Years later I learned—and this is new in civilization—that there was actually a hope in me to be a disappointed woman. Aesthetic Realism explains with solid logic that there are two kinds of disappointment. Certainly, people have been honestly disappointed; have met tremendous injustice economically and personally. But there’s also a determination in a person, which Aesthetic Realism makes clear, to see the world as a flop, as never coming through for you, so you can be disdainful and superior.

In his lecture, “Mind and Disappointment,” Mr. Siegel describes that drive. “On the one hand,” he says, people complain because they are disappointed:

On the other, to be disappointed is their triumph. If a person finds himself at the movies, he can be disappointed because he is not at home. If he’s at home, he’s disappointed because he’s not at the movies. If he gets a telephone call, he’s disappointed because his solitude is interrupted. If he doesn’t get a phone call, he’s disappointed because no one cares for him. And if he gets a phone call, and it happens to be a short one, he feels people are neglecting him and not talking long enough…Once you are looking for disappointment you can be a super-FBI.

I was one of those. Once, a friend pointed out on a very happy occasion at a restaurant, that I was looking to be disappointed with everything. I acted like a queen as I scornfully and casually mentioned that the food took too long to arrive; when it did, it wasn’t what I expected; and then it was too hot in the place. Though this is ordinary, the determination in a woman day after day to find things to be disappointed about saps the life out of her, and also makes her mean.

The reason we want to be disappointed, I learned, is explained by this Aesthetic Realism principle: “There is a disposition in every person to think [we] will be for [ourselves] by making less of the outside world.” This is contempt, and though having it makes you feel awful, you also have the pleasure of thinking other people are inept and you are the smartest thing going.

There Is Honest Disappointment, but How Do We Use It?

As the first child and only girl in our family, I was made a lot of by my parents and grandparents. While I liked the attention I got about how I looked, I also felt that no one wanted to know what I felt inside, and this made me angry. Sometimes I would hide in my room away from everyone.

There is an honest disappointment children have had, I learned, that who we are and what we feel inside is not known by those close to us. But a girl can also feel victorious keeping herself to herself. Mr. Siegel explained:

The first thing necessary to avoid disappointment is to ask if we’re not going after it….For instance, I have seen people complain about their not being understood by others. I’ve asked, “What have you done to be understood? Have you really tried to show yourself as you are?”…People conceal themselves, and then complain that they are not understood.

I did conceal myself. Though my father called me “sunshine,” most of the time I didn’t feel very sunny inside. I could appear like the all-American girl, but inwardly I made fun of people, and as time went on, I was increasingly sarcastic.

As our family grew larger, I had to help take care of my five younger brothers. Often I wished I were the only child like my friend, Andrea, across the street. I also felt put aside by my parents as they had other children to care for. Mostly, my brothers played together, and instead of joining in with them I remember feeling disdainful and going off by myself. When I did play with them, I would show off and was competitive to get my parent’s attention, especially my father’s.

As a young girl, my father took me to the hardware store every Saturday because he knew I liked learning about tools and how to fix things. One Saturday, when my brother Douglas was old enough, my father took him instead of me. Watching them drive away, I was jealous and angry. I remember hardening myself and acting cool when they came home. This is one example of what became an industry in me— feeling all men were brutes; that they didn’t see me right, and should be punished. My father used to say I had a chip on my shoulder. I hung onto memories for years that justified that case—like the time my father, simply doing his chores, unknowingly mowed over my favorite flower—a tiny buttercup in the middle of the lawn.

Yet this was the same man who spent hours carefully building a doll house for me at Christmas with carpeting, cabinets and a staircase inside, and who spoke about books with such pleasure that encouraged us all to read.

In an Aesthetic Realism class, years later I said I wanted to understand why I had come to be so bitter and disappointed with men. Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss asked me,”Do you think something in you feels that you had such a victory coming to that opinion of the men in your home that you’re not going to just give this up.” And she said, “A woman can feel somewhere if a man doesn’t see her right, she has more evidence for her favorite case, and it’s like a jewel.”

This was true. Ms. Reiss then said there was also something else in me, “that wants to be very sweet, but you don’t see it as strong.” I felt so described by this, and I’m very grateful to for explaining it. I’ve come to see that a woman is strong if she can feel honestly sweet in knowing a man, because she’s not trying to fool and manage him, she’s glad to be affected by him; and I have experienced this first hand in my marriage to Bennett Cooperman, Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor, whom I love very much.

I’ve also been able to study the hope in a woman to be disappointed, which is endemic in marriage. Once, when Bennett did the grocery shopping and came home, as I began to unpack, I saw there were many things I liked. But then, as I found that the nuts were “roasted” instead of “raw,” I had a little rush of irritation. Looking further, I asked, “Oh, are these really Gala apples, because they don’t look like them,” and when Bennett pointed out the touch of scornful glee in my voice, I saw he was right and I was grateful.

This is a minute to minute choice in a woman’s life and I’m continuing to learn about it, including from questions such as these asked of me by Ellen Reiss in a class: “Do you think you feel that the world should serve you and will fail at doing so? Do you think you set up things so you can be disappointed and angry?”

Love and a Disappointed Woman

In his lecture “Mind and Disappointment,” Eli Siegel explained:

I have said to persons, “You will never be loved by anybody until you can love the world from which that person comes. And even if you seem to be successful, you’ll feel disappointment.” The reason is that any person who expects to get what [she] wants from the world without giving the world that beautiful payment which is a desire to know and respect it, will be disappointed. Instead of… seeing the world as a process, it will change into an icebox….; it will be a greedy acquisitive business. Then, at a certain time, even if [one] gets what [one] wants, there will be a feeling of not having it. TRO 786

So often I ended up with that feeling of “not having it.” When I met Luke Tyler in college, I liked his seriousness and liveliness. He was very different from me. He grew up in Texas, cared for science and had traveled a lot.

But as I had with my brothers and father earlier, I wanted a man to make me the most important thing in the world, and was disappointed and hurt when he didn’t. Luke felt I wanted to manage and own him, and once told me he was even worried about giving me a gift, because I would use it to feel I finally “got him.” This was different from what I felt using my mind to study Renaissance painting in my art history classes. I would calculate when to be at the student union, pretending to study, sometimes even cutting a class to do it, waiting for him to walk in. Often I’d wear clinging outfits to get his attention; and when I did have what I saw as the ultimate victory through sex, I felt empty and cheap. In his lecture, Mr. Siegel said:

A woman has had a certain notion of love….She knows that this notion of love does not wholly represent her, but it is.the one thing with which she associates victory…. And every time she wins, she’s disappointed. TRO 788

I would have spent my whole life trying to get a man this way, feeling disappointed and desolate afterwards. Increasingly, Luke and I would fight and then reconcile. In an Aesthetic Realism consultation I was asked, “Do you think you and Mr. Tyler were very warm to each other [but]… that [together] you made less of the outside world?” This was true. And the warmth was really coldness because I didn’t want to know Luke, or encourage his care for other people and things. In fact, I was competitive with his friends.

Aesthetic Realism explains that the purpose of love, which will always satisfy and never disappoint, is to like the world. Having this purpose is a million times greater and more romantic than the cheap victories I went after trying to conquer a man.

When I met Bennett Cooperman, I felt for the first time that a man really wanted to know me and respect my mind. He didn’t just take my surface as the whole picture.

Yet that drive to be disappointed and to prove it was all a mistake was working in me. In a class Ms. Reiss asked me: “Do you think you’d like to be able to slam the phone down on his ear and say: ‘ You’re not worthy of my respect!'” It may be right not to think a person is worthy of respect but it’s never right to hope it.” At one point she asked me humorously as to Bennett, “Has Mr. Cooperman shown himself to be a thorough cad yet?” When I said “no,” she suggested that Bennett say to me: “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of evil left in me!”

I love Bennett’s thoughtfulness and exuberance, tenderness and strength—the way he encourages other people, wants to know them—including the men he teaches in consultations; and for his work in The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company presenting the historic lectures by Eli Siegel on the drama.

Sarah Josepha Hale Used Disappointment to Have America Better

A woman who used a true disappointment in behalf of the world, to have people seen with more justice, is the American writer and editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, who lived from 1788-1879.

Mrs. Hale was the editor for over 40 years of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the largest and most popular women’s magazine of its time. She was also the author of one of the first novels in America titled, Northwood, about slavery, and Poems for Our Children, which included “Mary’s Lamb” —better known as the song, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—and many other books including a scholarly work, Woman’s Record, or Sketches of Distinguished Women from the Creation to the Present Day, a copy of which Eli Siegel had in his library.

Sarah Josepha Hale was a force in America. She used the true disappointment many women had about how they were seen in the Victorian era—they were largely deprived of education, economic rights, and equal employment opportunities—to work for changes that are still in effect today. Her biographer writes:

She was the early champion of elementary education for girls equal to that of boys and of higher education for women. She was the first to advocate women as teachers in public schools….she helped organize Vassar College…. She began the fight for the retention of property rights for married women. She founded the first society for the advancement of women’s wages, better working conditions for women and the reduction of child labor.

As a young girl, Sarah Josepha had a large desire to know the world. Her brother Horatio was attending Dartmouth College, and when he came home would teach Sarah what he was learning. Her biographer tells how she was “generous in her gratitude.” Sarah wrote:

To my brother….I owe what knowledge I have of Latin, of the higher branches of mathematics, and of mental philosophy. He often regretted that I could not, like himself, have the privilege of a college education.

At 25, Sarah came to know and marry the young lawyer, David Hale, with whom she had five children. I believe he encouraged her mind and life very much. She describes how, soon after their marriage “We commenced…a system of study and reading.” And:

The hours allotted were from eight o’clock until ten…How I enjoyed those hours! In this manner we studied French, Botany…obtained some knowledge of Mineralogy, Geology…In all our mental pursuits, it seemed the aim of my husband to enlighten my reason, strengthen my judgment, and give me confidence in my own powers of mind, which he estimated more highly than I did.

Here we see a woman glad to be grateful for the good affect of a man—not looking to be disappointed.

Early in her marriage, Sarah Hale was diagnosed with what was called quick consumption, for which there was no cure. Ruth Finely describes how Mrs. Hale accepted her fate, but David Hale would have none of it. He had done research on the good effects of grapes on her illness. It was Fall and he took her up to the mountains where the grapes were ripe, and they traveled for six weeks. “It was beautiful weather,” Mrs. Hale recalled, and “I ate grapes.” Ruth Finley writes how Mrs. Hale said that David:

Also…had a theory that fresh air ought to be good for sick lungs….[When] we stopped at the doctor’s house on the way out of town…he vowed David would never bring me home alive. But David did bring me home, cured.”

Tragically, after only seven years of marriage Sarah Hale’s husband died suddenly, leaving her penniless and with 5 young children to support. But she did not use this to hate the world. She moved her family to Boston so she could work and provide for her children. It was at this time that she began her literary career and important work to have other women’s lives better. In a lecture, “Mind and Emptiness” Eli Siegel said:

A tragedy occurs and the self is shocked. For a while nothing has meaning. If there is a largeness of mind in the woman to whom the tragedy occurs, she won’t resent other people,…though she’ll be sad, she will feel…a sense of kinship between herself and all other people.

When Sarah Hale saw the poverty that wives and families of working sailors endured in Boston, she founded the first Seaman’s Aid Society. She wrote passionately:

The lot of the sailor’s wife is of extreme hardship. The highest wages, which at the best of times a common seaman can obtain, is eighteen dollars a month—often he is obliged to accept ten or twelve dollars….

This left the sailor’s family only enough money to “pay the rent and buy fuel” and forced his wife to support herself and their children at “grinding wages.”

Mrs. Hale opened a store where the wives of the sailors could work for good wages and sell the clothing they made from their own hands to the public. She established the first day nurseries where women could leave their children while they worked. The store was a huge success.

During Sarah Hale’s over 40 year editorship, Ruth Finley tells how Godey’s Ladies Magazine:

Dared to criticize conditions theretofore unquestioned, and then crusaded against them. It suggested reforms, and then organized committees to actuate them. It…”publicized” the inequalities and injustices suffered by women…

Sarah Hale encouraged Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor, and other women to study medicine. She stood up for Dr. William T.G. Morton’s discovery of anesthesia when he was attacked vehemently by his rivals and religious leaders, Ruth Finley writes how “she devoted pages of Godey’s to his defense.”

In an editorial in 1853, Sarah Hale invited inventors to make machines that would make life easier for American women. One result was the first washing machine. She published works by important writers of the day, including Edgar Allen Poe, and wrote articles encouraging better health and sanitation.

Meanwhile, a large matter in Sarah Josepha Hale’s life was how she saw the American Civil War, which took place during her editorship of Godey’s. Here, I believe, she made a large mistake which hurt her life. Louis Godey, the publisher, had a “no politics” policy, and the magazine at the height of its success was silent during one of the most important times in our nation. Her biographer tells how Mrs. Hale, having been born shortly after the American Revolution, had an enormous fear that her “beloved Union” might be dissolved. Though she was against slavery, she wrote about:

The great error of those who would sever the Union, rather than see a slave within its borders….

One can ask, “Was there something too soft in her against evil—the desire in people to have a war so they could continue to own human beings and use them for profit?” There are hints that she thought the abolitionists were too intense. She said of her novel “Northwood” that it “was written when what is now known as “Abolitionism first began to disturb seriously the harmony between the South and the North.” And Ruth Finley describes how she republished the book to counteract “the inflammatory influences of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

How much did she feel that justice was worth fighting for, that there could be a beautiful fight? When she and the magazine chose to be silent, Ms. Finley writes, “it was no longer the arbiter of the nation’s parlors,” and it “never again…caught up with the times.” Was Mrs. Hale deeply and rightly disappointed in herself?

Still, because of her important work, Sarah Hale was cared for by persons of her time who cared for justice, notably Charles Dickens. I’m very grateful that in our time, through the education of Aesthetic Realism, the drive in a woman to be disappointed can at last be criticized and change into an honest desire to know, an honest desire to find the world likeable, deeply satisfying. This is good will, the desire to “have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.” That desire, truly had, will never fail one, never disappoint.

The post Why Are Women Disappointed & Do We Ever Want to Be? appeared first on Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman.

In an Aesthetic Realism Class, Eli Siegel explained the difference between the two kinds of determination people have. “One,” he said, “has to do with will power…’I want this therefore it must be right!'” When a person is determined in this way, she doesn’t want to see the facts, and instead has the feeling Mr. Siegel described and which I had very often—”clench your teeth and go ahead!”

When our determination is right, Aesthetic Realism shows, there is still something we want, but it is accompanied by a large desire to know, self-questioning, and an ease in welcoming other peoples’ opinions. “The difference,” Mr. Siegel explained, “is between seeing something as good and being determined that something is good.”

I’m very grateful to have learned the difference between these two kinds of determination. I would have ruined my life going after things I thought were “right” just because I wanted them, but which left me feeling colder and harder.

The Determination to See vs. Wanting Our Way

“To live is to have one’s way somehow,” Mr. Siegel wrote in an issue of The Right Of:

The question is whether we know our true way well enough. Our desire to have our way is always accompanied by what the facts are….Reality and the facts may be at one with our desire; or reality and the facts may not be in agreement with our desire.

One way I think my own desire went along with seeing the facts, was through my early care for art. I studied painting, and liked drawing objects with pastels, such as the rough and smooth surface of an old bottle, trying to show the depth inside. I worked to get it right. This was in behalf of a good determination because it came from a desire to see, and I felt proud.

Yet this was very different from what I felt riding my bicycle around Biltmore Shores and seeing that other people in our affluent neighborhood had things my family didn’t have, which made me angry. In 3rd grade, I was jealous when Sharon Miller’s parents bought her the latest style plaid suits with matching fishnet stockings. We lived modestly, and I often felt that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted. Increasingly there came to be a determination in me that if I was to get my way, I would have to be very aggressive about it. When the Christmas catalogues came to our home, I would take them up to my room and look through them with a kind of greedy relish. I admired the jewelry with reverence, thinking of what I would get if I had money. These catalogues were like a bible to me.

As time went on and my parents had 5 more children—all boys—it became increasingly hard for them to make ends meet. Though we belonged to a beach club and went on summer vacations, there was a lot of pain about money and also how they saw each other. Often there would be fights.

I think my mother, Marion Nietsch felt things were too much for her. Though I saw a deep kindness in her when I was a little girl, as the years went on she got harder, and increasingly used alcohol to get some solace.

I’m sorry to say that I was in a team with my father Richard Nietsch against my mother. I was competitive with her and my brothers for his attention, and did not encourage him to care for her, instead I flattered and consoled him. He praised me a great deal and while I liked it, I thought he was foolish. Through what I began with him, I came to have a disproportionate sense of what should come to me without my doing anything to deserve it. In his book James and The Children, Mr. Siegel explains a determination I and many girls have had with our fathers and later with other men: “A person made by God exists for me to have glory.”

My mother was more sensible about me. When I made up a story so she wouldn’t find out I did something wrong, she would look at me and say, “I hope I can believe you.” While I respected her straightforward way, it made me angry that I couldn’t fool her.

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that when a child comes to see the world as a confusing, messy, unkind place, she can feel she’ll take care of herself by dismissing and managing people. I was determined not to like my mother and to show her that she could never please me. As I got older, we couldn’t be in the same room without arguing.

Once, when I was about 15, she came home with a lovely blouse she had bought for me. I showed such disdain for it and for her that she got furious and screamed, “What’s wrong with you!” I knew I was mean but I didn’t know how to be different, and I remember liking the fact that I could get her upset while I acted cool and unperturbed.

I felt I’d never be able to feel good about my mother, and then I began to have Aesthetic Realism consultations and I was tremendously relieved to learn that I could! In one consultation I was asked about what Marion Nietsch felt with 5 sons who were then ages 15-22, all living at home. “Do you think that’s an easy situation?”

Meryl Nietsch.  “No.” And they asked, “How do you think you would do with six children?

Meryl Nietsch.  “I don’t know!”

Consultants.  Do you respect your mother enough?

Meryl Nietsch.  I don’t think I respect her enough.

Consultants.  Do you think you really have a sense of what a woman with six children feels? None of us is in that situation but do you think mind can try to [know] what that feels like?

Meryl Nietsch. I think so.

And with humor, they asked, “Do you think since you were the first…that she should have just stopped there!” That’s just what I felt. For the first time I began to think about who my mother was, as a person in her own right, with hopes and feelings that I never knew existed. I was given assignments to write a soliloquy of her when she was 17, and to write a scene from a play about her which was set at a time a few years after I was born and as I did this, I began to see her with new eyes.

A Determination to Manage the World through Food

A large thing my mother and I fought about is something I was intensely determined about, and which hurt me very much. Though she tried to be of use to me, at 13 and for the next 10 years, I had what is affecting over 9 million young women in America today— anorexia and bulimia. I am grateful with my whole heart that unlike so many of these women, I met what explained and ended my pain.

In Aesthetic Realism consultations I heard the kind comprehension women are looking for when my consultants asked, “Do you think Miss Nietsch that you changed tremendous confusion and discontent with the world into the triumph of being able to manage it?” “Yes,” I said. And they asked about how I ate and got rid of food, “Do you think what you have is a very dramatic and organized way of saying ‘I don’t need the world?'” That feeling, I have seen, is a huge determination in a woman with eating disorders. She can be in agony about what she is doing to herself, but there is a tremendous victory—you have beaten what you see as a confusing world, you are running things.

My consultants explained, “Bulimia is a way of managing the world, having it please you but not affect you deeply; anorexia is a means of having yourself pure, without any additions. Both arise from contempt.”

In an earlier paper I spoke at length about eating disorders and Aesthetic Realism’s magnificent understanding of them. I have seen as true what Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss once described in a class, that they are “an utter battle with the laws of reality.” And I know from my own life that when a woman learns how to value the world and see it justly, her determination to use food, eat proportionately, in this way ends, she wants to respect food and keep it inside of her. This is what I am so thankful to say happened to me.

Two Kinds of Determination in Peg ‘O My Heart

In a lecture he gave in 1941 titled “Seeing and Grabbing,” Eli Siegel said that every person, “From the very beginning…wants to see things and also wants to grab things,” and explained that these two things can torment, “because they are not joined: the desire to understand and the desire to possess.”

We can see a drama about those desires in two characters in J. Hartley Manners’ Peg O’ My Heart. The play takes place at the “regal villa” of the Chichesters, who are snobbish and cold, and have just lost all their money. When they learn that Mrs. Chichester’s brother left his fortune to an impoverished Irish-American niece, Peg—a young, vibrant “beautiful girl of 18″— Mrs. Chichester agrees to take Peg in and educate her for a fee.

Peg is strong and tender, and despite her feeling lonely, so far away from her home, she has a pretty steady determination not to give way to sadness and to have a good effect on others. We see her looking thoughtfully at things, trying to understand people, yet she also has a sharp tongue which she feels bad about.

Peg tries to befriend the daughter, Ethel Chichester, who is a selfish young women. Ethel is very unhappy and takes it out on Peg, telling her “We have nothing in common.”

Peg.  That doesn’t prevent us from being decent to each other.

Ethel.  …Decent?

Peg.  I’ll meet ye three quarters of the way if ye’ll only show one generous feeling toward me. Ye would if ye knew what was in my mind.

That is a deep statement and I think Peg says it sincerely because she wants to have what Aesthetic Realism shows is crucial when our determination is right—good will, “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.” Peg says to Ethel:

Peg.  I watch ye and listen to ye. Ye turn yer face to the world as much to say “aren’t I the easy-goin’, sweet-tempered, calm young lady?” and ye’re not quite that, are ye?…up in yer head and down in yer heart you worry your soul all the time….And with all yer fine advantages ye’re not very happy are ye?…Are ye, dear?

Ethel.  (Slowly) No. I’m not….

Ethel is affected by Peg’s kindness. Like many women, she thinks if she gets the adoration of a man, named Christian, she will like herself. But she doesn’t really want to know him, or think too much about the facts about him, including that he’s married and has a baby. Ethel stands for a determination as to love many women have had, I certainly did—a man exists to make much of us. Peg is critical of this notion of love and asks Ethel many questions about Christian including, “Is it customary for English husbands with babies to kiss other women?

Ethel.  It is a very old and very respected custom.

Peg.  Devil doubt it but it’s old. I’m not so sure about the respect.

In The Right Of, Ellen Reiss describes another young woman whom she calls Celia, saying that she:

…was determined to get a certain man Rick—but she wasn’t interested in understanding him, seeing who he really was…. There had been “signs” that all was not in the clear with Rick, but Celia had glossed over them, dismissed them….She saw a man as someone whose function was to glorify her, whom she could use to feel superior to the whole world. This makes her like many women. And, being based on contempt, her determination…had to be something that would cause her to trip up painfully.

There are women this summer on beaches in the Hamptons or sipping wine in an outdoor bar with the perfect white dress to offset their tans, who are in agony about this. I know about it first hand. I spent hours concentrating on what I would wear and arranging my hair to have a big affect on men when I walked into a room. Sometimes I calculatingly drove by a place where a man I liked was, and then acted nonchalant when I saw him.

Once, while working as a lifeguard on Long Island, I was determined to get the attention of Steve Connors. He had a gentle thoughtfulness and energy that I liked, but I was more interested in having him show how wonderful he thought I was than in knowing him. I pursued Steve all summer and finally got what I wanted, but I couldn’t understand why I felt so bad.

Fortunately I had just begun to have Aesthetic Realism consultations, and was asked the questions women have thirsted to hear. “Do you think that there’s a way he approves of you, whether he says a word or not, that is better than anything else?”

Meryl Nietsch.  Maybe.

Consultants.  Do you think it’s the closet thing to worship that’s around?

Meryl Nietsch.  Yeah. But I don’t think its good.

Consultants.  Well, but is it part of the interest?

It was part of the interest, but I didn’t feel so good about it. With humor and depth my consultants asked, if I felt something like this:

“I thought I was going to have power and have my way; I did have power and have my way; and I’m not happy anyway. How come?” Because you weren’t really interested in seeing what your way really is.

The purpose of love, Aesthetic Realism explains, is to like the world. This is our deepest desire, and that is why the determination to conquer a man can never satisfy. A man is the world, and knowing him, his relation to everything is a chance to know reality and ourselves better. I’m grateful to be in the midst of this grand study with the man I love and am proud to need, my husband, Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor, Bennett Cooperman. Through his good will and criticism of me, which is often humorous including as to ways I am determined, I am a better woman.

For instance, early in our marriage Bennett asked me to wait until he got home to lift a heavy box down from a closet, but I didn’t want to wait and did it anyway. This was a pattern with me and sometimes I injured my back. I’ll never forgot what he said later: “Did it ever occur to you that a man can want to have a good effect you by lifting that box? Can that be part of your thought?” And he wrote kind critical lines about my back, which affected me very much. These are the first lines:

“Message from Meryl’s Back”

My loving back is telling me
To stop and look and want to see.
“I will be strong and will not ache
If you the proper time will take
To do the things you want to do—
Don’t plow ahead, but see what’s true”

I love Bennett for being a good critic of me and wanting me to be stronger.

The play, Peg ‘O My Heart comes to a crisis near the end when Peg stops Ethel from running away with Christian. It is night, and Peg comes home and sees Ethel with her suitcase:

Peg.  Were ye goin’ away with him? Were ye?

Ethel.  Take your hands off me…Let me go.

Peg.  Ye’re not going out of this house tonight if I have to wake everyone…Ye’d take him from his wife and her baby?

Ethel.  He hates them, and I hate this. And I’m going—

Peg.  So ye’d break yer mother’s heart and his wife’s just to satisfy yer own selfish pleasures?….He gave his name and his life to a woman, and it’s your duty to protect her and the child she brought him.

Ethel.  I’d kill myself first.

Peg.  Not first. That’s what would happen to ye after ye’d gone with him…Doesn’t he want to leave the woman he swore to cherish…What do we suppose he’d do to one he took no oath with at all? You have some sense about this.

Ethel sees how wrong she has been, and breaks down in tears. Peg says kindly to her:

Don’t cry. Don’t do that….and with the sunlight the thought of all this will go from ye. Come to my room and I’ll sit by yer side till morning.

The Determination of Good Will

“This desire to know, value, bring out the good power in things and people,” Ellen Reiss writes in The Right Of:

…is, Aesthetic Realism shows, the greatest strength. It is the only purpose that will make us truly strong. And the having of this good will is at the same time the most subtle of jobs, the most delicate, the tenderest.

This is what was encouraged in me as to my mother in classes taught by Ms. Reiss. Through what I learned, I began to see who my mother really was with more depth and kindness. In one class Ms. Reiss asked, “Do you think you can find the depths of your mother a subject of real interest?” And I was asked, “Do you really want your mother to think well of herself?” And, we began to have conversations about many things that made us both stronger.

I learned about her home in Brooklyn where she grew up during the depression, and what she felt later moving to Seaford, Long Island. I learned that she loved to read, what her favorite books were, that she once sang in a band. She told me about the excitement she felt when she first met my father in high school. Many of these conversations took place during the last months of her life.

I told her how much it meant to me to be learning about what sincerity is from Aesthetic Realism, when I had felt like such a faker. And when I thanked her for having been a critic of my insincerity—I was very much affected that she told me she worried about sincerity in herself too.

My mother and I came to have a friendship that I treasure. A week before she died, she wrote in a letter to Ellen Reiss:

I thank Eli Siegel for saving my daughter’s life and I want to thank you Ms. Reiss for continuing the kind work of [Mr.] Siegel.

The post We’re Determined, but Are We Right? Or, the Criterion for Good Determination appeared first on Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman.

A woman does not feel she is the same person determined in her career, holding her own in an argument—and yielding in a man’s arms….Both man and woman feel, with the old pain of centuries…that when we are tough we aren’t kind or sweet but mean; and when we are tenderly considerate and yielding, we’re not strong but foolish and will be taken advantage of.

This describes the fight that was going on in me. Then, at 23, I met the understanding I was looking for when I began to study this principle stated by Eli Siegel: “Every person is always trying to put together opposites in himself.”

How I Came to See Strength & Tenderness

Growing up on the south shore of Long Island, I cared very much for animals and I liked running down to the beach after it snowed with my neighbors’ St. Bernard dog, Brandy. I also remember when my parents, five younger brothers and I gathered around the TV to watch Louis Armstrong. I loved when he sang “Hello Dolly” with the sweet tenderness and gravelly roughness in his voice.

There was also a lot of anger in our home—often about money. When my brother Mark had a serious illness that the insurance company would not pay for, my parents had to use all of their savings so he could get treatment. From that point on, money was tight and there was a lot of pain about and arguing about it.

I regret that I didn’t try to understand what my parents were going through, but used their fights to feel disgusted with everything. In an early Aesthetic Realism consultation, my consultants asked me, “Do you think you came to feel that the world was a messy place?” “Yes,” I said. I felt I had to harden myself and manage people to get what I wanted; and more than I realized, I felt I shouldn’t be too affected by anything, or need anyone—and I secretly enjoyed feeling that I was above all the mess. My consultants explained that this attitude was contempt, which Mr. Siegel defined as “the addition to self through the lessening of something else.” And this was the reason I increasingly disliked myself.

I came to see that the fight in me between wanting to be affected by things, being honestly tender, and wanting to manage and be superior to other people, took many forms. For instance, as the oldest child, my father taught me how to fix and build things, and I took to this very much, doing a lot of heavy work in the yard, secretly thinking I was better and stronger than any boy. I was competitive and wanted to outshine my brothers in my father’s eyes. There were two songs I heard as a girl that I felt stood for me—”Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” from “Annie Get Your Gun,” and Helen Reddy’s hit “I Am Woman” with the line, “I am woman, I am invincible,” which I would sing like it was my anthem.

Women have agony about these opposites of strength and tenderness, and I did. As I got older and became interested in boys, I would get into contests with them in ways that made me ashamed. I saw early I could affect a man through how I looked, but I also remember that when someone got what I thought was too close, I would act hard and aloof. At other times I ended up having an intense intellectual debate with a man I was dating, and I would even challenge some men to arm wrestle. This did not endear me to them.

In one of the kindest essays, titled “Medusa Is a Nice Girl,” Eli Siegel explains so compassionately:

A girl knows she is hard, but she knows also that softness is socially necessary. Some mode of having hardness and softness is acquired for social persistence and advancement. But the two within a girl do not serve the same purpose. A girl is not hard for the same reason that she is soft. She is soft in order to be liked; she is hard in order to protect herself.

This describes so clearly what went on in me! Along with acting like the strongest thing going, I also cultivated a sweet and seemingly soft manner because I wanted very much to be liked. I also wanted to have my way, and with every year the division in me grew between an insincere softness and something like impenetrable steel?like hardness inside. I felt like two different people.

In an Aesthetic Realism class some years ago when I said I didn’t understand why I would go from being agreeable and yielding to getting my dukes up and not wanting to budge, Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss asked me, “Is there a battle of hard and soft?” I said yes, and she asked, “Do you want to answer it, or do you feel it’s wiser to have it both ways?” I had thought I was clever being able to go from one to the other.

In another class I spoke about something that had occurred very often: my getting into arguments with men—on a date, at work with a boss or co-worker, and even with a male sales clerk at a store. Ms. Reiss explained that this had to do with my attitude to the whole world. She said: “Miss Nietsch feels somewhere if a man doesn’t see her right she has more evidence for her favorite case— and it is like a jewel.” And she said one of my mottos was: “I’m not going to let any man walk over me!” But then, she explained, “There is something else in you that wants to be very sweet and have a lot of feeling, but you don’t see it as strong.”

This was an exact description of me, and I am grateful with all my heart that the coldness and hardness I once felt was inevitable, changed. Aesthetic Realism enabled me to have authentic tenderness for people, and to feel strong in having it—for my mother, including when she was dying of cancer; for my father; for my brothers and their families; my friends and co-workers. And through what I learned, I came to care deeply for a man, and to feel proud in being affected by him. I am very grateful for my nine-year marriage to Bennett Cooperman, who is an Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor. Bennett is a deep, kind, often humorously critical friend to me in many ways, including on the subject we’re speaking of tonight. I am proud to need him to be a stronger, happier, more honestly tender woman. Having this emotion is a million times greater than the wasted years I spent being hard and trying to defeat men.

Rebecca in “Ivanhoe” Is Beautifully Strong and Tender

Aesthetic Realism explains that we will be both tender and strong when our purpose is to have good will for the world and people. Good will is not what I once thought—something gushy, soft, and fake. Mr. Siegel described it as “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.”

In Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe there is a character who has affected people for many years, because of the way she puts together tenderness and strength. She is Rebecca, daughter of Isaac, the Jew.

The novel takes place in England, during the time of King Richard the Lion-Hearted and Robin Hood. A young nobleman, named Wilfred of Ivanhoe, had been banished from his home by his father, who disapproved of Ivanhoe’s love for Rowena. Ivanhoe then joins King Richard in the crusades, and later returns as a knight with Richard, who is in disguise.

Meanwhile, during King Richard’s absence, his brother John, who is cruel to the people of England, has been scheming to overthrow him so he can be king. But, in a spectacular tournament, Ivanhoe—who is also in disguise—battles and defeats all of John’s knights, including the fierce and evil Templar, Brian de BoisGuilbert. Though he has won and gives hope to the people of England, Ivanhoe is seriously injured. He is rescued, and restored to health in the following days by Rebecca, who has great knowledge of medicine.

In Scott’s description of her we see tenderness and strength. There is the beauty of her person, which Scott says is “exquisitely symmetrical,” with “brilliant eyes,” and “sable tresses.” But she also has a strength of mind and a purpose to be kind to people. Rebecca, Scott writes:

…had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained, arranged, and enlarged in the course of a progress beyond her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived…Rebecca, thus endowed with knowledge as with beauty, was universally revered and admired.

She is very much affected by Ivanhoe’s faithfulness to Richard the Lion-Hearted, who stands for people getting the economic justice they deserve and for his courage in fighting the traitors. As she takes care of Ivanhoe, enabling him to gain strength, Scott tells how she:

…performed her task with a graceful and dignified simplicity and modesty, which might, even in more civilized days, have…seem[ed] repugnant to female delicacy. The idea of so young and beautiful a person engaged…in dressing the wound of one of a different sex, was melted away and lost in that of a beneficent being contributing her effectual aid to relieve pain.

Ivanhoe does get stronger and he is deeply moved by her. And she comes to love him. But because they live in a time when no Catholic could marry a Jewish woman, they cannot show their love.

An important aspect of Rebecca’s strength is that she does not use her beauty to weaken Ivanhoe. Most women feel, as I once did, “If I can have this man in a tizzy about me, then I am strong.” But this kind of thinking is really contempt, and always weakens a woman. When Rebecca sees that Ivanhoe is affected by her, she says to him:

It is well you should speedily know that your handmaiden is a poor Jewess, the daughter of that Isaac of York to whom you were so lately a good and kind lord.

And Scott shows that Rebecca, strong as she is, also has a fight within when she sees Ivanhoe trying to stop his feelings for her. He writes:

She could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy.

And she says later, “I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away.” And the larger purpose in Rebecca wins out. When Ivanhoe says he must get well enough to bear his armour and fight John, and if Rebecca will enable him to do this he will pay her with a “casque full of crowns,” she replies:

[T]hou shalt bear thine armour on the eighth day from hence, if thou wilt grant me but one boon in the stead of the silver thou dost promise me…I will but pray of thee to believe henceforward that a Jew may do good service to a Christian, without desiring other guerdon than the blessing of the Great Father who made both Jew and Gentile.

Speaking about the importance of the novel Ivanhoe, Eli Siegel said in a lecture, “it did give a dignity which is necessary to the Jews.” And placing the tremendous value of Scott, author of so many powerful novels and creator of hundreds of characters in fiction, Mr. Siegel said he was among the 30-40 World Great Writers, and that, “the notion of one mind having all this come forth from it, makes you prouder of yourself. It staggers you with respect for man.”

The Oneness of Hardness and Softness in a Woman

One of the reasons Rebecca is so admirable is because we feel she is trying to have a good relation of hardness and softness, opposites related to tenderness and strength. As I said earlier, these have been very big in my life. I could be sweet, but also terrifically stubborn. Early in my marriage to Bennett, we had a quarrel concerning who knew more about the computer. I had prided myself at my speed and knowledge on the PC, but Bennett was an expert on the Mac, which I didn’t know so much about, and I’Â’m sorry to say that I found my hackles going up at the idea of having to learn from my husband.

We told about this in an Aesthetic Realism class, and to have me get some perspective, Ms. Reiss said humorously “Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning never argued about the computer.”

Then she asked me an important question which I recommend every woman ask as to her husband. “What do you think you do that most annoys Mr. Cooperman?” I said, “My desire to manage him, hover over him when he’s doing something in the house. I say ‘I think I could be of use.'” Ellen Reiss asked:

Do you think “I could be of use” is really “I can do this better than you, so step aside”? That’s superiority.

This was so true, and Ms. Reiss asked about ways I could be sweet and yielding and then get my back up. She asked: “Do you think you have good will for Mr. Cooperman?” I said, no. And she continued:

Good will is the firmest thing in the world…And it’s the most flexible thing—you give up any notion of yourself that would get in the way of being fair to that person.

I thank Ellen Reiss for teaching me how I can be proud of myself as a woman and wife.

One of the reasons I am so affected by Rebecca and am learning from her is that she is a means of seeing what real strength and true tenderness are. She is not obstinate or stubborn as I have been, nor is she strategically sweet. Also—different from me and many women—she doesn’t use a man not seeing her right to ratify a case against the world and see it as a jewel. As Ivanhoe continues, we see Rebecca has that beautiful oneness of firmness and flexibility that are in good will. In a lecture titled “Poetry and Strength,” Mr. Siegel said that “one idea of strength” is the:

Ability to take many things and to remain what you are…The ability to endure, to remain the same amid much vicissitude.

This, we see in Rebecca as she meets great danger. She is captured with Ivanhoe and others, and they are held prisoner in the castle Torquilstone by the evil Brian de Bois-Gilbert and King John’s men. As Brian de Bois-Guilbert tries to force Rebecca to submit to him, and she shows magnificently what Mr. Siegel described—the “ability to take many things and remain what you are.” They are high in the turret of Torquilstone castle, and Bois-Guilbert says:

Thou art the captive of my bow and spear, subject to my will by the laws of all nations; nor will I…abstain from taking by violence what thou refusest.

‘Stand back,’ said Rebecca—’stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! My strength thou mayst indeed overpower…but I will proclaim thy villainy…from one end of Europe to the other…I defy thee.’

As she spoke, she threw open the latticed window which led to the bartizan, and in an instant after stood on the very verge of the parapet, with not the slightest screen between her and the tremendous depth below…’Remain where thou art, [or] thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God than her honour to the Templar!”

While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve…gave to her…a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not…on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command….gave…yet a more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert…thought he never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.

He respects her tremendously. Rebecca is courageously strong and critical of him throughout this novel, but he feels he has to have her. She is falsely accused by the Templars of bewitching Bois-Guilbert and is sentenced to death, unless she can find a Champion Knight to fight Bois-Guilbert on her behalf. Even in the midst of such peril we see she is brave and true to herself. She says in a room full of her accusers:

God will raise me up a champion…It cannot be that in merry England, the hospitable, generous, the free, where so many are ready to peril their lives for honour, there will not be found one to fight for justice.

Then, in a dramatic moment, Scott writes this sentence—itself a beautiful oneness of tenderness and strength, delicacy and power:

She took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the Grand Master with an air of simplicity and dignity which excited universal surprise and admiration.

As the novel nears its end, Rebecca is rescued by the noble Ivanhoe; and we see tenderness and strength as one thing become triumphant.

Aesthetic Realism which can teach every woman and man how to have these opposites which people have felt would always war in them honestly work together in our lives. This, I am thankful to say is what is happening to me—and I want to be a means of it happening to people everywhere.

The post Do Men & Women Have the Same Question About Strength & Tenderness? appeared first on Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman.

This attitude can have us feel we don’t have to listen to another person; we don’t need to read books; we don’t have to learn new things

This is contempt, defined by Eli Siegel as “the addition to self through the lessening of something else,” and it is the thing which stifles and hurts us, and makes us mean, and it is what I so much needed to know as I grew up in the 1960s.

The Confusion about Need in a Girl on Long Island

In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss writes:

Aesthetic Realism show[s] there is a criterion for need: for what we can respect ourselves for needing and what we cannot. We can be proud of any need that is in behalf of our greatest need: to like the world. We are ashamed of, and weakened by, any need that is a substitute for that largest need, or impedes our fulfilling it.

Growing up in Massapequa, I felt I needed to be outdoors, and I loved learning about the different kinds of flowers and trees that grew near our home. In the summer I looked forward to seeing the yellow buttercups that grew in the midst of green grass in our backyard, and I remember so vividly the fragrance of the lush purple lilac bushes in spring.

We lived near the Great South Bay where I would watch the sail boats and smell the fresh sea air in the warmth of the sun. I also liked swimming in the ocean and being tossed about by the strong waves.

But as I got older, I used the very things I liked so much—the sun and beach—as a means to impress people. As a lifeguard, I made sure everyone at Tobay Beach noticed my athletic ability and my blonde hair and dark tan, which I worked very hard on for hours. I felt I absolutely needed to have a tan in the summer or I would die. But I was so concentrated on myself, I felt more and more nervous and empty.

I was the only child for four years and then over the next years something big happened. My mother gave birth to five sons, and I was no longer an only, pampered child. I was excited when my first two brothers came, but when the third and then the twins came I felt “this is too much.” Often, I helped my mother take care of them, and as time went on I used my position as the oldest, to discipline them, and liked the fact that they seemed to need me. But I didn’t feel I needed them. In an Aesthetic Realism lesson Mr. Siegel explained to a person: “the ego wants people to need us without limit but we want to put limits on our need of others. Out of this comes much misery.” This was true of me.

At the same time, I felt I had to compete with my brothers for my father’s attention by playing sports, fixing things around the house, doing heavy work like chopping the wood. This was to become a way of life with me—competing with men and not wanting to need them.

Like many families today, my parents worried about money and there were many fights. I didn’t want to think about what my father felt having to work such long hours to support his large family. In an Aesthetic Realism consultation years later, my consultants asked me so kindly: “Do you think you changed confusion and discontent with the world into the triumph of being able to manage it?” I had. And whenever I felt angry with my family I would run to my room and slam the door, or go out on my bicycle and ride for hours by myself, trying to get rid of everyone. Increasingly I felt I should depend only on myself. In his great lecture, “Mind and Emptiness,” Mr. Siegel explains so compassionately:

Unconsciously, we are all trying to be Mr. and Mrs. Zero, Mr. And Mrs. Hurrah for Nothing which is Me.There is a refusal to feel that we need anything.

I was trying to be Miss Zero and it made me feel very empty inside. In high school, I started getting rid of things that once had meant so much to me—I quit the swimming team and other sports, dropped out of the chorus and stopped playing the flute in the band. More and more I did not want to need anything, and this took a dramatic form. I began eating large amounts of food then disgorging what I ate, or I would starve myself for weeks, eating very little. I had bulimia and anorexia which for ten years I was to suffer from. Years later my consultants asked: “Do you think full and empty are very big things in your life?” I said, “Yes,” and they continued:

Do you think sometimes you can feel very empty and want to fill yourself and then you can just want to empty yourself? Do you think there’s a state of emptiness that you enjoy, having yourself to yourself?”

Meryl Nietsch. Yes. I think that’s true.

Eating disorders are, my consultants explained, “a very dramatic and organized example of saying, ‘I don’t need the world.'”

Aesthetic Realism explains the cause and solution to eating disorders, and because of this they ended permanently in me. In The Right Of #1310, Ellen Reiss explains:

[I]t is the contemptuous desire not to need the world that has made people not want to need that terrific representative of the world which is food. Anorexia nervosa won’t be understood until the desire for contempt is understood. [A]norexia would not occur without a person’s unconsciously wanting the victory of showing she does not need the world; she is gloriously sufficient unto herself; the less she needs, the more she is her own superior self, and pure.

I know with my own thriving, healthy life that when Aesthetic Realism is known and studied, anorexia and bulimia will not be causing the deaths of so many women and crippling the lives of millions of others who suffer from them today.

Can We Be Proud to Need Someone?

In “Mind and Emptiness” Mr. Siegel said:

We have to see that the needing of something is freedom. While we are trying to say to things, “Reach me,” we are also trying to wipe them away. The process of wiping away—which can take the form of forgetfulness, lack of interest, and so on—is the thing that has to be understood.

And he continues:

[T]he needing of a friend, the needing of company, the need to know what another person is, are signs of emancipation, not signs of bondage.

These sentences describe a huge mistake women have made as to love and I made it—feeling that if we need another person we are not free.

As I was coming to know Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor, Bennett Cooperman, I was very affected by the depth of his thought and kindness to people, including me. I felt I was too managing and speedy and aloof with people, and his thoughtfulness had a good effect on me. When I saw the combination of tenderness and strength in Bennett and his humorous straight criticism of me, I felt I needed him. I looked forward to talking with him every day.

But more than I knew, I also had the feeling: Meryl Nietsch can take care of herself; and I used what I saw as my physical strength to feel I didn’t need a man because I was self-sufficient. At the time Bennett and I decided to move in together, I didn’t understand why I suddenly felt very intensely against some of the suggestions he made about the apartment. I got my back up when he suggested moving a wall where the refrigerator was. I felt there was something wrong with my intensity, and spoke about it in an Aesthetic Realism class. Ms. Reiss so kindly asked me:

Do you think you are bending over backwards having Bennett Cooperman more in your life?

Meryl Nietsch.   Yes.

Ellen Reiss.   Do you think you want, on the one hand for Bennett Cooperman to be with you, but on the other hand, a woman can feel if she lets a man into her life, she’s no longer the person she was. “The Meryl Nietsch that was will be no more!” The great question is, if a person means more to us, are we more or less?

The answer is, we are more! I am grateful for what I have learned and continue to learn about this question. Bennett and I were married in October of 1995. As a woman who spent so much of my time feeling superior and being competitive with men, it means so much to me that I love a man and with every week I am more and more proud to need him—his perceptions about the world and people, his ability as an actor, his intellect and his important work as a consultant.

What Do Women’s Magazines Encourage Women to Need?

Women’s magazines are filled with things they say women need—a fit body, good sex, the latest styles, various techniques on how to get a man or a job, how to have marriage succeed. But they encourage the very thing that women have been doing for centuries which is completely against our largest need—contempt, for men and for the world.

Aesthetic Realism explains that the greatest need of women in love is to have good will, which Mr. Siegel said is, “the desire to have some one else stronger and more beautiful for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful. How different this is from what is advised in an article in an issue ofMademoiselle, titled, “Want to Sweep Him off His Feet? Get Inside His Head” by Colin McEnroe.

The article says what a woman needs is to get a man to love her utterly, and to do this she needs to find his “secret self” and encourage it to come out. There are these sentences:

What we’re talking about is considerably more profound and powerful than mere flattery, or endorsing somebody’s choice of hobby. And we’re certainly not talking about molding somebody into your vision of what they are. No, this is more about opening doors. This one leads to him on a sailboat. That one leads to him reading at a poetry slam. This one leads to him as a passionate cook…It’s not your job to make him walk through. It’s enough to show him the door exists.

Under the guise of encouraging a man to express himself—it is really patronizing as hell and all for one purpose—to get a man to adore you exclusively. The article continues: “The thing you want to do is put yourself in the picture,” and says that a woman needs to “water the part of the guy that doesn’t get watered.”

The article tells about Helen, who can’t concentrate on her work because she is obsessed with Alex. Finally after seeing him sing at a company talent show she sends a flirtatious e-mail which asks:

If an asteroid were about to hit the planet and there were only 15 minutes left live, would you come and stand by me, humming something by Springstein?

So the world is coming to an end, but you’ve got your man! And if a woman does get a man through being wily and strategic she feels cold and calculating and like a fraud. I have learned that a woman needs to be passionately interested in a man’s relation to the whole world—this is good will and it makes a woman feel proud and clean.

Women need to know how great and kind Aesthetic Realism is on the subject of what we need in love. In The Right Of Ellen Reiss explains:

[B]ecause of Aesthetic Realism, people can be proud and intelligent at last on the beautiful subject of need in love. We can ask ourselves: “Do I feel I need this person 1) because I see him as a means of getting rid of the world, of feeling at last I’m being made superior to everything? Do I need him in order to feel I own a human being, a person magnificently silly about me? Or, 2) Do I need this person because he is a means of my respecting every person more? Through him, I am fairer to everything and everyone.” The second is the only need as to a person which can make us proud. It is real love. It is romance at its most passionate.

Aesthetics: What a Woman Needs Most

Through the magnificent way Aesthetic Realism explains art, people can learn how we want to be in our lives. “All beauty,” Eli Siegel explained, “is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

Women need to learn from art how to put together opposites in themselves such as sweetness and strength, passion and exactitude, the intimate and the wide. A woman who has been loved for nearly 400 years I believe because of the way she puts these opposites together is William Shakespeare’s Juliet from Romeo and Juliet.

In an Aesthetic Realism Class, when I said that I didn’t like myself for how I was often too managing of my husband, particularly after I’m very much affected by him. I said I wanted to be sweet with him, but I didn’t see it as strong. I was surprised when Ellen Reiss read passages from Romeo and Juliet and asked me if I thought Juliet was sensible in her feeling about Romeo. I had felt Juliet was beautiful, but I had never thought about whether she was sensible. Ms. Reiss suggested I study Juliet and ask, “Was Juliet wise or stupid?” These are some of my findings.

When Juliet first meets Romeo at a ball at her home, she sees qualities in him that she is swept by—he seems both fervent and gentle, passionate and kind. And while being a critic and wanting to see if she can trust him, she doesn’t hold herself back, she is not coy or insincerely restrained. When the Nurse tells her he is a Montague-the family her own family hates and who have been bitter enemies of each other for many years—it doesn’t change her mind: she is very logical, and later, speaking to the night air as if it were Romeo, says:

Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

And she says:

And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

I believe Juliet is wise because she is glad to have met a person she feels she can love for who he is, and she has a response that is accurate and full. Juliet is precise—she is questioning of Romeo. She isn’t ga-ga over a man—she asks him “Where do you stand?”

O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronouce it faithfully.
Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my havior light;
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

Even though she doesn’t know what his response will be, Juliet is not hidden and calculating with Romeo. She is straightforward; she is passionate but her mind is still keen. She sees this as a beginning, and says when they part, “This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,/May prove a beauteous flow’r when next we meet.” And she says in one of the greatest, most famous passages in the drama:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Here, Juliet is showing what Aesthetic Realism says is love itself: proud need. And so different from the hurtful advice given by women’s magazines—to plot to have a man make you the most important thing in the world, an empress, while you strategically and contemptuously withhold yourself, saying “You need me, but I don’t need you—Juliet says she is so grateful she needs Romeo to be herself, her “bounty is as boundless as the sea,” and “the more I give to thee/the more I have, for both are infinite.” The opposites of self and world are here sheerly. She says the more she gives the more she has, and she is sweet and critical, tender and strong, passionate and so exact. I admire her enormously for this and want to be like her.

In “Love and Reality” Eli Siegel writes: “We love because we desire to be entirely ourselves, everything we can be.” And in order to be everything we can be, we need to like the world in its wideness and intimacy. This, the education of Aesthetic Realism makes possible; it is the joyous study women all over the world need.

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