Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Mary Cassatt

  • The vulnerability of love

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On Thanksgiving Day, I watch my niece Jenn with her seven-month-old daughter Laila playing on the living room floor. Jenn’s gaze has never left Laila despite the commotion nearby made by family who are setting the table for dinner, moving furniture to add additional chairs. The kitchen is lively. Utensils…

  • Rethinking the impulse to empathize: a sister’s perspective on sympathy and stigma

    Jeanne FarnanPennsylvania, United States “I am so sorry.” My youngest sister, Annie, was born during the spring semester of my first year of high school. These four words are etched into my memory, integrally intertwined with the events of that spring. “I am so sorry.” I remember these words so clearly because they clashed dramatically…

  • Painter, interrupted: Mary Cassatt and illness

    Christoper WalkerBielsko-Biala, Poland The year is 1868, and the twenty-two year-old Mary Cassatt has had her first painting, The Mandolin Player, accepted by the famous Paris Salon. The painting is in the realist style and is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s 1659 Self-Portrait. The background is lit as if there were a candle behind the sitting mandolin player, a…