What would you do if you knew a man who had the minimum amount of social life, who spent the majority of his time inside his home unless it was to go out to the store to get paint supplies or photocopies of newspaper clippings? This was Henry Darger's life. The way he lived seems to be anything except interesting, yet inside his mind a world unlike any other was flourishing. When Henry died in 1973, his landlords found the unexpected--a 15,000 paged novel, completed with an additional 15,000 pages of artwork to go along with the story, as well as a complete autobiography, the weather record for ten years, and a complete list of soldiers in his fable and full background on each character.
The tale Darger composed focused around a group of seven young girls who had the male reproductive system, magic, war, flying mythological beasts, and punishment. Throughout the story, the young girls, probably ranging between the ages of seven up to twelve, were highly important soldiers in a crusade to spread Christianity and faith in God and His doings. Darger's characters were given the opposite gender roles than accepted in society--females were brave, strong warriors while males were occasionally shown as weak and frightened by meek animals like mice. Inside of his story, beauty played off as dangerous and violent.
Despite the obvious masterpiece that Darger had created, there is an underlying problem--is the man who wrote such a beautiful, complete story ill-minded or was he just different? There seems to be a lot of evidence that faces towards insanity. Henry's mother passed away when he was younger, and since his father didn't make enough money to support a family of three, Darger's younger sister was given up for adoption. Most of his youth was spent in a boys' home, and then later, around his teens, he was sent to an asylum where he was forced to stop schooling and partake in strenuous work. While working inside the asylum, Darger was a victim to abusive and harsh beatings. Later in life, Darger was denied the access to adopt--one of his sole yearnings in life.
Although there were many events in his life that could have led him to be on the edge, these events may have been what fueled Darger's imagination. Having almost no experience with the opposite sex and having to leave school prior to the age where taking an anatomy class is appropriate, Darger would have no idea as to what a female's body should look like, which justifies why the girls in his novel had male reproductive organs. The obsession with female protagonists may have also been born from the same lack of female association in his life. Since Darger was unable to adopt a child due to the questioning of his sanity, the ages of his heroines may have arisen from his constant yearning to have a child of his own. Having been a victim of abuse, the violence in his tale has an obvious upbringing.
The debate of whether his novel is a product of his own insanity or a creation from a different take on life is in constant motion. There is justification either way--he had a rough life which may have led him to have many different personality disorders, but because of his upbringing, we could assume that Darger just coped with life differently. In my take, I believe that Henry is just another victim to the cruel way society analyzes us as people. Darger's sanity may be constantly questioned, but I have come to feel that he was reckless, but not crazy, that the way he perceived reality was in no way altered by his mind.
If one should read a caption from his story, they would find that what he endured throughout his life is directly noted in his novel. With the opportunity to adopt a child torn away from him, his female characters were punished. When he struggled with his faith in God and religion, Darger's characters were struggling with their faith and the war seemed to be going downhill for protagonists. Yet, when he returned to attending church every day, three times a day, his characters' faith was renewed and the heroines' lives were beginning to get back onto the right track. Like any author, Henry put his life into his work. He put his emotions into the characters. Every single author out there has left some part of them inside their novel, even if that was just their take on the world at that given point in time. So the question of whether Henry Darger is insane or eccentric may still be lingering on the lips of many out there, but I would like to believe he kept his sanity intact.
There is, however, one thing many people will continue to struggle understanding. After having been sent to the same home his father passed away in, Darger began to deteriorate at a rapid pace. The few people who grew to love him came in to visit, and gave him their appraisal at the marvelous and majestic world he left in their wake. Darger had only a few words in response, "It is too late now." What exactly was too late? Maybe he was talking about the double ending he had left the people with; one of the endings detailed our heroines' success in winning the war, while the other showed their demise. The thing is, we may never know why Henry decided to place this double ending. Maybe he regretted his decision to originally have the group of young girls win, or maybe he decided that we, as the readers, should decide their fate?
"Just because there are questions doesn't mean that there are answers." And that may just be something we, as the audience of his biography, as the curious viewers, will have to learn to live with.
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