Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea

Hey there, chirping cuckoo, welcome back to the Asylum. This week's dose of letters is provided by Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel that serves as a backstory for Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. In this novel, the reader can gain a profound insight about how Thornsfield's "madwoman in the attic," Rochester's wife, the Jamaican creole Antoinette Cosway ended up in England. Even though the writer's style can't compare to the gripping, Victorian original, the book is certainly a useful reading for anyone who is fond of Jane Eyre and is curious about the gloomy secret of Thornfield.

What makes this novel credible and effective is the narrative technique. Namely, the story starts with Antoinette telling about her days of adolescence in Jamaica and her mother's going mad. Part II is narrated by Rochester before and after about his wedding with Antionette (whom he later christens Bertha), with a small intermezzo told by the wife. Finally, Part III takes place in Thornfield, by the time Antoinette has become the "madwoman in the attic," and is told by her nurse and herself. This fragmanted structure underpins the plot because the contrast in the tone and voice of the characters also uncovers the differences in their mental state. Whereas in Part I Antoinette is merely a witness of what she will have to endure and writes in a slightly inconsistent and confusing way, in Part II Rochester can see the signs of inherited peculiarity in her eyes and writes in a coherent an easily understandable manner. It is through his eyes that we can see how the girl goes mad, as a result of which the man's love turns into hatred. By the time the narration switches back to Antoinette in Part III, her sanity is completely lost. She doesn't believe that she is indeed in England, and she perceives the house as a "cardboard box."

The transformation of Rochester's and the "mad girl's" relationship also portrays the process of Antoinette's falling to dementia in a realistic way. At first Rochester seems to love her unconditionally, begging her not to leave him when she wants to call off the wedding. However, later they exchange roles; it is Antoinette who loves Rochester and the man wants to escape. But his strong hatred, anger for being deceived, and desire for revenge keeps her beside the mad woman, hindering her from even the hope of a happy life: "She is mad, but mine, mine."

It is also remarkable how traits of Jane Eyre have been woven into the plot. For example, we learn that the house of Antoinette's family burnt down, and this memory later led her to set fire on Thornfield. We can hear the madwoman's thoughts and pictures of her troubled mind right before the tragedy. And, knowing the premises and her motives, it's not so hard to understand her anymore. Perhaps that is the biggest shot of the whole novel: by turning the point of view upside down, by taking a temporal circle, it manages to evoke empathy and compassion in the reader towards a character who was depicted as an obstacle of the happiness of our beloved Jane Eyre.

Susanna Kaysen: Girl, Interrupted

Welcome back, dear inmate, I hope this new piece of interruption will not cause any permanent damage in your mind. The subject of this week's post is the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. The autobiographical novel gives a credible account about the author's experiences with her mental illness and about her staying in McLean Psychiatric Hospital.

The first thing worth taking a closer look at is the title itself. Not only is the title interrupted by a comma in the middle, but the whole narration is fragmanted, sometimes underpinned, other times contradicted by the official documents about the protagonist's health state. The title also refers to the 18-month interruption spent at a mental hospital at the beginning of Kaysen's adult life. Furthermore, she admits to have an obsession with tunnels, the tunnels of the asylum, and her notion about "the world [having] been reduced to a narrow, throbbing tunnel." Tunnels connect two separate places by interrupting both of them, and someone who goes into a tunnel is surrounded by darkness, having the illusion of going somewhere but without any idea about what's on the other side. The life of the patients is also interrupted by regular "checks" of the staff, in every 5-15-30 seconds, even at night. They even contemplate whether certain actions (like sex) could fit between two interruptions. The metaphor of interruption also appears in the arrangement of the room in the hospital. Whereas the room of the staff are on the right side, the patients live on the left, lunatic side of the building.

The protagonist is diagnosed with personality disorder, which she connects to her feminists viewpoints. According to the official documents, this illness is "most commonly diagnosed with women," and its symptoms, such as "compulsive promiscuity," instability of self-image, or binge eating are also associated with female behaviour. Kaysen supports her opinion by stating that these things wouldn't be considered problematic in case of a man.

The author describes her mental instability by a variety of pictures and methods. For example, like Charlotte in The Yellow Wallpaper, she also has a problem with patterns: "When I looked at these things, I saw other things within them." Likewise, her complicated relationship with her body also illustrates her troubled mind. She depicts her tongue as "a vast foreign object in [her] mouth," and she questions her own existence and animateness when she's scratching her wrist to make sure that her bones are there under her flesh, even though she can't see them. The intriguing thing about bones is, however, is that it's all that's left for the inmates of the mental institution, still it's the very same thing she can't find: "Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: All of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves." This proves that her lack of confidence concerns not only the reality of the outside world, but the reality of inner world as well.

The writer also successfully presents mental problems with a simile of physical illness. She writes that the intangible bundle of her thoughts is like the flue, because "the first thought triggers the whole circuit: [...] first a sore throat, then, inevitably, a stuffy nose and a cough." She underpins her reasons for self-mutilation, too, in relation to her precarious world view:  "I got a gruesome satisfaction from my sufferings. They proved my existence." 

Kaysen often laments the loss of time spent during interruptions. She knows that it's lost forever, still wants to know the amount of it, even in the case of such a trivial act like the pulling out of a teeth. It's crucial for her that in the darkness of doubts about herself and the whole world, at least time could be known to be real.

The book was adapted into a movie in 1999, starring Wynona Rider, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, and Brittany Murphy.

Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock,
One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest."

Welcome back to the Asylum, I hope you're all having a great time bathing in the sunrays of spring. In such a nice weather, even the chance of recovery seems brighter and more realistic. Not so much the case for the inmates of the mental hospital in Ken Kesey's One flew over the cuckoo's nest. At least, not in the beginning..

The way in which this book is different from the earlier ones is that it is not about the actual process of going crazy. This novel is beyond that; the story takes place in a mental institute, in a "cuckoo's nest," and the characters are vegetating in the hopelessness of ever going back to the world of the sane. They are completely isolated from the outside world: instead of sunshine, they perceive fog, wrapping around their mind to keep it under lunacy; instead of caring doctors and nurses, they have the Big Nurse, Miss Ratched, who is terrorizing and manipulating everyone in the ward; instead of hope and humanity, they live in a machine-like state of life. However, when the new patient, Randle McMurphy arrives, things change. He detects right the first day the intolerable conditions of what's going on in the institution. Not letting the Big Nurse break him, he is doggedly striving to wake the other patients up from their slumber of half-death.

The impact of his endeavors can be most distinctly seen in the case of the narrator, from the perspective of whom the story is told, Chief Bromden. In the first half/two-third of the story, Bromden pretends to be deaf, as a result of which he is hardly present and serves only as an observer, as if he were half-dead. Nevertheless, thanks to McMurphy, he is gradually gaining his voice back and comes back to life.

The leading metaphor that pervades the whole novel is that of The Combine. Bromden identifies society as The Combine, a huge machine, that sends out impulses, controls everyone around, conquers and destroys humanity, and liquidates those who are not suitable for the outside world. It can also illustrate modernity with its mechanization, the USA itself annexating the land of his father, consumer's society. Anything that deprives social rejects and rebels of their rights in order to keep the machine working smoothly. This machine-like worldview appears also when the narrator describes Nurse Ratched as a huge truck that puffs out smoke and can't be stopped, and in his nightmare, in which people themselves are merely mechanical objects themselves and when stabbed, their bowels give out metal junk instead of blood.

Contrarily to this soullessness stands McMurphy's attitude towards the power of laughter. Even when he first appears, he shocks everyone with his loud guffaw because they hadn't heard that joyful voice for ages. One of the most touching scenes of the book relates to this motif as well; when several of the patients go fishing together with McMurphy, the ice finally breaks. The awkward situations and the ridiculous lack of competence caused them to burst out laughing; and that minute, they won. From that point, they are capable of laughing, by this driving the Big Nurse crazy and keeping themselves sane. They became human again.

Of course, they will still not be perfect, but McMurphy helps them realize that just because they can't fit in, it doesn't mean that they are insane. It's just "He who walks out of step hears another drum."

Disturbia

Welcome to my head. Oh come on, what’s with that surprised look? Maybe you didn’t expect this? Yeah, you can’t tell by my appearance that my mind is a real beast. Do I look scary with a bloody knife in my hand, with eyes glowing with insanity, with a gaping hole where my heart used to be? Don’t be shocked, after all, you were the one who helped my mind to victory. You can’t have reckoned with my going disturbed. Still you proved I shouldn’t have listened to my heart again, that it decoyed, humiliated me.

So, to prevent it from betraying me one more time, I exterminated the root of the problem. Do you think it was too much? Am I out of my mind? You’re wrong, I’ve never been more awake before. I’m finally not blinded by emotions, I can see with my mind’s eye exactly who you really are, that you’re a coward, a liar, a traitor, someone to be detested. Oh, you don’t like my opinion? What did you expect me to do? To look for the day to see you again after you have been pretending ignorant for years? You’re even naïve. But you can’t outdo me, not at all.

Anyway, it’s time for revenge. I have already shown my heart how someone who hurts me ends up, now it’s your turn. Oh, you’re not afraid, are you? Shall I feel sorry for you? Sorry, I don’t have anything to do it with. You see, the little bastard is rotting here in my hand. How innocent it is, now, that it doesn’t beat anymore, isn’t it? It’s powerless, defenseless, just like I was when I let it poison my blood, and, together with it, my mind, But it’s over. It’s not pulsating anymore, it won’t start beating faster just because you’re close to me. Do you feel sorry for it? Here, you can have it. It has always been yours anyway, but now you can exhibit it as a trophy, with the title ‘How someone who falls for me ends up’. Feel fre to laugh with your buddies.

Oh, you don’t feel like laughing now? It’s a pity, because I’ve just found a great new form of fun for you. And you don’t even have to lift a finger. I’ll simply show you the uplifting freedom caused by the lack of my heart. Don’t you want me to? Oh come on, don’t be afraid, it won’t hurt. You won’t feel anything, could you want any better gift? You’ll still have your thoughts, of course, but they won’t be blurred by feeble human feelings. You would like to remain human? Why, am I not? You’ve got a point. I don’t feel like one anyway. Yeah, I can read your thoughts from your face, I’m rather like a zombie with the amount of life you’ve left in me.

Would I be a monster? Just because I want revenge? Still, you see, I only want to help with this. Of course, with such an empty heart like yours, it is possible that nothing will change. Let’s see, what I shall rid you of. Your brain? Why, you don’t use it anyway. Your soul? That’s not my style. You know what? I won’t change anything. Not as if you were so damned perfect. I just have a better idea. I’d rather make you want to get rid of your feelings, thoughts, dreams, the voices in your head yourself, push you to the edge of madness due to the fact that you’re a human. You will be begging for me to look at you, to leave you alone, to get out of your head, your nightmares, but I won’t, only when you are ready for the freedom I indulge in now. And I’ll be enjoying every minute of torturing you. You will curse the day when you met me.

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want you to hate me. I guess it’s a little late for that. Hate yourself.. Just like I was blaming myself when I should have been blaming you all along. I want you to know how it feels like to watch your own execution. As your own hangman. What a show it will be…! I’ll be watching it from the first row, and I will collect your drained blood to get a taste of what others call life.

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

Hey there bedlamite, I'm glad to see you smiling, does the lithium work? Great. Even the sun is shining, we can feel the first touches of spring carressing our skin. How delightful! If you behave, we can go out, out of the snowy prison of our mind to have a breath of fresh air, but at first let's see today's dose of remedy.

Sylvia Plath's semi-biographical novel, The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963. The protagonist, Esther Greenwood is about to have the world as her oyster: she has won an internship at a prestigious magazine in New York and with it the opportunity to attend galas, receptions, fashion shows, and so on. However, she feels out of things, so she decides to go home to Boston. The first sign of her imminent madness might be when she throws out the contents of her wardrobe, piece by piece, "in the dark heart of New York", the night before she is leaving the metropolis. Arriving home, she decides to write a novel but feels literary blocked, incapable of writing. Insomnia and lack of appetite are her next symptoms, and once she even thinks of choking her own mother because she is so irritated by her continuous snoring. Soon she is assigned to Dr Gordon, whose negligence results in an error in the electroconclusive therapy applied on Esther. Gravely affected by the "shocking" experience, she starts diving deeper into her depression, and makes several suicidal attempts. She tries hanging, drowning, and cutting herself, unsuccessfully. Finally, she takes her mother's pills and a glass of water, hides in a crack opening from the cellar, and swallows the pills one by one. She passes out as the silence, "at the rim of vision, gather[s] itself, and in one sweeping tide, rush[es her] to sleep."

She wakes up to realize she has been hospitalized, but she is not happy about surviving her suicide mission. She is acting hostile towards her mother and the nurses. The wathershed might be her acquaintance's, Joan's arrival, at whom she looks with compassion and suspicion at the same time. At times she is so filled with doubt about what to think about Joan, that she fancies the girl is merely a product of her imagination. Nevertheless, thanks to the this time properly administered electroshock therapy, Esther steps on the way of recovery. Her determination to recuperate may be enhanced by Joan's sudden suicide as well. The book ends with a prosperous scene, as Esther is proceeding towards the room where the question of her release is to be discussed.

The protagonist of The Bell Jar is a young girl who suffers from clinic depression generated by disillusionment in the hopelessness of life, and indifference to the outer world. She identifies her illness as a bell jar that doesn't let her breathe fresh oxygen, so she is "stewing in [her] own sour air." She has won several scholarship, she is clever and talented but feels entrapped in a world where she can't follow all her dreams and can't become a free writer and woman.

Plath's expressive imagery brings the novel to life. Starting from the metaphor of the bell jar, which Plath effectively stretches onto both the mental and the physical world ("to the person in the bell jar, [...] the world itself is the bad dream", or the one mentioned previously, in which the psychologically pictured bell jar has a contaminating effect on air itself), the author depicts the choices of her life as a fig tree, with several, unique fruits, but she's paralyzed by her unwillingness to make a decision. The glassy texture of the bell jar appears at other times as well. For instance, in the glass-eye of a nurse, the "glassy surface of [her] brain", and the "glassy haze" that she can see the night she wants to drown herself. Another recurring metaphors of the novel are shells and pebbles, which symbolize Esther's own fragmented, shipwrecked life.

The novel was adapted into movie in 1979, and a remake is going to be released in 2012, starring Julia Stiles as Esther Greenwood. Let's hope for the best; namely, that the cure will prove to be successful and you will be perfectly healthy by then. Take care.

Mad Girl's Love Poem
Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Henry James: The Turn of the Screw

"Welcome to where time stands still
No one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
Just labeled mentally deranged"
/Metallica - Welcome Home (Sanitarium)/

Now, that James Hetfield has done the greetings for me, let me begin this week's dose of antidote for sanity with a foretaste of what's to come. As the fact that I opened the treatment with a few lines of lyric suggests, I will bring some music therapy for you. May all our senses contribute to our brain's derailment from its rational route.

After this little sneak peek, we can get down to work. This time, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is on the menu. What kind of a dish is that, you ask? Twisting.. creaking.. ghostly.. gloomy... and spooky.. Mouth-watering, isn't it?

The title itself is quite significant. It is mentioned only a few times in the whole novel, and those instances create a frame. Namely, when the phrase first appears in one of the dialogs, the screw is only about to commence its way into the woodwork of the story, whereas near the end, it is already tightened to its place. In between this frame and throughout the narrative, several turns lead towards the tragedy of the last chapter. The most important of them is, perhaps, uttered in the following sentence: "What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?" The reason why this particular change of course might carry special importance is that this is the first occasion, when the reader has doubts about the credibility and sanity of the governess, the protagonist (whose name, most peculiarly, is hidden throughout the whole book).

However, Mrs. Grose, the main character's friend continues to believe her. She might do so because she trusts adults more than children - what a petty mistake this can become -, or because she's under the spell of the governess's manipulation. It is surprising how skillfully the protagonist uses the wits that have left for her. Not only does she color her fancies and the materializations of her imagination to a great extent, but she doesn't even realize how many times she's lying. In addition, she learns to get hold of people and have them do what she wants with her gift of the gab. It's as if by letting herself go, which she often refers to as something she must do -, she can get to others. Losing control over herself gives her control over other people. In fact, so much control that she can't even handle it, and she ends up using it in the most dreadful way.

Nonetheless, the question of why the governess is seemingly going mad is still unanswered. And, most importantly, why are ghost the subject of her hallucination? The best answer I can think of is that she was so terrified by the letter telling about the little boy's dismissal from school that her unhinged mind could bear it only by putting the blame on the dead; for instance, on late Mr. Quint and Miss Jessel.

That's all for now, dear patient. One last piece of advice: keep your screwdriver at hand. You can never know when you have to unscrew a screw so that it wouldn't fasten your brain to the wicked, screwy corner of your skull.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher

Good Morning, dear tenant, I hope you had a good night filled with demented nightmares and demons driving you literally crazy. Now, let us continue our tour here, in the Asylum.

The subject of our next stop is the House of Usher. Or, to be more precise, The Fall of the House of Usher. The title refers to the place where the two main characters fall into insanity. A thought-provoking parallel can be drawn with Charlotte's Yellow Wallpaper for two reasons. For instance, a physical object, in this case, a house represents the state of mind of its tenant in Poe's short story as well. Furthermore, just as Charlotte was obsessed with the lack of order in the pattern of the wallpaper, the protagonist of this story is bothered by the perplexing arrangement of the furniture in the house, by the dark draperies, and the fretted ceiling. This atmosphere of dissonance infected him with gloom and fear.

What I'm interested in, however, is why the mad notice the software errors of their mind in the physical world first. Is it because as they are falling deeper into insanity, their senses trick them and they see the flaws, stains, and holes of their mental health materializing in tangible objects? Or is it because they are scared to face their madness all alone, only on a mental level, so they project it all out so that they could put the blame on reality? As if it were all the fault of a nauseating color, a creepy smell, and the fretted ceiling? Are they merely afraid to face themselves? If so, they might not be that different from their sane fellows after all..

Poe's piece of work is remarkable for the literary passages in it and their connection to the main topic. Both the poem and "Mad Trist" (mind the word describing both the characters' state of mind the book they are reading) of Sir Lancelot Canning reflect upon the mental derangement of Usher. (Another example of the author's linguistic virtuosity is the choice of the name of Usher's sister: Lady Madeline.)

Instead of analyzing the poem, let an excerpt from it stand for itself to illustrate its lacework of fantasy and reality, sanity and madness, fiction and nonfiction:

" V

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI
And travelers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more."

If we scrutinize the excerpt from an artistic point of view, it is apparent what the author meant by "the monarch's high estate" or "a discordant melody".

From the aspect, of course, the house itself is a metaphor of Usher's mind, and the fall symbolizes the collapsion of his sanity. As far as the narrator is considered, he escapes just in time so that he won't be buried by the cutting fragments of Usher's mental health. What about you? Will you get sober just in time to get out of the way of the falling shards coming from the psychic eruption of your lunacy? We'll see.. Just stay here to keep the can of worms closed. Take care, dear bedlamite.