Windows

This is a doodle I did while thinking about an excerpt from Paris Spleen by Baudelaire, which is a collection of very short 1-2 page stories/musings about the state of Paris in 1869. This particular picture is from the piece called "Windows". Baudelaire writes about passing this window on the street and seeing a woman inside that looks depressed, so he makes up this life for her in his head in which the woman is always worked to the bone, never goes out, and is constantly very tired and lonely. Of course, this is all in his own head because he personally doesn't KNOW the woman (who may very well be quite happy). However, he prefers to think that his story is true and (assuming that his story is true) that he's somehow reached out to her because he knows her "story" and sympathizes with her. In the end, he says that even if the story isn't true, it's still made him feel better about himself basically just because he thought of her assumed plight and it made him sad. As I see it, even if the life that he imagines for her is true, he hasn't actually done anything to help her or make it better...That's we're all supposed to tie into the Parisian government, at the time, being all talk and no action about the plight of the common man. I just think it's an amusing short story and a fun book, in a kind-of-depressing sort of way.