Mental Illness in Literature

Many authors use mental illness as a tool or a metaphor, with little regard to the real-world impact of these types of issues. However, over time fewer authors have continued to rely on mental illness as a tool or tactic; realistic representations of mental illnesses are finally beginning to manifest in literature. The attitudes toward mental illness depicted in literature mirror society's attitudes toward mental illness, but also influence it. As societal perceptions of mental illness evolve, the depictions of mental illness in literature evolve and vice versa. Mental illnesses have been portrayed as romantic and beautiful, as metaphors for oppression and labels for nonconformity. Examples of this phenomena proliferate literature from every age, including the works of renowned writers such as Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, and in both Victorian and modern literature.

For example, Shakespeare, a genius of his time, had a mind filled with creativity and his works were flooded with words and phrases that were never used before him, and have been remembered and used long after. The way that Shakespeare has portrayed insanity has undoubtedly affected much of the literature that came after his works. His plays include characters with various types of mental illnesses; the delusions faced by many characters in Macbeth, Othello’s psychosis, King Lear and his madness, the irony of Romeo and Juliette’s suicides, depression faced by Hamlet, and Ophelia’s suicide, which perhaps had the most impact on how mental illnesses later become romantic in literature.

Driven mad due to the tyranny and neglect in her life, Ophelia’s death is an image that surfaces repeatedly in art and literature; the idea of innocence driven to insanity is a fascination in society still. Ophelia went crazy, perhaps due to grief, or perhaps due to the neglect and tyranny that was ever so present in her tragic life. When she’s singing her songs, and handing out imaginary flowers in the Elsinore court, the men there realize just how grave the situation is, just how insane Ophelia has become, after all “no one has more power to terrify than a person who is desperate enough to embrace madness and death” (Harrison). Ophelia’s suicide was an act of assertion, she embraced the idea of death and committed to it, suicide was the only choice that she could make for herself in a world where she was pulled in many directions and given many instructions. In the many artistic representations, Ophelia is beautiful, in shining water with flowers all around her corpse, as though to say, Hey, remember me? I wasn’t important alive, but I am beautiful dead.

In his own essay, “The Philosophy of Composition,” Edgar Allan Poe says “the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” Poe’s life experience played a huge role in his writing, his dark themes were likely in some ways a reflection of his own mind, and his fixation on death may have been due to the way that nearly all the women in his life died of the same horrible disease. Poe’s stories are filled with themes of insanity and immorality, and complex characters with intricate and detailed madness and twisted minds. His use of mental illness brings in the idea that the mind’s capabilities are limitless when insanity isn’t perceived as a boundary. The insanity creates a new level to the mystery in his fictions, and an overall haunting tone in his poetry.

Many would say that this is just Poe’s personality, his writing style, that he has “an apparent lack of interest in moral themes” in his works (Cleman). However, it could be argued that Poe’s works are the reflection of his active interest in moral themes; his characters go mad, certainly, but often they use it like a new ability, some hidden talent they’ve discovered that releases them from responsibility for their actions via their inherent insanity. Perhaps Poe’s characters show that on some level he believed or hoped that this kind of character could only exist because of some greater cause beyond their own conscious control. Amid the grief of losing his wife, insanity was the only refuge Poe had. In a letter to a friend which detailed the trauma of the loss, Poe wrote of himself: “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman made her mark on the world as a feminist author with her story “The Yellow

Wallpaper.” In this story, the narrator slowly becomes plagued by insanity, in the form of postpartum psychosis. Gilman uses this illness as a metaphor for the gender based oppression the narrator faces at the hands of her husband and her society. The way the characters act in “The Yellow Wallpaper” emphasizes the roles that the society of the time placed on each family member, and the narrator slowly becomes completely delusional as a response to being cooped up because of a mental illness. These delusions and mental disorders faced by the narrator are worsened by an overly protective, or controlling husband, which is where the feminism comes into the situation.

In the particular case of “The Yellow Wallpaper” it is not entirely clear whether the narrator’s oppression is a result of her mental illness or whether her mental illness is a result of her oppression; throughout the story both her insanity and oppression become progressively worse. Her delusions themselves become the only way she acknowledges her oppression, when she says of the wallpaper pattern that “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (Gilman).

In Victorian literature themes and situations such as the one Gilman wrote were common, just as these situations were common in the real world. Women who were in an unusual state of mind, or who weren’t seen to be proper women were often labeled, incorrectly, with a mental illness or disorder to write off many things that made women independent or unique as a flaw. The literature of the times, perhaps in attempt to normalize the practice, reflects the very real ways that medical diagnoses of mental disorders were swayed in a way of oppressing women. Jane Wood, a scholar who specializes in Victorian Literature, said “hysteria, as the archetypal female disorder, rose to prominence…as a condition whose clinical condition could be modified in order to diagnose all the behaviors which did not fit the prescribed model of Victorian womanhood.”

In recent representations of mental illnesses, mental disorders and suicides, most authors are taking an approach that has less to do with beautification and more to do with the element it brings to their work. There is still a large stigma in society about those with mental disorders, however many authors find that this theme adds new depth to their work. Novelist Patrick McGrath believes that “fictional narratives and psychotic illness are mutually exclusive entities.” In his own gothic fiction novels, McGrath argues that these illnesses and disorders manifest in characters whether the author intended to or not. However, he also agrees that it is, at some level, the responsibility of the author to find a balance to not misrepresent the illness of the character but to still give the desired effect of insanity to the readers.

Young Adult fiction is one of the most popular and widely read categories, these are the books that get turned into mainstream films, the books that get banned from schools because of content, and the books that shape and influence young minds as they are learning. The way that mental illness and disorders are represented in this literature are imperative to the way that people view mental health in a real-world setting. Authors have finally begun to step away from the beautification and romanticization of these issues.

Susana Kaysen’s novel Girl, Interrupted was a memoir of Kaysen’s own experiences as a diagnosed patient who was confined in a psychiatric ward at McLean Hospital. Kaysen details the things she saw and learned of herself and of the other patients around her during her stay at the hospital in 1967, for about eighteen months. Care of mental health issues has evolved greatly since the 60’s, and so have the stories we read which feature characters with such illnesses. In 2011, Jay Asher’s novel Thirteen Reasons Why brought a realistic approach to the after-effects of suicide in a way that did not romanticize that character’s death but instead managed to portray the weight of the situation. In 2013, a young adult fiction entitled Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets shows the issues and stigmas that adolescents with mental illnesses face, and how the social stigma about treating these issues is harmful to individuals and families. These types of representation are beginning to have a positive effect on the common societal perceptions of how the mind works and breaks and heals.

Throughout history, literature and society have influenced and shaped one another, and will continue to do so. This can be seen through the progression of mental illness and differences in portrayals over time from periods such as the Victorian era up through modern times. Additionally, authors such as William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe prominently featured mental illness as strong themes in their works.

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Works Cited

Cleman, John. "Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense." American Literature 63.4 (1991): 623-40. Web.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Portable Literature. 8th ed. N.p.: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013. 376-87. Print.

Harrison, B.N. "The Unified Theory of Ophelia: On Women, Writing, and Mental Illness." The Toast. The Toast, 03 Mar. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

McGrath, Patrick. "Method to the Madness." The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 June 2013. Web. 27 Sept. 2016.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "A Terrible Evil." Letter to George Washington Eveleth. 04 Jan. 1848. MS. N.p.

Poe, Edgar A. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art. Vol. 28. Philadelphia. Apr. 1846. Print.

Wood, Jane. Passion and Pathology in Victorian Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

References

Asher, Jay. Th1rteen R3asons Why. New York: Razorbill, 2007. Print.

Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print

Roskos, Evan. Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Houghton Mifflin

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