(The Little Locksmith charts Katharine's struggle to trans...)
The Little Locksmith charts Katharine's struggle to transcend physical limitations and embrace her life, her body, and herself in the midst of debilitating bouts of frustration and shame. Her spirit and courage prevail, and she succeeds in expanding her world far beyond the boundaries prescribed by her family and society: she attends Radcliffe College, forms deep friendships, begins to write, and in 1921, purchases a house of her own in Castine, Maine. There she creates her home, room by room, fashioning it as a space for guests, lovers, and artists. The Little Locksmith stands as a testimony to Katharine's aspirations and desires for independence, for love, and for the pursuit of her art.
Katharine Hathaway was an American author of Mr. Muffet’s Cat and Her Trip to Paris, The Little Locksmith and The Journals and Letters of the Little Locksmith.
Background
Katharine Butler Harris was born to a wealthy and well-educated family in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1890. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the spine as a child. From age five until she was fifteen, she was kept strapped to a device that was intended to prevent her from developing a deformity of the spine, like that of the hunchbacked little locksmith who did odd jobs for her parents. She spent the ten years in bed, playing with her brothers and sisters, writing poetry, sewing, painting, making paper houses, and collecting Japanese artifacts that were brought to her by a friend of the family. During this time, she believed the assurances of her parents and the family doctor that she was basically healthy, lucky to be receiving the treatment that would prevent her from becoming stunted and twisted like the little locksmith.
When she was fifteen, Katharine was set free from the confining device, and was shocked to find that it had not worked, she was hunchbacked, frail, and small, and would never grow taller than a ten-year-old. Her family wouldn’t talk about her disability, and she felt isolated and alone. She was also hurt by the fact that because she was physically different from others, she was expected not to have a romantic life, even though she was an intelligent, and passionate person.
Education
Katharine's education consisted of one year at Abbot Academy in Andover and another year at Miss McClintock's School in Boston. She also attended Radcliffe College from 1910 to 1912.
Katharine Hathaway began her writing career when she moved to Maine. Her published works include Mr. Muffet's Cat and Her Trip to Paris that was written in 1934, The Little Locksmith in 1943. The Little Locksmith was published a year after her death in 1943. The Journals and Letters of the Little Locksmith was also published posthumously in 1946.
Achievements
Katharine Hathaway is particularly known as the author of The Little Locksmith, a memoir about the effects of spinal tuberculosis on her childhood and adult life.
Quotations:
"A person needs at intervals to separate himself from family and companions and go to new places. He must go without his familiars in order to be open to influences, to change".
"I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness, and other things being equal I would make the decision which had the largest number of creative reasons on its side".
"I believed passionately that every human being could be happy. I believed that everybody should pursue his own kind of happiness boldly and positively".
Personality
Katharine was an extraordinary woman.
Quotes from others about the person
"Katharine Butler Hathaway was the kind of heroine whose deeds are rarely chronicled. She took a life which fate had cast in the mold of a frightful tragedy and redesigned it into a quiet, modest work of art". - The New Yorker.
Connections
Katharine Butler had relationships with a Japanese painter, Toshihiko, who visited her one summer and fell in love with her. Eventually, however, he moved to Paris, leaving her behind, heartbroken. She moved to New York, where she underwent therapy and met Taro, a cousin of Toshihiko’s, and they fell in love. He proposed marriage, and she planned to go to Japan with him. He went first to prepare for the wedding, and after months of silence, she received a letter in which he told her that he had decided to follow his family’s wishes and marry a Japanese woman.
To deal with this new heartbreak, Katharine went to France, where she studied art and became involved with a French construction worker. Like her previous romances, this one was destined to end in sorrow, and she went back to the United States and married a New Englander, Dan Hathaway.
