“I am convinced, the longer I live, that life and its blessings are not so entirely<\/p>\n
unjustly distributed [as] when we are suffering greatly, we are inclined to suppose,”<\/p>\n
Mary Todd Lincoln, 1868, in a letter to Mrs. Felician Slataperi.<\/p>\n
“inclined to suppose” explores aspects of Mary Todd Lincoln’s private and public lives, and her<\/p>\n
poignant ability to reflect upon her own life and the lives of others in her writing. Her<\/p>\n
words echo across time, reminding us of the futility of conflict, the pain of absence and<\/p>\n
loss, and the importance of hope when facing the uncertainty and fragility of our lives.<\/p>\n
We see Mary’s life as one lived between carefully defined spheres of Victorian America.<\/p>\n
We began by imagining the complex challenges she faced as a sophisticated, politically<\/p>\n
astute woman, more educated than most men of her day, who grew up in an atmosphere<\/p>\n
of financial and cultural privilege and intellectual freedom, during a period of American<\/p>\n
history when women were not encouraged to think, much less express their views<\/p>\n
publicly.<\/p>\n
Mary was ardent about cultivating Lincoln’s political career and often used his positions<\/p>\n
of influence to voice her own social and political concerns. Equally passionate about her<\/p>\n
family life, she was devoted to her husband and children, recognizing and nurturing the<\/p>\n
uniqueness of each of them. She loved and feared for them and for herself; her intuition<\/p>\n
was uncanny. So it is when she writes in a letter to her husband, “Your name is on every<\/p>\n
lip and many prayers and good wishes are hourly sent up, for your welfare.” These<\/p>\n
words, in Mary’s own script, encircle the hem of the skirt in inclined to suppose.<\/p>\n
We find the intersection of Mary Todd Lincoln’s private and public lives to reveal her<\/p>\n
complexity and the tenuous balance between loving wife and mother and First Lady. Here<\/p>\n
we see Mary in a parallax view, at her most vital and powerful and at her most tender,<\/p>\n
fragile and vulnerable. Her intellect and emotional strength in the face of frequent trauma<\/p>\n
and loss suggest a formidable spirit. As contemporary women, we each related to the<\/p>\n
threads of her life and reflected upon how they intertwine with our own experiences. The<\/p>\n
fabric’s pattern made of Mary’s words, “Others live on in a careless lukewarm state, not<\/p>\n
appearing to fill Longfellow’s measure: “Into each life, some rain must fall,” indicates<\/p>\n
the extent of the emotional pain she suffered as a result of the many tragedies she<\/p>\n
experienced, and her ability to persevere despite these challenges.<\/p>\n
Lisa Marie Kaftori in collaboration with Joan Giroux and Whitney Huber Lazar<\/strong><\/p>\n Castle Gallery, New York, 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I am convinced, the longer I live, that life and its blessings are not so entirely unjustly distributed [as] when we are suffering greatly, we are inclined to suppose,” Mary Todd Lincoln, 1868, in a letter to Mrs. Felician Slataperi. “inclined to suppose” explores aspects of Mary Todd Lincoln’s private and public lives, and her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-447","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lisamariekaftori.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}