We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes

“We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes”: Perceptions of Madness in Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Mrs. Dalloway

Madness is a mystery, only truly and completely understood by those who have experienced a complete break from reason and sanity. Definitions, descriptions, and treatments of the insane vary according to historical period and culture. In primitive times, it was believed that if a person violated a taboo, it weakened the protective barrier woven by the Shaman and allowed evil spirits access to the body. The Shaman or Medicine Man would treat a person who behaved outside of the norm, as such behavior was believed to be caused by evil spirits. The Medicine Man could cure the patient, but the Shaman was needed to evict the evil spirits (possibly sending them to an enemy of the tribe). One who needed regular treatments found themselves trepanned (primitive brain surgery) or apprenticed to the Shaman (insanity was one of the signs of a Shaman).

The belief that madness was caused by demonic possession lasted until the end of the Eighteenth Century. It was not always the dominant theory, but it tended to be the popular one. “Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on (Bronte 424).” (Hippocrates, Plato, and Cicero had various theories about the cause of madness, but they did not agree with each other and none of them gained popular support.) In Moslem dominated cultures, however, this belief was inverted; madmen were considered ‘touched by Allah’ in order to convey some important truth. Muslims treated the insane much the same way Hindus treated cattle, as sacred beings who must be allowed to go their own way unmolested. This is of course an interesting counterbalance to the ‘touched by Satan’ theory that lead to the exorcism method of treatment favored in Europe.

There is an interesting overlap in beliefs that covers the end of the Fifteenth Century to the end of the Eighteenth Century: the birth of the ‘inherited mental defect’ belief. Anecdotal evidence accumulated and people who dealt with the insane noticed that insanity ran in some families. This heralded the building of insane asylums, wherein the mentally ill could be chained like the sub humans they were believed to be, by reason of possession or defect. As the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason changed the way people looked at the world, the ‘inherited mental defect’ theory held more weight. By the Twentieth Century, the mentally ill were upgraded from ‘defective’ to ‘fragile’ in the eyes of the community. This heralded the beginning of the popular ‘rest cure’ – cutting off stimulation because the poor darlings couldn’t handle it.

Ultimately, the label of madness was bestowed upon any person who did not behave within the parameters set by society for their class, culture, and gender. The behavioral expectations for the poor were less strict than the rich, as the poor were considered inferior. The expectations of males and females varied as well because in most cultures males had the power and thus were given more behavioral leeway. Each culture decided how to differentiate between eccentricity and delusion, emotional intensity and hysteria. The observable behavior could be placed on a continuum; there is no paranoid delusion that couldn’t be reasonable under other circumstances, nor is there emotional excess that doesn’t have its place.

If one reads the three works listed in the title, one will find examples all along the continuum, from the prosaic to the hallucinatory. One of the reasons we are so fascinated with the insane is that some part of us realizes that we are only a few steps away from the condition. There is also the allure of letting go, of losing one’s inhibitions in a big way. “When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: (Bronte 151).” Jane Eyre had spent over a decade stifling her stronger emotions; it’s no surprise that the laugh of a woman with no restraints should be thrilling. Jane had lost control twice as a child and had paid dearly for those lapses. The first time, she had finally had enough of her cousin’s abuse and paid him back in kind; that was the result of a slow build up of rage. The second time was the result of sheer terror; she was afraid of being trapped alone with a ghost and had a panic attack; her concussion may have exacerbated the situation. The child has two opportunities before leaving her childhood home to vent her feelings of resentment. Throughout the rest of her narrative, Jane Eyre feels intensely, but has learned not to express it. According to the standards of English society, she behaves like a sane individual, although she must keep constant vigil over her wayward passions.

Bertha Mason Rochester, Bronte’s madwoman in the attic, is at the other end of the emotional continuum. If she feels something, she allows herself the full experience, and she acts upon the feelings with little or no regard for the consequences. Because of this she must be confined, so that she cannot harm others or commit adultery. Although she is definitely mad, as well as excessively passionate, she does seem to have some grasp of reason. Bertha only harms those with whom she has ‘issues’; the innocents she leaves alone.

Edward Rochester has no difficulty expressing his intense emotions, but his excesses are not judged so harshly. This is also the case with John Reed, Jane’s cousin. “He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in a day, but continually (Bronte 5)” and “He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing (Bronte 7).” Yet when Jane defends herself, she is punished for her passionate outburst; John is not. When Jane is grown, she nearly marries Edward Rochester; the wedding is canceled due to the fact that he has a wife. Rochester is upset that Jane might leave him. “’Jane! Will you hear reason?’ (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear); ‘because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.’ His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild licence. I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him (Bronte 426).” No one even once considered locking these two gentlemen away, even though their outbursts were just as passionately violent.

In fact, the only man in the three texts whose behavior is called into question is Septimus Smith, the veteran in Woolf’s classic novel. The irony here is that Septimus, who has visual and auditory hallucinations, definite delusions, and post traumatic stress disorder [“Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now communicated with him who was the greatest of mankind, Septimus, lately taken from life to death, the Lord who had come to renew society, who lay like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun, for ever unwasted, suffering for ever, the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer, but he did not want it, he moaned, putting from him with a wave of his hand that eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness (Woolf 215-216).”], is accused of upsetting his wife and behaving in an ungentlemanly fashion. It is as if Septimus had a gaping abdominal wound and his physicians chided him, “You must stop this bleeding, man, think of the carpet, your wife will never remove the stain.” As a counterpoint Clarissa Dalloway, who also seems to suffer from post traumatic stress [“To see your own sister killed by a falling tree (all Justin Parry’s fault – all his carelessness) before your very eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the most gifted of them, Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter (Woolf 264)…”She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day (Woolf 200).”], found a socially acceptable way to mask her feelings of alienation and disconnection.

Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich is a well-known lesbian radical feminist poet. When asked why she never wrote poems about her children, she replied “poetry was where I lived as no-one’s mother, where I existed as myself” (31). Her nonfiction writings explore the various ways that patriarchal dogma permeates society from the law of the land to the subconscious mind of the individual. Of Woman Born is an insightful investigation into the way we perceive motherhood on personal and cultural levels. Motherhood is a nesting ground for paradoxes. Mothers love their children as tiny beings with vast potential and hate the near-constant demands they make of her. Mothers savor the experiences of first words and steps, the feeling of being unique and irreplaceable to at least one person, even as they defer their dreams and parts of their identities which prove incompatible with childrearing. According to the patriarchal mindset, motherhood is a woman’s ‘sacred calling’ that is simultaneously deemed unworthy of pay or notice (unless something goes wrong).

Traditionally, the unborn child has been valued above the mother in medical emergencies by the same lawmakers who condoned exposure of female infants. These paradoxes, according to Rich, may well be born of fear. Pregnancy proves that women can give life; what is given can also be taken away. Rich theorizes that the originators of the patriarchal system had a vision of woman as Kali, she who creates and destroys for unknowable reasons. In their fear, they deny the power of procreation by devaluing everything connected with it, including childrearing, pregnancy, even women themselves. By denigrating a woman’s ability to be anything other than homemaker and caretaker, they reassure themselves that mother isn’t going anywhere – she is bound to the child.

Rich points out the difficulties of raising children in this paradox. All children have some hidden awareness of a mother’s power (‘I brought you into this world, I can take you out’). A mother raises a son who must either learn to disrespect her or become a pariah to his peer group (‘mama’s boy’); this relationship is also a template for his attitudes toward women throughout his lifetime. Either way she chooses, the mother must damage some part of her son’s fragile psyche. Daughters have another set of difficulties; their role models are just as confused as they are. Yes, mothers are often confused and frustrated and badly in need of help. Unfortunately, the same system that denies their inherent worth also denies their need for help. Childbirth is treated as a medical condition to be dealt with by technology. Mothers in crisis are only acknowledged in the aftermaths of tragedies. We must debunk the myth of instinctive motherhood and look for workable solutions to the problems of reproduction, childrearing, and a woman’s place.

Fairy Tale Ethics in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber

Once upon a time, in lands far and near, fairy tales were used as a method of transmitting cultural values from one generation to the next.  The conventional wisdom of fairy tales reassured children that there was power in purity and virtue, power that could be used to triumph over evil and, regardless, good and evil always earned a transformation (whether as a reward or as a punishment always depended on the choices made).  Protestant ethics were the dominant cultural mores in Charlotte Bronte’s time, so she ‘knew’ that one must work hard, avoid temptation and do the right thing under all circumstances in order to receive rewards in the end.  Angela Carter studied Sadeian philosophy, which informed that those who resist temptation have not tried it, everyone is corruptible, and ‘do as ye will shall be the whole of the law’.  Drawing on the Protestant work ethic (the Freudian superego), Bronte reinforces the conventional wisdom of fairy tales, while Carter uses Sadeian philosophy (the Freudian id) to call the conventional wisdom into question.

There is power in purity; like any power, purity can be corrupted.  The Protestant ethic (superego) defines purity in terms of spirit (i.e., seeking God).  Helen Burns, Jane Eyre’s friend from Lowood, had that form of purity.  Bronte shows a break with convention by showing that all children are not pure: “Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible; John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before (30).”  In Sadeian philosophy (id), purity resides in sexual virginity; the emphasis is on the untapped potential.  In the title story of her collection, The Bloody Chamber, Carter writes: “I saw how much that cruel necklace became me.  And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away (11).”  In a later story, Carter describes the other side of the coin: “He has that special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potential, and furthermore, unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance (97).”

Unlike purity (which is innate), virtue (from the Latin virtus ‘valor, merit, moral perfection’ – OED) is a quality that can be earned or lost.  Protestant ethics dictate that virtue is purchased through suffering.  Jane Eyre turns a corner and gains the strength of virtue only after: “-it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me.  The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass.  That bitter hour cannot be described (418).”  Carter, advocating for the id, which identifies with the pleasure principle, implies that virtue is lost through pain: “In the course of that one-sided struggle, I had seen his deathly composure shatter like a porcelain vase flung against the wall; I had heard him shriek and blaspheme at the orgasm; I had bled.  And perhaps I had seen his face without its mask; and perhaps I had not.  Yet I had been infinitely disheveled by the loss of my virginity (18).”  Fairy tales do not try to claim that virtue is its own reward.

Fairy tale endings inevitably feature transformation earned through choice.  Protestant ethics (superego) dictate that if one does the right thing, one will earn blessings.  Jane’s sacrifice and Rochester’s redemptive penance lead to their eventual happiness.  “My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we love most are happy likewise (642).”  Carter embraces the superego in her title story, for it is only when the female protagonist gives up her desires for worldly things that she is rescued and rewarded with the happy comfortable household she really wanted.  “We lead a quiet life, the three of us.  I inherited, of course, enormous wealth but we have given most of it away to various charities (40).”  So, Jane is wealth, accepted and loved by the husband she chose.  Rochester earns partial sight and marital bliss through hard work and sacrifice.  The female protagonist of The Bloody Chamber has earned the husband who truly loves her, her mother’s protection, and some peace.  And the fictional characters lived happily ever after (because they did the right thing).

Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte.  Jane Eyre.  Puffin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 1994.

Carter, Angela.  The Bloody Chamber.  Penguin Books, London, 1979.

Essay: What stereotypes do people have about the United States and its role as a world power?

What stereotypes do people have about the United States and its role as a world power?  To ask the question in a forward and blunt manner is to deny any chance of an honest and meaningful answer.  To answer the main question of this essay, I interviewed twelve people of my acquaintance.  By asking non-directive, open-ended questions, I was able to gain insight into the stereotypes my respondents may not be aware they have.

I did not mention stereotypes at all during the interviews, so as not to inspire my respondents to censor themselves.  I also took steps to ensure that I did not influence their answers.  Unfortunately, this is an election year, so some bias could no be avoided.  After gaining consent for the interviews, I sent my respondents written copies of the questions I planned to ask them about living in America, so that they had time to think about their answers before talking to me.  Some of those from whom I requested interviews were unable to comply, so I have less variance and diversity in the interviewed population than I wanted.  My respondents include: two immigrants from India, two African-American female single parents, two school aged children, three males, two non-heterosexuals, and a retired soldier.

What do you like most about living in America?  The children answered that they enjoyed the freedom, food, and fun.  When asked, they revealed that they believed children who lived outside the U.S. were deprived of these things, as shown in the ads "Feed the Children," "Save the Children," and other such media releases.  Interestingly, the African-American women and Indian immigrants valued the number of industrial and career opportunities most, while the Caucasian women over the age of twenty-one valued personal freedom above all else.

What do you like least about living in America?  The men and the children agree that watching political conventions on television is their least favorite part of American life.  The females also spoke out against politics, but half of them cited policies of lending support to other nations when our own citizens are suffering, while the rest were disgruntled by the personalities and views of individual politicians.  Not one of my respondents compared the U.S. system of government to the government of another country.

What does America mean to you?  The children answered "freedom" and did not elaborate.  Both men polled refused to answer this question; I am still unsure what that means.  The women's answers were variations on the theme of 'freedom of choice'.  When further questioned, the women revealed a common belief that true freedom and independence was only available in this country.  They also unanimously supported any foreign policy that lead to freedom of choice for other women.

The results of my interviews were not what I expected.  People of my own race and gender were more willing to talk to me than those who were not, although I have known most of them for the same amount of time.  The children gave me the answers that they were socialized to give, by teachers and media biased in favor of America.  The women interviewed were united by their value of personal freedoms, but their views on politics and the U.S. as a world power were divided along racial lines.  The Caucasian women supported inroads to the spread of democracy, while the African-American women favored concentration on domestic issues.  Part of what makes this so surprising to me is that the women live similar lifestyles, economically and geographically; yet, their answers in the individual interviews deviated in exactly the same places.

Walter Mitty: Behind the Fantasies

Charlie Chaplin once said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” This may also be true in the case of James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. So much of the reader’s attention is drawn to the fantasies and their humorous intersections with the everyday world that it is easy to overlook textual clues as to the personas of Walter and Mrs. Mitty. Rob Pope addresses this on pages 168 and 169 in the Common Topics section of The English Studies Book. After defining the problem and the terms, Pope provides a possible procedure: “1 – Identify the presumed centre of the text: …2 – DEcentre it so as to draw attention to marginal or ignored figures, events, and materials…3 – Recognize that you have thereby REcentred the text. Weigh the implications of what you have done for an understanding of the text as you first found it. Also notice that you have produced another configuration which can in itself be challenged and changed, and further de- and recentred in turn.” If the fantasies were no longer central to the story, what would the text reveal about Walter Mitty’s life?

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was first published in a 1939 volume of “The New Yorker”. It is the story of a man who constantly takes refuge from the everyday world by indulging in fantasies that feature him as a larger-than-life heroic figure, only to ‘wake up’ and find that he cannot even park a car without help. This short fiction centers on the fantastic daydreams of the main character, Walter Mitty. The word count of the full story is 2083. Without the fantasies, the word count drops down to 1004.

In his first fantasy (with which the story opens), Walter Mitty is the Commander of a Navy hydroplane, respected by his subordinates because of his fierce courage: “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!”…” In his next fantasy, he is the brilliant Dr. Mitty, called upon to treat a V.I.P., who manages to fix a machine that “there is no one in the East who knows how to fix” before performing surgery the other doctors are too craven to attempt. In Mitty’s next fantasy, he is a murder suspect who admits that he could have murdered the victim firing the pistol with his left hand, shelters a beautiful brunette, and when the District Attorney behaves badly, “Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin”. In Mitty’s next fantasy, he becomes a world-weary, cynical, hard-drinking Captain of the Royal Air Force, departing the base to fly “forty kilometers through hell”. As the story closes, Mitty’s last fantasy is of his heroic self facing a firing squad “erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the undefeated, inscrutable to the last”.

Meanwhile, in the real world, as Commander Mitty guides his crew, Walter Mitty is driving an automobile (and increasing his speed). While he imagines himself saving the expensive machine and the millionaire friend of Roosevelt, he is still driving an automobile through busy traffic to reach the parking lot (where he nearly hits a Buick). Fortunately, while he imagines being questioned by the District Attorney, he is only walking along the sidewalk, trying to remember what his wife told him to pick up while he was out. His imaginary stint in the RAF occurred while he was safely ensconced in an armchair. The only danger involved in his final fantasy would be lung cancer (from the cigarette he smoked outside the drugstore).

So, there’s a lot of misdirection. Mitty’s fantasies are more exciting than remembering puppy biscuits or leafing through magazines. Everyone daydreams, so it is also a common thread, used to garner sympathy for the character. His wild imagination is funny, so much so that a film adaptation of the short fiction was made (starring Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty). The daydreams also keep the focus on Walter Mitty as he imagines himself.

That’s where this gets tricky. There are actually two main characters named Walter Mitty. One of them is the henpecked husband who can’t remove the chains from his tires; the other is his idealized self, the Walter Mitty he wishes he could be (or thinks he should have become). Still, the fantasy and reality of this story is all seen through ‘Mitty-vision’ and is therefore suspect. Walking in his shoes, there is much that the reader does not see.

The center has been identified and examined. The next step is to remove the fantasy sections of the text and center what remains. What does the real world text reveal about Walter Mitty? When his wife asks about his gloves, he exhibits passive-aggressive behavior. “He raced the engine a little…He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again.” He is forgetful, despite multiple reminders. “Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out…” He worries how others perceive him. “The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself.”

Mrs. Mitty is more prominently featured in this newly centered text. What does the text reveal about her? Mrs. Mitty does not like to ride in a car moving faster than forty miles per hour. She has a solid routine, one that includes a weekly trip to town to run errands and get her hair done. She tells Walter what to do, often phrasing it in the form of a question, using words and tone one expects in a mother addressing her child. “”What are you driving so fast for?”…”Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?”…”Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?””

Mrs. Mitty, like so many women who marry dysfunctional men, is a control freak. She has to micromanage her husband, tell him what to do, where to go, and what to wear. This level of behavior is often fear-driven. Mrs. Mitty panicked when Walter went fifteen miles over her personal speed limit. Why? Was she aware that he wasn’t paying attention? Had they been in car accidents before, and she was trying to make sure they were never in another one? She panicked again when she didn’t see him in the hotel right away. Why? Did he have a tendency to wander off and get lost, or forget to take her home? Mrs. Mitty has motives, but James Thurber isn’t telling.

What does Walter leave out of his own narrative? He leaves out quite a bit, actually. The subtext (or absence) reveals a side of Walter Mitty that is considerably less than flattering or funny. He does not pay close attention to his surroundings. Three times in the narrative, he is snapped out of a fugue state and told to concentrate on his driving; once he goes fifteen miles faster than he intended, once he misses the change of a traffic light, and once he almost hits a Buick in a parking lot. Is he simply a bad or incompetent driver? Not according to the text: “He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.” He only gets in trouble when he daydreams, but he obviously prefers the fantasies to his real life. When his wife snapped him out of his initial fantasy, “She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.”

Walter seems capable of doing things right, if he can only stay in the moment. But is that entirely accurate? It is easy to lose track of how fast one is driving, or the color of a traffic light. However, in the parking lot he drives in the lane marked ‘Exit Only’ and begins to cautiously back up, but the attendant intervenes, insisting on putting Mitty’s car away. Why? Walter Mitty the narrator never addresses the issue, but the attendant doesn’t call Mitty by name, so my best guess is that the attendant saw Mitty come close to causing a collision as he backed up; otherwise, why would he bother parking the car when he didn’t have to (and it meant leaving his station)?

Walter doesn’t know what he may or may not have done wrong because he didn’t care enough to pay attention. He also doesn’t know how he managed to hook his chains around the axle. He doesn’t ever seem to get his errands right on their weekly trips to town. His fantasies are full of meaningless words and glaring inaccuracies. Why? Why should Walter bother to learn from his mistakes when it is so much easier to escape them, occasionally surfacing long enough to resent the competency of others? His priority is not to learn how to take off chains, but to appear physically incapable of taking them off, which shows that Walter Mitty values image over content.

Without the comedic interplay of fantasy and mundane reality to distract the reader, the gaps in the text are glaringly obvious. A reality-centered text belies the initial impression of the henpecked husband whose sole means of escape is a rich imagination. This new center reveals Walter Mitty as a man who cannot be bothered to live his own life, learn from his mistakes, or take responsibility because daydreaming is much easier and he knows his wife will take charge. Mrs. Mitty is depicted as less of a harridan than a fear-driven control freak who has likely been commanding by default and cleaning up her husband’s messes for years. Close reading of the text proves Chaplin right, as the lives and personas of Mr. and Mrs. Mitty seem tragic close-up.