The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane

The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane

This is a memoir that was very popular in its time. It was “lost”, and then rediscovered. It is written by a 19 year old woman who lived in Butte, Montana in 1901. Ms. MacLane was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Butte, Montana of 1901 was a mining time, and for many reasons Ms. MacLane did not feel like she fit into it. For the times she had more than the usual education for a man and certainly for a woman. She tells us she is a genius, and who am I to argue with her. Later in life she became openly bisexual. The memoir openly speaks of her love for a woman that is beyond platonic. I cannot imagine trying to come to terms with those stirrings in that place at that time. It had to be difficult. The following passage is but one of many that speaks of this.

“I feel in the anemone lady a strange attraction of sex. There is in me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of her, arises and overshadows all the others.

“Why am I not a man,” I say to the sand and barrenness with a certain strained, tense passion, “that I might give this wonderful, dear, delicious woman an absolutely perfect love!”

And this is my predominating feeling for her.

So, then, it is not the woman-love, but the man-love, set in the mysterious sensibilities of my woman-nature. It brings me pain and pleasure mingled in that odd, odd fashion.

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?”

The book is philosophical and it is trivial. She perhaps used the triviality to focus on the dullness of her existence in Butte. It is written almost in a stream of consciousness style. At the same time her prose has poetic feel to it. Certain passages to me had a Kafkaesque feel to it. Or perhaps a less developed Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but nowhere near as dark. The memoir has a predominate note of teenage angst.

Ms. MacLane’s intent was obviously to shock. While not shocking in 2014, I can only imagine it must have been provocative and scandalous in 1901. The opening passage as it sets the tone for the book gives a wonderful indication of what is to come.

“I of womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a Portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary MacLane, for whom the world contains not a parallel.
I am convinced of this, for I am odd.
I am distinctly original innately and in development.
I have in me a quite unusual intensity of life.
I can feel.
I have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness.
I am broad-minded.
I am a genius.
I am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school.
I care neither for right nor for wrong—my conscience is nil.
My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility.
I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness.
I know myself, oh, very well.
I have attained an egotism that is rare indeed.
I have gone into the deep shadows.
All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd.”

I called the book philosophical earlier. The quoted passage below is worthy of a Zen master.

“I have no particular thing to occupy me. I write every day. Writing is a necessity—like eating. I do a little housework, and on the whole I am rather fond of it—some parts of it. I dislike dusting chairs, but I have no aversion to scrubbing floors. Indeed, I have gained much of my strength and gracefulness of body from scrubbing the kitchen floor—to say nothing of some fine points of philosophy. It brings a certain energy to one’s body and to one’s brain.”

There are long passages dealing with her desire to marry the Devil. I saw that as a stereotype of a woman lusting after the “bad boy”. She is also an unabashed agnostic and speaks of that. The following passage sums her feelings about Christianity and not surprisingly mine.

“I see the promises in the Light. Oh, why—why does it promise these things! Is not the burden of life already greater than I can bear? And there is the story of the Christ. It is beautiful. It is damningly beautiful. It draws the tears of pain and soft anguish from me at the sense of beauty. And when every nerve in me is melted and overflowing, then suddenly I am conscious that it is a lie—a lie.”

The only part the book that “offended” me was her various stereotypes of the ethnic groups living in the Butte of 1901. It was not unexpected given the cynical outlook she seems to have had. Ultimately though she strikes me as a young person looking for love and her way in life, the exploration of that is what makes this a good read.

This book is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free at: