Dear Virginia
Stacy N.
 
Why is it that they depict you with tears pouring down your face? Why do they find it necessary to exaggerate your pain? They present you as a sobbing, blubbering woman; such is the false image that the caricature  portrays. But your pain is neither something to mock or to stereotype. It is in fact the drive for most of your work, and is that not what should be portrayed about a writer, their work itself? And who is to say that dark is bad? Often times our hardest, strongest, most gripping emotions come out of the darker depths of the creative genius. Did the caricature artist perhaps forget that just as he shades those tear drops falling from your face, a writer may also choose to write in shades of gray? A writer may choose not to always write of death and dismay, nor of the lightly beating wings of a butterfly, but may in fact choose to write of the valleys untouched between such starkly contrasting topics.

Sweet Virginia, it's such a sad day when all that is discussed about you is your state of mind when you wrote, instead of what was produced in that state of mind. And to any man, years from those in which you flourished, to try to criticize your life, perhaps he should be reminded that he is just a man, whose life probably consists of coffee, a newspaper and a lonely apartment in the lesser part of town with one reclining chair and a fridge full of sour milk and TV dinners. Perhaps he should remember he is just such a man. And as for the artist who drew you, not himself, should remember that point. That he in fact drew you. You, a woman of many shades, whose words continue to pour into hearts and souls. The pages upon which these words sit, quickly leafed through to a favorite passage of words, your words. But he is just a drawer of a misguided sketch, which is to be looked down upon and reproached by a girl in an English class who knows better.