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Madness: Controlling the Other

Madness: Controlling the Other. Presentation for Wide Sargasso Sea By Candice Clark. Bertha Mason . Was she really crazy? Definition of hysteria in Victorian Psychiatry Treatment of madness in women How does the cultural attitudes pervade the literature? How does this connect with race?.

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Madness: Controlling the Other

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  1. Madness: Controlling the Other Presentation for Wide Sargasso Sea By Candice Clark

  2. Bertha Mason • Was she really crazy? • Definition of hysteria in Victorian Psychiatry • Treatment of madness in women • How does the cultural attitudes pervade the literature? • How does this connect with race?

  3. Crazy or Just Misunderstood? • Antoinette or “Bertha” is described as sexual, unchaste, and rebellious. • She refuses to adhere to the accepted codes of acceptable feminine behavior. • Women were particularly vulnerable to mental instability due to their unique reproductive makeup. • Sexual pleasure=sign of insanity.

  4. Insanity: Victorian Style • Women were diagnosed with “hysteria” a deviation from standard behavior or an excess of normative levels of feeling. • During the Victorian Era, madness became a “female malady.” • Sexuality became the defining quality of a women’s nature. Codes of chastity, conduct book, sexual segregation, marriage, patriarchal social arrangements became ways of managing a woman’s weak character. • Men became the strong, moral, disciplined force that must protect women (from herself apparently).

  5. How do we fix this girl? • Treatment during the Victorian Era • Clitoridectomy pioneered by Dr. Isaac Baker • Extreme Vigilance: Husbands and male family members must be ever vigilant to protect women from their weak natures. • Educate their children • Charity work

  6. Attitudes Toward the Culture of Women • During this era, women were considered “angels of the house.” • Victorian medical science defined women in biological terms as naturally passive, dependent, sexually disinterested, born to be mothers and helpmeets to men. • These attitudes seriously limited girls’ access to education, expression, employment, and ownership of property (Married Women’s Property Acts). • Women who exhibited “deviant, unnatural, or unwomanly” behaviors would be diagnosed as mad.

  7. Cultural Madness • Rochester sees her as foreign, alien and as someone who he can never understand due to the wide cultural differences between them. • Antoinette herself does not know where she belongs culturally speaking. “So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” • Rejected by whites and blacks, what is she? • Rejection and confusion lead to her madness. • Narration: having her voice taken away by Rochester, a metaphor for colonialism and treatment of the natives, leads to her madness.

  8. References • http://herstoria.com • http://www.saraharoeste.com/music • Halloran, V. (2006). Race, Creole, and National Identities in Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Phillip’s Cambridge. Small Axe, 21(10) p.87-104. • Mezei, K. (1987). “And it Kept its Secret”: Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea. Critique, 28(4) p. 195-209. • Schlichter, A. (2003). Critical Madness, Enunciative Excess: The Figure of the Madwoman in Postmodern Feminist Texts. Critical Methodologies, 3(3) p. 308-329.

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