NOT KNOWING YOUR EX-WIFE.

NOT KNOWING YOUR EX-WIFE. Shortly after reading “Squire Petrick’s Lady”, I read the article by Joshua Wolf Shenk, which describes human defense mechanisms, including just the kind of constructed delusion that had seemed so original to me in Hardy’s story. As an example, the article describes how George Vaillant, the conductor of the study, once failed to recognize a picture of his third wife after their divorce. And then I recalled that we spent a great deal of time over several years with a married couple who were very good friends of ours. There was a divorce and the couple decided, in dividing things, that we would go to the husband. Five or so years later, the husband told us that he had met a lady at a social event who knew him, but he couldn’t place her. It was his ex-wife, who had changed her hair style.