Crazy female writers are drastically underrepresented!
You can't tell me the world hasn't seen its fair share of female authors who were just a tad off-kilter. I'm demanding equal opportunity acknowledgment of insanity!
So here's a quick rundown of the crazier women who have put pen to paper.
(A note: I totally respect all these writers-- yes, even Bronte, much as I hate Jane Eyre. They all impacted literature, in one way or another, and they are all largely respected by the global community today. Seriously, they're cool. This is just meant to be fun.)
Sylvia Plath:
Ms. Plath was a bit of a headcase, but honestly, she had her reasons. Her father died when she was eight, for starters. But that didn't stop her from getting her work published in literary magazines as a teenager, or from getting a scholarship to Smith College, where she continued to write successfully. Of course, successful writing usually just points to having some variety of tortured soul, and Sylvia didn't disappoint. While in college, she "suffered a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide."
Unfortunately for our heroine, the treatment for her nervous breakdown involved six months in a hospital undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, which basically induces seizures in its patients. Fun stuff, huh? So fun that Plath referred to it heavily in her writing. "Now they light me up like an electric bulb. / For weeks I can remember nothing at all," is a line from "Poem For A Birthday," which explored her college suicide attempt. When Plath's husband left her for another woman, she kicked the writing into angsty overdrive-- we're talking, “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time—”
After publishing The Bell Jar, a novel that was basically autobiographical and focused on a young woman's suicide attempt, Plath killed herself by putting her head in the oven and turning on the gas. She was, as all really cool artists are, more famous in death than she was in life.
Virginia Woolf:
Sylvia Plath:
Ms. Plath was a bit of a headcase, but honestly, she had her reasons. Her father died when she was eight, for starters. But that didn't stop her from getting her work published in literary magazines as a teenager, or from getting a scholarship to Smith College, where she continued to write successfully. Of course, successful writing usually just points to having some variety of tortured soul, and Sylvia didn't disappoint. While in college, she "suffered a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide."
Unfortunately for our heroine, the treatment for her nervous breakdown involved six months in a hospital undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, which basically induces seizures in its patients. Fun stuff, huh? So fun that Plath referred to it heavily in her writing. "Now they light me up like an electric bulb. / For weeks I can remember nothing at all," is a line from "Poem For A Birthday," which explored her college suicide attempt. When Plath's husband left her for another woman, she kicked the writing into angsty overdrive-- we're talking, “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time—”
After publishing The Bell Jar, a novel that was basically autobiographical and focused on a young woman's suicide attempt, Plath killed herself by putting her head in the oven and turning on the gas. She was, as all really cool artists are, more famous in death than she was in life.
Virginia Woolf:
Virginia Woolf, who had a really cool last name, "strove to create a literary form that would convey inner life." Born in 1882, she was greatly effected by her mother's death in 1895-- she is believed to have suffered bipolar disorder from that time on. One of her more famous novels, Mrs. Dalloway, tells the story of two completely different people whose thoughts and feelings have intriguing parallels.
The novel ends with the suicide of one of those characters, and Plath's life ended in suicide as well. In 1941 she walked into the Ouse River and drowned, leaving a note behind that told her husband she was afraid she was going insane.
In 1962, years after her death, Woolf unknowingly lent her name to the title of an award-winning play, Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The play is about dysfunctional relationships, and is full of scathing abuse, both verbal and physical.
Now there's an upper!
The novel ends with the suicide of one of those characters, and Plath's life ended in suicide as well. In 1941 she walked into the Ouse River and drowned, leaving a note behind that told her husband she was afraid she was going insane.
In 1962, years after her death, Woolf unknowingly lent her name to the title of an award-winning play, Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The play is about dysfunctional relationships, and is full of scathing abuse, both verbal and physical.
Now there's an upper!
Charlotte Bronte:
In my personal opinion, the fact that Bronte's novel Jane Eyre is considered "partly autobiographical" is enough to doom the poor woman to at least partial insanity (we're talking about a novel in which a young Jane is misunderstood and abused by her childhood guardians, unjustly labeled a liar at school, falls in love with a-- rather overbearing!-- man who is keeping a crazy wife in the attic, hears voices, sees ghosts, and ends up marrying Mr. Rochester after Ye Olde Crazy Wife commits suicide by setting fire to the house and jumping off a roof).
That is all.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Gilman's life was no picnic, beginning when her father left the family; Gilman was an infant at the time. This left two children, our own Ms. Charlotte and her brother, Thomas, in the care of mother Mary Perkins, who was not the most affectionate or maternal figure in the world, considering the fact that she "forbade her children to make strong friendships or read fiction," believing that this would prevent them for getting hurt, as she had. I'm not making this stuff up! In her autobiography, Gilman claimed that her mother only showed affection when she thought her daughter was asleep.
Truthfully, her relationships didn't improve particularly as she got older. Gilman married Charles Walter Stetson, an artist, in 1884 (she'd initially declined his proposal, which as it turns out would've been the better idea), and had a child with him in 1885. Gilman suffered from intense post-partum depression after the birth of her daughter, and contacted a specialist, who prescribed the "rest cure." This "cure"-- and yes, I am using dubious quotation marks-- involved bed rest, isolation, and complete dependence on others (we're talking being fed by someone else, not leaving bed, and oh, heaven forbid any speaking whatsoever). When she was sent home, Gilman was under orders to limit her "intellectual conversation" and to never write again.
Be fair to the lady. She gave it a shot. Of course, it resulted in deepened depression and suicidal urges, and in the end she and her husband decided that a separation was necessary. It was only after Gilman left her husband and spent time alone, with her daughter, in a completely different town, that her depression began to lift.
Years later, Gilman would write a short story about her depression and its "cure." It was called "The Yellow Wallpaper."
(I got you, didn't I? There you were, reading along, when suddenly...BAM. Wallpaper.)
And, winner of the, "Rumors of My Insanity Have Been Greatly Exaggerated" prize, Ms. Emily Dickinson!
Best known to this year's AP Lit students (heeeeeeeeeey guys!) as a female poet who used random capitalization, and whose poems can all be sung to the tune of the "Gilligan's Island" theme song (thanks, Ms. Hallberg!), Dickinson is notable for a couple of other things. She did not, for example, like to leave her house, staying in her home in Amherst for almost the entirety of her adult life.
But, contrary to popular belief, she wasn't a total recluse. She had normal things-- things like visitors! Friends! Family! She had an extremely close friendship with her sister-in-law, threw parties at which she entertained many guests, and kept up steady correspondence with an impressive number of people. And though the bulk of Dickinson's work-- we're talking close to 2,000 poems, here-- were officially published after her death, she sent plenty of those poems to friends and family while she was still alive.
Well. There you have it. Intriguing, intelligent, talented women who were, collectively, a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Love 'em, hate 'em, or love to hate 'em, you have to admit they did, on occasion, bring the crazy.
Silly Facebook quiz. You really missed out. ;]
Yellow wallpaper iz scurry! She iz bad!
ReplyDelete