the very first pages of Sunburn that her main character Polly has up and left her husband and three-year-old daughter in the middle of a beach vacation, and that this is an abandonment she has been planning for some time. Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny opens with the shocking words “The baby is dead,” and immediately we’re told it was the seemingly perfect and perfectly maternal nanny, Louise, who did it.
By depicting their protagonists as clear-cut mother-monsters from the outset, these authors risk alienating readers who cannot see past their actions. However, by exploring these topics in fiction, they also allow us to set aside the instinctive outrage or disgust we might feel encountering the same women on the pages of newspapers. Whereas in life we’re quick to judge the neglectful, abandoning, overly sexual or murderous mother figure as singularly monstrous, their fictional counterparts are afforded our patience and attention, perhaps even our identification. These authors allow us to consider such women as people as well as mothers, which is something we need to start challenging ourselves to do in life as well as on the page.
In the real world, the thing those on both sides of the argument seem to agree on is the idea that if a woman
is a mother then that should be the thing she is first. Emin argued she chose not to have kids because, “I would have been either 100 percent mother or 100 percent artist.” The only significant difference between this and the statements of women who tell us it is possible to “have it all” is that the latter claim they’re able to be 100 percent mother and 100 percent artist. Both sides perpetuate the idea that women must succeed as mothers above all else. Perhaps they can be successful artists, but only if, like Hein Koh when she posted the ultimate “multitasking mom” image, they’re also managing to breastfeed both of their twins at the same time. The stories of those making it work are almost always: “Look, I’m an artist, but see, my kids are fine; I haven’t fucked them up by continuing to make my art.”
A notable exception is Lara Feigel, whose exploration of the life and work of Doris Lessing, Free Woman, takes a critical look at how the late author was judged for abandoning two of her three children and examines her own feelings toward being a writer and new mother. Feigel notes that during the sixties and seventies there was a much greater understanding and a more open discussion of what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called “maternal ambivalence.” Since then, though, there has been an increasing focus on the needs of children taking precedence over those of their parents and this seems to have closed down the conversation and turned the admittance of that ambivalence into one of our society’s ultimate taboos. What both impressively accomplished mother-artists as well as “art-monsters” Emin and Abramović appear to tell us is that there are only two acceptable roles for women: Good Mother or Not a Mother.
