early failure to bond with her mother resulted in "an insatiable longing for connectedness" and a desire to recreate the nurturing ambiance of childhood (Herrera 14). On the other hand, her father's attendance on her during a childhood bout with polio produced a strong identification with him that was centered around the notion of disease and suffering combined with artistic productivity. Guillermo was afflicted with epilepsy and subject to frequent attacks and Kahlo, who learned to cope with them when she accompanied him in his work, may have found that his condition "made her own childhood illness more acceptable--or even admirable--to her"(Herrera 21).
Kahlo was prone to romanticize and dramatize her own life. She claimed, for example, to have been born in 1910, the "romantic year of the Mexican Revolution's beginning" and she and Diego Rivera, the rising painter whom she met while she was still at school and later married, developed a story of instant attraction dating from that first meeting--"characteristic of the retrospective myth creation that was indulged in by them both" (Milner 6, 7). Politics and romance were central to Kahlo's life and legend but when she was 18 physical suffering became a permanent part of her life as well. A bus on which she was traveling was crushed by a streetcar. Kahlo was thrown from the bus and "her spine, pelvis, foot and collar bone [were] all broken and a metal handrail pierced through her pelvis" (Milner 9). Kahlo became a semi-invalid and underwent over 30 major operations during the course of her life. These procedures often required "protracted periods of convalescence" in which Kahlo was often partially immobilized in "constricting plaster corsets" (Milner 9). The injuries she suffered undoubtedly contributed to her inability to bear a child and Kahlo underwent three abortions during her marriage to Rivera.
It was during her first convalescence that Kahlo, who had early inte...