Austrian cellar monster Josepf Fritzl has received 200 love letters: The power of love
It is, of course, not a new phenomenon but when it happens to people like Austrian ‘cellar man’ Josef Fritzl it is still more than a bit shocking:
Josef Fritzl has received 200 letters from women offering him love and affection. The lonely hearts told the depraved beast he is misunderstood and “good at heart”.
They accepted his claims that he kept his daughter Elisabeth in a cellar for 24 years to prevent her from straying and to keep her safe from drugs and booze. They also believe Fritzl, who fathered seven children through Elisabeth, wanted to teach her about the “joys of motherhood”.
It is a strange phenomenon though – and as far as I know it’s mostly women writing these things to male prisoners. That might simply be because these types of monsters are mostly male but it might also be something more psychologically complicated than that. It has become more than a bit of a cliché: the idea that women think they can change the men they fall in love with. I’m not sure where this idea comes from. It certainly isn’t based in fact, since, in most cases, these men do not change. The old optimism remains, though. It may be part of that oldest of fictions: that love conquers all – including some types of behaviour.
It does not do such things at all. The poet Auden once wrote that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’. The same, in the end, goes for love. Infatuation may change the behaviour of the ‘afflicted’ for a while. When men are courting, for instance, they are mostly on their best behaviour and are willing to go against their grain – up to a point. Afterwards, when they have ‘got’ the woman they revert to type: they become themselves again.
So, women who think they can change men are, on the whole, sadly mistaken. Firstly, in that first courting phase, men are already on their best behaviour. So, they think that what they show there can’t be much improved on anyway. The women who, in these early days, silently and patiently bide their time, trusting they will change certain types of behaviour later, don’t realize that by saying nothing the men think all is well.
When women, at some later point in time, mention certain things they would like to see changed, these men tend to become irritated and hurt by this. It feels like a kind of betrayal: that the women who first said they loved them, now seem to be dissatisfied with the product they bought. What’s worse, remember that these men were on their best behaviour during the courting stages – so, at about the time that the women make these first, cautious sounds of critique, the men were hoping they could slowly go back to being themselves again.
Yes, what a tangled web we weave, when we first start to court. Anyway, when women do write these love letters to men who are on Death Row, or to men like Josef Fritzl, maybe this is part of that same optimism that makes so many women think that they – or their love - can change men.
Furthermore, our oldest fairytales mention these kinds of things. The ‘Beauty’ who can turn the ‘Beast’ into a prince, by being patient and loving; the princess who can change the frog into a prince, with just one kiss. There are many more stories like that, which talk about this type of transformation – and most archetypes have firm roots within the human heart. So, maybe this professed love for monsters like Fritzl is a combination of romantic optimism, hope and magical thinking.
Also, on a more practical level, it is an extremely safe indulgence: to love a monster from afar, who will, most likely, remain locked up forever – and who will never be able to hurt the woman, or even destroy the fantasy, by having sweaty feet, by snoring, picking his nose and what have you.
All traditional fairytales end the moment the young couple are ready to say their ‘I do’ – and with the blithe assurance that they will live happily ever after. Which, of course, is a nonsense: they won’t. Nobody does. The human heart is not really built for happiness: it always thinks it is wanting something. These women who court their monsters from afar though, can indeed live these fairytale lives for a long as they want: the stones that form the prison walls that separate them from their frog/Beast princes are the same building blocks that hold up these castles in the sky.
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