10 CHAPTER 1
After she was married, Big Edie continued to sing, to write songs with her
accompanist, and even to record some of those songs. At that time, however, cul-
tural conventions required a woman of Big Edie’s social standing to stop performing
after marrying, even if such performances generally were limited to social functions.
Big Edie’s need to perform was almost a compulsion, though, and she would head
straight to the piano at family gatherings. Her nieces and nephews were eager to
hear her sing, but the adults in her extended family, and her own children, were not.
Her parents and siblings barely tolerated her at family gatherings (Davis, 1969).
Clearly, even as a young woman, Big Edie was already behaving in ways that were
at odds with cultural norms.
In 1934, when Little Edie was 16, Big Edie and her husband divorced; at that
time, divorce was much less common and much less socially acceptable than it is
today. This event marked the start of Big Edie’s life as a recluse (Davis, 1969). By
1936, the house and grounds began to suffer from neglect (Davis, 1996). In 1942,
Big Edie’s husband stopped supporting her fi nancially after she showed up late for
their son’s wedding, dressed inappropriately—another time when Big Edie’s behav-
ior was unusual for the context and culture. Big Edie’s father was also angry with
her for her inappropriate behavior, but he didn’t want her to starve. He set up a
trust fund for her, which provided a small monthly allowance, barely enough to
pay for food and other necessities.
Like her mother, Little Edie was artistically inclined. She aspired to be an
actress, dancer, and poet, and she claimed that wealthy men such as Howard
Hughes and Joe Kennedy, Jr. (John F. Kennedy’s older brother, who died in World
War II) proposed marriage, which she refused. Little Edie’s cousin said of her, “She
had a very, very fertile imagination” (Martin, 2002). In 1946, she left home to live
in New York City and work as a model, but her father disapproved of this as he
had disapproved of his wife’s musical performances (Sheehy, 2006).
In 1952, after 6 years of being separated from her daughter, Big Edie became
seriously depressed (Sheehy, 2006), although there is no information about her spe-
cifi c symptoms. She spent 3 months calling Little Edie daily, begging her to return
to Grey Gardens. Eventually, Little Edie moved back to take care of Big Edie. When
she did, her artistic aspirations became only dreams and fantasies. The documen-
tary fi lm Grey Gardens vividly captures Little Edie’s palpable disappointment at the
path her life took—becoming a round-the-clock caretaker to her mother, a disap-
pointed woman herself.
So far, we’ve seen that psychological disorders lead to signifi cant distress, im-
pairment in daily life, and/or risk of harm. We’ve also seen that the determination of
a disorder depends on the culture and context in which these elements occur. A case
could be made that the Beale women did have psychological disorders; let’s consider
each one in turn. Big Edie exhibited signifi cant distress when alone for more than
a few minutes; her reclusiveness and general lifestyle suggest an impaired ability to
function independently in the world—perhaps to the point where there might be
a risk of harm to herself or her daughter. Her behavior and experience appear to
satisfy the fi rst two criteria, which is enough to indicate that she had a psychologi-
cal disorder. Moreover, Big Edie suffered from depression at some point after Little
Edie moved to New York, and she experienced enough distress that she begged her
daughter to return to Grey Gardens.
As for Little Edie, her distress was appropriate for the context, and thus would
not meet the fi rst criterion. Her ability to function independently, though, appears
to have been signifi cantly impaired, which also increased the risk of harm to her-
self and her mother. It appears that she too suffered from a psychological disorder.
However, these conclusions must be tentative—they are based solely on fi lms of the
women and other people’s descriptions and memories of them.
Now that we know what is required to determine whether someone has a
psychological disorder, we’ll spend the rest of this chapter looking at how psycho-
pathology has been explained through the ages, up to the present.