Sophia- Writer, Photographer, Creative Director
Sab – Writer, Model
Izzy- Model, Photo Editor
Nicte- Model, Creative Director, Editor
The city of love. A starry-eyed nickname for Paris. It’s a cruel irony that this epigraph fits better as an epitaph.
Berthe was never one to melt so easily. She wasn’t a vulnerable wallflower wilting at the sight of attention. Instead, she basked in it, blooming in its light. So, when she first approached Gustave, she didn’t consider him much of a prospect, let alone consider him much at all. He was a fair amount older, gruff looking, but surrounded by fellow art students, he seemed out of place as a civil engineer in a gallery.
“What does an engineer know of the world of fine arts?” She pressed him.
“Math and science are not as devoid of art and soul as you smug fine artists all believe,” he answered her query.
“And you engineers sit in your ivory towers looking down upon us illogical, overly sensitive romantics, assuming we know nothing of calculations and precision.”
Berthe’s wit and charm were palpable, and Gustave needed less convincing of her allure. They spoke an intimate language of art, architecture, and mathematics. To no one’s surprise, the two became inseparable in a city promising to fulfill their professional and now, personal dreams. By the next Christmas, the wedding table had been set.
Through years of professional failures, the struggling artists had unconditional love and support to fall back on. When the World’s Fair set its sights on Paris, their fates began to look up. Gustave was commissioned to design the exhibit’s centerpiece, and through grit and hard work, he delivered a crown jewel. With pride, Berthe was satisfied to simply bask in her husband’s glory, despite her own struggles.
However, when private art dealer Durand-Ruel bought 22 of Berthe’s paintings and set her career in motion, the same could not be said for Gustave. How dare Berthe attempt to upstage the great Gustave Eiffel? But if there was one thing engineering taught Gustave, it was how to be measured and calculating.
As Berthe celebrated with her impressionist peers like Claude and Édouard, she couldn’t help but miss Gustave. As her first supporter and closest confidant, she wanted to share her success with him, as he did with her, returned to the 15th Arr.
However, Gustave’s insecurities had found another means of support that night. As Berthe entered her bedroom, she was initially confused to see a bra lying on the ground. It was lacey- the type that she would never wear. Berthe felt the air almost knocked out of her and a knot in her throat as the realization of her husband’s betrayal hit.
With intense shock, Berthe’s heart was more than merely cracked, it was splintered, fractured, broken, caked in tar. The fiery red that once filled her heart was now out of anger instead of love.
Gustave fumbled over his words, looking for any excuse he could muster to shift blame: “Well I assumed you’d be busy with those poetic, artist ‘friends’ of yours in Montmartre.”
His defenses fell on deaf ears. The betrayal, the lack of accountability, the jealousy, it was all too much for her. How could you? How could you? How could you? Were the only thoughts pounding in her brain as she pounded Gustave’s chest with scissors.
She expected some type of relief at the end to wash her pain away with the blood down the drain, but her mascara was smeared with crocodile tears of betrayal and regret. She barely heard the police sirens beyond the pounding of her own heart.
In her cell, she lit a cigarette to steady her hands and take the edge off. Her mind battled with itself to justify and condemn her actions. She couldn’t reconcile that the man she loved had cheated on her and that the bloody mess she left on the bed was the man she loved.
The easiest way to survive was to believe the lie her lawyer fed the jury. Daily, she rehearsed the details— coming home, finding a bloody pair of scissors lodged in Gustave’s chest, never seeing the murderer herself.
“That’s exactly what must have happened— an intruder broke in and murdered my husband,” Berthe agreed. My fat, cruel, lying husband, she added in her head.
“The jury finds Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot… not guilty!” This time a wave of relief finally washed over Berthe.
As news of Berthe’s trial was revealed, she became a sensation. The tabloids filled with outlandish narratives of Gustave’s death and Berthe’s questionable innocence. Some claimed she had been stabbed herself. Others claimed she was a cannibal.
Only Berthe knew the truth.
Though she attempted to regain anonymity in her everyday life, wearing oversized sunglasses in public to hide her face, she didn’t entirely hate the attention. The publicity catapulted her fame to new heights taller than Gustave’s tower ever reached. Her name would go down in infamy as a maneater, a murderer, a misunderstood artist. She smirked to herself knowing this was the ultimate revenge for Gustave’s jealousy.
However, she could never truly escape Gustave’s shadow. With his tower reigning over the city of love, it sickened her that she had ever believed in its mirage. Berthe needed a fresh start, especially as the allure of a black widow began to dull.
Freedom, she told herself, was what she needed. Freedom from this history, from this reputation, even from this attention. Her paintings didn’t sell because of her skill anymore; they sold as appendages to the spectacle of her life.
So Berthe took the first chance that came her way towards a new life— A young architect named Frederic, who promised to deliver the U.S. a taste of France. But Berthe was no longer a naive, lovesick puppy. Though she looked towards America with hopes of a bright future, she brought a touch of Paris with her; not its fraudulent promises of love but its lessons of strength, resilience, and skill with an artistic tool or two, ready to strike before it was too late.
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