Thelma Wood was a well-known sculptor who frequented the salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Often descibbed as having a sort of "sexual magnetism", she was the lover of such women like novelist Djuna Barnes, photographer Berenice Abbott, and Henriette Alice McCrea. Her work during her eight year relationship with Barnes was recognizable by its charged erotic sentiment and imagery of animals, nature, and fetishistic objects such as shoes. Though the love between Wood and Barnes was the greatest of their lives, Wood had a hard time remaining monogamous, and had many outside affairs. (Corrine 1). This led to a lot of jealousy and passionate fights between the two lovers. After Wood left Barnes for Henriette, Barnes wrote her most famous novel, Nightwood, in which the character Robin Vote serves as a satirized version of Wood. Wood was outraged, and felt misrepresented. After sixteen years with Henriette, they split up, and never spoke to each other again. It was a great love, one that sprouted from a place of pain and ended in one (Herring 7). 

Comment on this page