By: Laura Lee Cochran 2022
Laura Lee Cochran
Elizabeth Gentry
ENGL 253
18 April 2022
Joy In Absurdity: Value Leads To Worth
We as human beings possess an innate value, though we are inclined to prove our value to others to give us worth. I believe that value and worth go hand in hand, but are very different ideas. Value is simply what you are: a human who breathes, loves, and hates. However, worth is proving that what you are is significant. Simply put, value is our significance and worth is how our significance is seen or desired by others. It’s something that’s ingrained in our being, to seek worth in external forces to prove what is internal. Because of this, we often find ourselves seeking our worth in objects, ideas, or other desirable things in order to gain others approval. This often can leave us trapped and stuck in a cycle or wishing our value is seen, thus proving we are a worth to someone else. Kitty, in Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, as well as myself, can relate to this. Kitty found her worth in her decorative lifestyle while I found it an achievement. Because our value is often proven by the worth that others see in us, we fall into a spiral when our value is not affirmed in what we attach our worth to, and Kitty and I fell right into this spiral unknowingly.
Kitty is married to a man named Chris who came home one day with amnesia of the marriage they held together, and without knowing, Kitty had to confront her fears of losing the worth that Chris once saw in her. However this idea of Chris no longer seeing worth in Kitty starts before he even comes home. Chris’s cousin Frank writes a letter to Kitty speaking of his amnesia and a moment that he had with Chris concerning Kitty. Chris asks about Kitty, who he is apparently married to, to which Frank replies saying that “she [is] a beautiful little woman” and that she has “a charming and cultivated soprano voice” (West 15). To this Chris replies “I don't like little women, and I hate anyone male or female who sings. Oh God, I don’t like this Kitty. Take her away!” (West 15). I’m sure as Kitty read this, her heart sank, because mine did for her. If I heard my husband dislike attributes of myself, it would make me question if he settled for me. Then after reading the letter, Kitty replies “He always pretended he liked my singing” (West 15). Although this is something small that she said, I’m sure this is what started her on her spiral and caused her to prove her worth to her forgetful husband who seemed to no longer love her.
Now that Kitty realized her husband had forgotten his love for her, she had a mission to be seen as worthy in her husband's eyes again. On the day that Chris came home, she dresses “in all respects like a bride. The gown she wore on her wedding day ten years ago…” (West 18). From an outside view, we can see right now she is trying to prove her value as a woman, as a wife, as a person who desires to be seen and loved. So she puts on her wedding dress so that it would remind Chris of their union together. She is setting a stage for Chris, putting on a show to prove to him that she once was worthy in his eyes with jewels and lighting. When she comes downstairs she walks around the table “with her lower lip thrust out, as if she were considering a menu, she lower[s] her head and look[s] down on herself. She frown[s] to see that the high lights on the satin shone scarlet from the fire, that her flesh glowed like a rose, and she change[s] her seat for a high-backed chair beneath the farthest candle-score.” (West 18). Though, this is only the beginning of the spiral. Only because as we can see, Kitty probably expects to get a reaction out of Chris, she wouldn’t go through this length otherwise. Though, the reaction she gets is not what she worked for. When he enters, she shows herself off like a freshly painted artwork. She is the masterpiece waiting for the critics critique. To which Chris explains that he's thankful to have given her those gifts and says “you look very beautiful in them” (West 19). This must have made Kitty elated, though it only lasted for a moment. We only get Jenny’s point of view in the story, but she observes that “as he spoke his gaze shifted to the shadows in the corners of the room, and the blood ran hot under his skin. He was thinking of another woman, of another beauty” (West 19). To which “Kitty put up her hands as if to defend her jewels” (West 19). In this moment, it sounds humorous for her to only lift up her jewels as a defense, but I think it was because it was the only thing she saw him seeing worth in. That without those jewels, without her dress, without her decorations, she was nothing. Her first attempt didn’t work, and so desperately she put them up again hoping that this time he would notice her. It’s heartbreaking really, to see how Kitty completely forgot her value outside of these decorative things because she has worked so hard to prove her worth to Chris.
I too set a stage to prove my worth through a mural I planned to give to my choir department, and my defense was also uneffective causing me to question my value. You see, in high school, I found my worth in my talents and success. My value was nothing if I didn’t prove it through what I did or if others didn’t affirm me in it. This went on my entire high school career. Though, a moment where it is most prominent is in my sophomore year when I decided to paint a mural for my choir department. I had been involved since my freshman year and I truly could call my classmates and teachers family. So I wanted to give them a gift. When I spoke of the idea, everyone met me with excitement and praise and I felt seen for the first time in choir. I now had something that people cared about. Something that they wanted that I could give. So when I went to work on it, I couldn’t help but have in the back of my mind how everyone was going to react when I had it finished. When I brought it in, it was like I was a new person. I was an artist who cared about the choir department that everyone now saw as worthy. I was talented, and people praised me for what I did. They were excited to see the mural presented in the choir room, though summer came and things changed.
The first reactions slowly faded away and I had to come to realize that they never really cared for what I did in the first place, because as time went on, my art seemed to be more of a hassle than a blessing. At the beginning of my junior year, we had a new choir teacher, and walking into class the first day I expected to see the mural hanging to be seen by everyone. Though when I walked in, the wall was bare. I then found out that my cherished mural that I had placed so much of my worth in was discarded in the closet. My heart sank and I had no defense. The mural that they initially loved, was now unwanted. Was all that past praise for nothing? The entire year went by with countless back and forth fighting for the thing I thought gave me worth to be hung on a wall, only to be reminded time and time again that fighting for this mural was pointless, just like fighting for my worth was .I had peers say cruel words to me, I was seen as a problem, and I no longer felt like choir was my family. So nobody was going to see my worth, or affirm it. Because to them, I had none. And if I couldn't prove my value, then who’s to say I have it in the first place? I ended up deciding to take it home feeling as if all of my efforts were for nothing, because by the end of it, any worth that I had before was now demolished. I had completely forgotten my value outside of what my peers thought because of how hard I strived to prove it. I lost sight of myself, of my value, of what I really wanted. Much like Kitty.
Though these stories were never about jewels, a dress, or a mural, they were instead about our efforts to prove our worth as a means to an end to get what we desired. We can see the superficiality in the talents and things we own, but they run so much deeper. It’s this desire to have worth without having to prove it to anyone. To simply be valuable, and for people to realize that value, not because of what we have or what we do, but because of who we are. Though because we believe lies that this is how it’s supposed to be, we fall into this spiral that never ends. For Kitty, she may always spend her life making sure Chris continues to love her by showing off her decorative lifestyle. For me, I might always try to seek my worth in what I do and wait to be affirmed by my peers. Will we always come up empty handed? Or will we finally be affirmed? No matter what the outcome is, it seems easier to fight than to sit with the weight of accepting a lie that we have no worth. If our value is to simply be, and our worth is proving that value, why do we even have to prove it? Well, I’d like to say because if we seek value in the external, and not the internal, then we will always be trying to find something external to affirm it. And the external is unpredictable and leaves us with unprepared expectations of others. Perhaps this is a common theme, falling into spirals. If so, I hope Kitty and I are able to learn of this spiral, to escape it, and see our value for what it is, without having to prove it.
Works Cited
West, Rebecca. The Return of the Soldier. Digireads, 2022.