In 1972, landlord Nathan Lerner entered the apartment of his previous tenant: the reclusive and disturbed Henry Darger. As expected, eccentric hoarder’s trinkets littered the floor – from piles of petty trash (1000 pepto bismol bottles) to stacks of bricks kept under his mattress to painstakingly wound and unwound balls of twine. However, alongside this magpie rubble was also the sprawling manuscript of Darger’s epic ‘In the realms of the unreal’. The contents contained a 15,145 page tale, marvellously illustrated, with convoluted titles such as: ‘The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.’ Disturbingly, though, it also featured prolific depictions of naked prepubescent girls undergoing horrific abuses and violent ordeals.
The discovery of the manuscript made Henry Darger an instant suspect in the murder of Elsie Paroubek, whose likeness was reflected in his tale’s protagonist, ’Annie Aroubek’. Suspicions seemed to be confirmed when his diary was found, revealing that he’d kept a newspaper cutting of Paroubek’s death, and built up a small shrine to her. He had then lost her picture, and when realising he’d never find it, had furiously written, ‘God is too hard on me’.
Yet these days people don’t think he was a murderer. They think he’s an extremely talented artist with a history of disturbed erratic behaviour. As a child, he was hospitalised at a mental asylum under charges of ‘masturbation’ and ‘self-abuse.’ In his old age he was a recluse, speaking in nonsensical syllables or quiet mutterings. And now it’s understood that his fascination with young innocent girls might not be evidence of ominous paedophiliac tendencies. Instead, his images can be read as showing empathy for the young, innocent, beautiful and abused. His sister was put up for adoption upon his mother’s death during childbirth, and this too was a loss to him – he never knew her as his sister. Psychologist Bonesteel proposes that he ‘was very likely sexually abused in those institutions and adults really became his enemy because they did nothing but betray him’. Darger wrote that he felt more comfortable in the childhood realm than the adult world, admitting, ‘I hated to see the day come when I will be grown up. I never wanted to’.
The depiction of nude girls, whose genitals are either male or androgynous, might therefore not be a menacing evidence of Darger’s perversions, but instead might refer to Darger’s innocence and ignorance of female anatomy, or even self-identification with these hunted girls. Moreover, in his manuscript Darger inserts himself as both saviour and betrayer in his own tale, perhaps revealing his own desire to rectify his and his sister’s upbringing. Thus Darger’s character’s eventual betrayal might be an acceptance of his true reality: he is an adult (the symbol of oppression throughout his life), his treasured picture will never be found and his life was nearing its end. Upon Lerner’s revelation of Darger’s artwork, he was contacted in his old age home, only to respond, heartbreakingly, ‘too late now’.
“Henry Darger” by Insignifica is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.