47 pages • 1 hour read
Marta MolnarThe Secret Life of Sunflowers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The Life of Johanna Bonger van Gogh
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses mental illness.
While the story of Emsley Wilson is fiction, Johanna Bonger was the real wife of Theodore van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh’s brother. Johanna was born on October 4, 1862. Calling herself “Jo,” she grew up in the Netherlands and worked as a teacher at a girls’ boarding school in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her parents were middle class.
Jo married Theo van Gogh in 1889, and their son, Vincent Willem, was born in 1890. After Theo’s death from syphilis at age 33 in 1891, which is not presented historically accurately in the novel, Jo returned to the Netherlands and went on to marry Johan Cohen Gosschalk—another Dutch painter—in 1901. When Theo died, Jo discovered that he owned more than 400 paintings and hundreds of drawings by Vincent. She would spend the next 35 years publicizing Vincent’s work, and her son would later undertake the task after her death. As described in the novel, Jo also compiled and edited the correspondence between Vincent and Theo, which was published under the title Letters to His Brother in 1914. Later, Jo became active in politics, especially the socialist movement. She co-founded the Amsterdam Social-Democratic Women’s Propaganda Club, a women’s rights organization that aimed to improve both the education of working-class people and working conditions for women (“Biography of Jo van Gogh-Bonger.” Van Gogh Museum).
The full extent of Johanna’s role in procuring an audience for Vincent was unknown until 2009 when her grandson granted art historian Hans Luijten access to Johanna’s diary (Shorto, Russell. “The Woman Who Made van Gogh.” New York Times Magazine, 14 Apr. 2021). Up until this point, Jo’s efforts were largely underestimated, partly because of misogyny and partly because she had no formal training in art. Luijten’s 2019 biography of Bonger—Everything for Vincent: The Life of Jo van Gogh-Bonger—was instrumental in recognizing Jo’s accomplishments. Bonger’s diaries have also been published digitally.
Social Context: Mental Illness and Social Stigma in the 19th Century
Born in 1853 in Groot-Zundert, the Netherlands, Vincent van Gogh’s birth occurred exactly one year after that of his stillborn brother. His father, as the novel references, was a Christian minister, and his mother dabbled in painting. The family struggled financially, and Vincent was forced to leave school to work at age 15, where he was given employment by his uncle, who owned an art dealership. He attempted to work as a minister in London, Amsterdam, and Belgium, but he clashed with church authorities. He then moved to Brussels to become a largely self-taught painter. Before then, however, he would live in London, where he fell in love with a woman who did not return his affections. Some have speculated that van Gogh experienced his first mental health crisis when she rejected his marriage proposal (“Vincent van Gogh.” Biography, 4 Mar. 2020).
Van Gogh’s challenges with mental illness may be as well-known as his art. The field of psychology was in its infancy in the 19th century. What is regarded today as mental illness (an umbrella term for a number of conditions) was then often regarded as a spiritual failing that could be cured through prayer and religious devotion. Instead of receiving treatment to help them be productive and functioning members of society, people with mental illness were often hidden away in institutions, many times against their will. After studying van Gogh’s letters and the accounts of those who knew him, doctors and psychologists have proposed a variety of conditions van Gogh might have had, such as bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, substance abuse disorder, and schizophrenia. Further, there is evidence that physical conditions such as epilepsy and alcohol withdrawal exacerbated his mental health condition (Grohol, John M., and Emma Dibdin. “Exploring Vincent van Gogh’s Mental Health.” Psych Central, 20 May 2022).
