Women &; Madness: Part 1
By thom_austin
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A STUDY OF WOMEN AND MADNESS
Women and Madness: Part 1
Victorian : From Red Rooms to Blue Peaks
"And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm." (Byron)
Foucault's institutional confinement refers to France in the
seventeenth century where the distinction between reason and unreason
was beginning to develop, paving the way for the development of the
sciences of psychiatry and the birth of the asylum. Prior to this
change in the study of the mind, the institution of madness was not
necessarily linked to unreason, it was more integrated in society and
thinking, and even during the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance
it was associated with particular sacred forms of knowledge which were
considered to provide insights into the human condition.
It is this insightful use of madness to express the human condition
that I hope to explore in the parameters of nineteenth century fiction,
bringing in other contemporary references from more recent texts where
they serve the exploration.
Nineteenth century confinement according to Showalter was a growing
female condition: "By 1872, out of 58,640 certified lunatics in England
and Wales, 31,822 were women" It was this condition of the woman's
confinement that most certainly sent out tremors of anxiety to the
daughters of the century.
The management of the insane was also shifting from women proprietors
to the male dominated medical profession. In the struggle for
expression and professional advancement it could not have been of any
influence to have such growing numbers contained within institutions. I
will allude to the historical position of woman and their assumed and
real maladies where it serves the literary enquiry.
The influence of anxiety is present in the writings of Charlotte
Bronte, not only in Jane Eyre which will be my main field of focus but
also in much of her other works.
There is a divided self that emerges from the author's creation, I will
explore how she attempts to link these separate spheres of the self and
how the anxiety of division represents change and development not only
in the love of the soul but in the presentation of the woman in the
text. Maybe in writing what she described as "the third story" she has
assisted at least in fiction to bring the madwoman out of the
confinement of the attic and into the insight of the drawing room via
the novel reading public mind.
I will hopefully show how the portrayal of madness can be seen as of
some effective use on creative thinking, which links back to the
renaissance ideas around sacred knowledge. In the chosen texts, whether
in character or symbolic language the presence of the mad identity can
spawn the passion of poetry.
This expressive tool will serve to illustrate the ideas around
breakthroughs rather than breakdowns, in language and characterisation,
to a heightened sense of control and freedom.
This breakthrough can also assist in the development of literary
theory, bringing about narrative and mythical solutions in the text.
The critical project is not one of psycho-analysis, although it may be
suggested it relies established thought, it is more an examination of
the evident psychic resolutions of the female author. This is possible
by this expressive breakthrough that happens with the representation of
madness.
Charlotte Bronte catalogues through her work the Victorian approach to
the mad woman and also goes some way to attempt a curative and psychic
controlling of the female malady. She brings the Victorian approach of
moral management into focus and in her text their are other causes to
be examined for the visibility of this malady.
It might be suggested that Bronte breaks through the oppressive
Victorian confines with the assistance of a male muse? The Byronic
romantic figure in the role of her expressor muse could be described as
a Freudian father or political teacher with regard to her critical
interplay of symbol and character. As Woolf suggests, " She [Bronte]
does not attempt to solve the problems of human life; she is even
unaware that such problems exist; all her force, and it is the more
tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, 'I love', 'I
hate', 'I suffer' . Does she express herself through the poetic writing
with the assistance on confined potent male force within, the muse or
the father figure? By posing the question it suggests that the there is
a requirement for a male balance to what is most clearly her own
independent force.
The question is raised only because of the evidence in her early
writings of a controlling yet benevolent male force. An energy that
could correspond to the Platonic idea of the other half, or the Jungian
notion of binaries in the anima and animas.
At the heart of this early creativity was an imaginative world into
which Bronte would enter. In many ways this retreat into a male force
represents the journey to the whole. Charlotte wrote of this male muse
figure in the following lines:
And he has been a mental king
That ruled my thoughts right regally,
And he has given a [? steady] spring
To what I had of poetry&;#8230;
In the domestic private confines of Haworth, Cottage together with her
brother Branwell and her sisters she would create the imaginary world
of 'Angria' in which the imagined "Duke of Wellington" and his son the
"Marquis of Douro" would roam unrestrained like Byronic heroes. In
light of these earlier creations it can be seen that Rochester is a
direct descendant of male muses and mythical characters, and also a
father-figure. Angria would inspire her later literary creations, and
provided at the time a dream world of solace into which the young
teacher Charlotte would long to escape.
This escapism rightly provided an antidote to the stifling
male-dominated world in which Charlotte existed. Can it be described as
an imaginative development that fulfilled a lack of full advancement in
her role as governess or as a recessive childhood fascination? It could
be described equally as her creative fount that would spawn later
success stories, or as an obsession with an imaginative confinement in
a feminine domestic world.
Jane Eyre also exhibits an unresolved identity in the obsessional
ambiguity of her character. She is searching for her male muse and a
resolution for the separate spheres of the public and the private, in
the world of Thornfield and its master.
She doesn't display a high self regard as this can be witnessed in
self-critical outbursts: "That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never
breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never
surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were
nectar"
She does however display a restlessness in the text, "I think I rave in
a kind of exquiste delirium." This delirium is presented in the pained
world of Jane Eyre under the controlling forces of the narrator's
desire to see love resolve a dilemma. It is a confined delirium, a
psychic dilemma that is representative of the Victorian female malady,
portrayed in Bronte by the extremes, in terms of femininity that
inhabit the red rooms of the text represented by the characters Helen
Burns and Bertha Mason. Showalter calls this the "three faces of Jane."
The three faces formalised by the mind, body and spirit perhaps.
This desire for control also takes on the myth of male patriarchy,
characterised by Rochester and linking to the earlier creations of such
strong heroes as the "Duke of Wellington." These male prototypes
inhabit the blue peaks of the prose. It is the narrator's wish to
police internally within the text this delirium, taking shape via the
literal and metaphorical destroying of these two extremities to make
way for the complete being, or in Showalter's words "to make way for
the full strength and development of the central conciousness."
This textual control can also be described as a linking of the separate
spheres, a resolution of the divided self. An employment of love is
offered as a curative for this delirium. Is the style of love presented
in Jane Eyre one of domestication or one of a romantic style? The
difference between these two forms of love can be equated with the
difference between the role of the nurse and that of the poet/te4acher.
If it is the former then there is a perpetuation of the repressive
elements that Bronte seems to set out to challenge. "Reader, I married
him!" falls flat not as an assertion of the Romantic blue peaks but a
taming compromise. Can this then be the only expectation for the
condition of women under the ruling forces of male Patriarchy? The
expectancy of further confinement, or at lest a self-controlled
confinement through compromise. The compromise being marrying a maimed
husband and playing the role of nurse.
This compromise can be turned on those characters of Bertha and Helen
cited earlier, suggesting a moral policing of women of extreme body or
spirit who may also be described as "mad". They are interned and suffer
tragic consequences as evidence of the self-repressive approaches
Bronte is capable of in her striving for compromise. She marginalises
them in order to deal with the full potency of her self she kills off
these characters and in order to deal with the male figure of power she
knocks him of his mythical horse. This could be easily criticised as
one of the compromises of the romantic project, her not taking the bull
by the horns as it were. Or is this the best approach to those mental
kings that rule with oppressive influence.
We could underwrite this resolution with a borrowing from Barthes in
his defining of Gradiva as a figure of the woman the romantic hero
loves unknowingly. This idea of the unknowledge adds as a diversion to
the question of determinism in the Bronte subtext. Is the writing of
characters such as Bertha a product of the 'trance writer'? That is to
say does Bronte have complete control over her creation? This would
call into question the ability, and construction powers of the woman
novelist if it was such that she wrote the work under the influence of
some supernatural force, possessed in some way. Are the more
interesting things, as some critics have suggested, those she put into
the text without her knowledge?
In order to release Rochester from his delirium gently, Jane as the
Gradiva figure conforms to his delirium both in the real and the
mythical. We witness Jane being led by Rochester through his narrative
past and to the madwoman in the attic which as the physical basis of
his present life symbolises his real delirium.
She enters into his delirium like a Freudian analyst into the
patient's life or dreams, little by little consenting to play the part
of Gradiva, to sustain the illusion somewhat and not to waken the
dreamer too abruptly. Gradually she unites the myth and reality, by
means of which the amorous experience or the analysis (Love of the
Soul) assumes something of the same function as an analytic cure.
Barthes goes on to point out that there is, alternative to the figure
of salvation in Gradiva a more aggravating or wicked force that seeks
to maintain or sustain the delirium. This corresponds to the
destructive elements already mentioned in Bronte's project.
The wicked force may be evident in the narrator's ploy to knock
Rochester of his horse, also to maim and blind him. This in order once
again to provide the benevolent figure of salvation for the use of
Jane..
Is the madwoman being displayed in Rochester's own Romantic psychic
breakdown, in the destructive project of the Gradiva in the text? A
feminisation is being conducted, not only freeing his trapped literal
feminine aspect which is Bertha but also that of his female muse. This
question of the feminine leads to answers of male character psychology
or literary theory which we are not wholly concerned with here. It does
point out the important paradox of the narrator's possible madman
discourse, which could be paraphrased as the mad-drag queen in the
Romantic closet. With this we could embroil Rochester in the staging of
his own fire at Thornfield.
If we return to the Madwoman in the attic we are led to the daughter
text 'Wild Sargasso Sea' which attempts to bring to fruition some
answers to the Freudian dilemma of transference that is presented in
Jane Eyre. By it's Humanitarian reworking of the character Bertha
Mason, this intertext accuses Bronte of unsympathetic neglect of her
"third character", confined as she is to the Gothic subplot together
with the other supernatural influences; dogs, moons and the Moor.
But do we accept this charge of neglect or rest with surety on the
notion that these characters are merely symbols of the central
consciousness of the narrator who is after all Jane striving for a more
complete human existence?
If Bertha was allowed to interact more then there might be no spawning
of these alternative narratives, as it is she is merely symbolic. By
her symbol then she makes more of a potent breakthrough. In her
animalistic presentation she begs the treatment of a humanitarian text,
which is destined to come after, partly as a seeking of character
justice.
Can we see, in revenger's tragedy of a Frankenstein complex, the
symbolic monster having it's revenge on creator? Or could it also be
described as evidence of the brutalising force of the mother? Asylum
conditions historically would only encourage the nature of confinement
, the threat of a consumptive death and the repressive conditions
exercised on the woman's right to education, political voice and
control of her own life.
To present another angle on the malady of the Victorian women we may
consider the portrayal of hunger and confinement. In most of Charlotte
Bronte's novels we are faced with women who are imprisoned or undergo
their own self-confinement. There is Caroline Helstone's pitiless
confinement in her room and self in Shirley where she becomes obsessed
with by a secret depth, an anxiety and yearning to discover and know
her mother. By this influence of anxiety of the unknown mother does the
desire turn to a romantic coldness with woman as a Prometheus unbound.
This is an example of the "Cooped Up" discourses on feminine
domesticity that Johanna Smith progresses in her feminist perspective
on Frankenstein. The tension is in the desire for mother and the need
for domestic escape.
Lucy Snowe is also a victim of self-confinement, at the hand's of the
male character's rejection yet under the direction of the narrator's
apparent pitiless supervision. This portrayal corresponds to the
prototype of Ophelia that was making a representative comeback in the
Victorian era. All the confined, receive little or no sympathy, starved
of human love and kindness which we would imagine could help to cure
them. Instead they are informed that for the development of women it is
necessary to undergo this self-enclosure and self-containment. Is this
the Romantic struggle of a conscious towards expression amid extreme
trial and torment? The triumph of moral reason over sexual passion.
Madness and religion reconciled to breakthrough to equality.
No of Words: 2,615
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