Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sarah Jane I. Irawa

  • Madame Defarge: The psychology of vengeance

    Sarah Jane I. Irawa Parañaque City, Philippines   Illustration of the wine-shop in St. Antoine by Fred Barnard. Madame Defarge is seated with her knitting; her husband Ernest Defarge standing behind her. “And with these hands I keep a memory Of the ones who’ve done such wrong Until the judgment comes and all of us are…

  • Matushka’s ordeal

    Sarah Irawa Parañaque City, Philippines   Catherine the Great Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette’s biographer, wrote of his heroine as “the most signal example in history in which destiny will at times pluck a human being from obscurity and, with commanding hand, force the man or woman in question to overstep the bounds of mediocrity.” The…

  • Victoria’s curse

    Sarah Jane I. Irawa Parañaque City, Philippines   The dining room in an ancient hunting villa obscured in the verdant vastness of the Polish forest erupted in thunderous applause, if not rambunctious laughter. The two youngest grand duchesses just concluded their performance of two short scenes from Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme. That evening in Spala was…