We're All Mad Here...

          For the last blog of the school year I would like to continue a topic from my "Monsters and Ourselves" thesis paper. In this paper I compared and contrasted the obsessive nature found in Henry Jekyll from the novel, Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, to the same nature of Clarice Starling from the film The Silence of the Lambs directed by Jonathan Demme. Alternately, for this blog entry I would like to discuss the natures of the villains/antagonists of these works: Edward Hyde and Buffalo Bill.
In Jekyll and Hyde, the character of Edward Hyde comes about through Jekyll's desire to create for himself two separate beings. What really interests me here is Hyde's mentality and understanding of his heinous crimes and actions (assaulting a young girl, killing Sir Danvers, etc.) And I believe that Hyde completely and utterly does not understand what he's doing or if he's mentally there at all. I mean he is described as primitive, ugly, and ape-like so basically he's a metaphorical animal. But if he is an animal, then who's going to take the blame for his actions because animals aren't rational, they just do what they need to do to survive. Jekyll straight up refuses and is all like "It wasn't me, it was Hyde." Yet Jekyll has been known to basically "clean/cover up" for Hyde's actions. Also, I found it kind of odd that Hyde just did these crimes without a motive. There's always motive. In the words of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, "Happy people just don't kill their husbands. They just don't." In a sense, this is pretty accurate. You could think of every villain in the history of villainy, and they all have some type of motive. Something just has to snap in someone's brain for them to go as far as killing another being. And for Hyde, I just didn't see any motive, besides the fact that he is described as "pure evil." Although, Hyde's actions might have stemmed from Jekyll's suppressed history which isn't really stated in the book, and being the thorough readers that we are, we can't assume anything. So to me, it seemed like Hyde was just an outburst of Jekyll without any motive to go gallivanting around the city.

In The Silence of the Lambs, the serial killer, Buffalo Bill, is almost the complete opposite of Edward Hyde. He understands everything that he is doing (Note: he skins women in order to make a women's suit for himself. Really this movie is better than it sounds, it won Best Picture.) but I'm pretty sure that Buffalo Bill's mental state is not ok since he's, you know, a serial killer. Even when Clarice Starling is going over the case file, she describes him stating, "He's got real physical strength combined with an older man's self-control. He's cautious, precise. He's never impulsive. He'll never stop." And here's where I start comparing Buffalo Bill to Hyde because Hyde is almost exactly this. "He's got real physical strength," Yes because Hyde is very primitive and ape-like and would obviously be strong.  "He'll never stop." I completely agree and believe this true for Hyde. He already doesn't take responsibility of his actions nor does he understand them so why should he stop? I don't think he can stop. And if Jekyll kept going with the transformation, I'm pretty sure Hyde would take over and then all hell would break loose. Which is why somebody had to stop him. Luckily, that person was Jekyll who realized what he needed to do before it was too late. The same goes for Clarice with Buffalo Bill. She found him at home, alone, and she arrived at his home, alone. She already had him in her grasp and she knew that she had to kill him when given the opportunity. 

In conclusion, Edward Hyde from the novel, Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and Buffalo Bill from the film, The Silence of the Lambs directed by Jonathan Demme, strongly exhibit the same nature characteristics. They're both strong, and never ceasing. Unless someone is willing to stop them and put an end to this madness.  

A Society That's Something Next to Normal

          For this month's blog, I would like to expand upon the idea brought up in the Cult of Domesticity discussion. The idea was that what society thinks of women completely contradicts what the general populous of women are taught. Society glamorizes sex and beauty in women while we are taught to be modest intellectuals that can change the world. 

          And it's sad to think that our views on women have come so far and we've given so many freedoms to women yet society still chooses to objectify and degrade them. If you look at the works  The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both written at the end of the 19th century, you can see how the views of women have drastically changed since the societal opinions are reflected in the works of the time period.

          In The Awakening, Edna was expected to be subservient to her husband. When Mr. Pontellier believed that one of his children was ill while on vacation, he made Edna get up to check on the child.  When they went back to New Orleans, Edna was expected to stay in the house in case callers came to visit. And why did she continue to do these things? To conform to the societal role of women or be outcasted (or until she reached the breaking point and made her deadly decision.) In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator was kept in a room in her house because she was deemed "ill" by her husband. since he was a doctor, the narrator has simply become a lab-rat, an object for her husband where he can do anything to her as she is seen as "his property" during this time period. By keeping the narrator in the room, she is slowly losing her sanity because she is beginning to see creatures run around the grounds and becomes obsessed with the wallpaper. Soon the narrator reaches her breaking point and completely loses sanity as she has submerged herself in the removal of the yellow wallpaper. 

          There was a recent event that happened to me that contradicts everything I've known and have been taught about the value of women. I was working backstage during one of the school's play practices this year, trying to cut a material in half to be used for structural purposes. Except the way I was cutting it was not working correctly and I was getting frustrated and ready to give up. One of the male crew members said something to me (which I do not recall) and I replied with, "We can't do it, we're women." Now the teacher supervising this (who has known me for four years) quickly turns to me and said, "I can't believe you let yourself say that," because for those four long years this teacher has known me to be tough and willing to get my hands dirty as I am not the prissy type. I didn't have a reply for her that day, but upon contemplating the situation I found that I had blamed my own gender on my inabilities to cut things rather than my short-temperedness. Which, in all honesty, is the worst thing I can do because if other women begin doing this, that's just going to make it ok for men to do it and then society will be right back to where it was over a century ago. 

         With every leap ahead there will always be a few steps back. I'm glad that women have the freedoms that they have if only we could stray away from the objectification and contradiction that is always in pursuit. I already believe that women can do just as much as men and men can do just as much as women. maybe it'll just take another century before we're all on a level playing field. But then again to change society's value of women, we must first change ourselves. Do we, as individuals, conform to society's glamor or do we obey our own moral obligations and treat others as individuals regardless of gender? 

Awakenings and Asylums

          There was something I noticed in the works of literature that we read that was not discussed in class. I noticed that most of these female characters go mad, or experience a moment of madness in some way, before becoming an individual. Or perhaps they just seem mad to us because that's how we perceive them to be as they break away from their possessive husbands. The female protagonists in The Awakening, A Doll's House, and The Yellow Wallpaper all carry out actions that can be seen as "mad."
           In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna's deranged moments occur right after she and Mr. Pontellier have dinner. He up and leaves, complaining that their dinner is scorched, and Edna is left to eat dinner alone. Afterwards, she goes to her room and "She carried in her hands a handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her." These actions only escalate as she "takes off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it." Also, "In a sweeping passion she seized a glass vase from the table and flung it upon the tiles of the hearth. She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear." I feel like this is what Edna needed to do to start breaking away. Her ring is probably her only attachment to Mr. Pontellier and by smashing it, she's showing that she doesn't need him. By smashing a vase, she can hear the crash and may feel more powerful knowing that she's broken something since she's never done something like that before.
            In A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, Nora's act of madness does not take place until the very end which sparks her to leave the house. Torvald finds out that she took out a loan for their vacation years ago and has been trying to pay it back ever since. Torvald is outraged and calls her, "a hypocrite, a liar, worse than that, a criminal." He claims that, "Now you have ruined my entire happiness, jeopardized my whole future." The odd thing, at least to me, that is happening here is that Nora stays relatively calm. Her husband is freaking out and calling her harsh names and she just accepts it. She comes to the conclusion that both Torvald and her father have treated her just like a doll which is why she must leave. She explains to Torvald, "If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer." Before leaving, she states that she doesn't want to see the children again, and that Torvald shouldn't write to her or try to help her as she doesn't want help from "strangers" as she slams the door upon exiting. Nora's slamming of the door punctuates her decision to leave and the beginning of a new life.
             In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator quickly becomes mad since she is kept in a room with little activity due to her depression. She becomes obsessed over the wallpaper in her room. The narrator believes she's seeing a woman behind the wallpaper as well as bars on her window. She stares at the wallpaper and believes it has a certain smell to it. She begins to take the paper off and when her husband walks in and sees what she is doing, she explains, "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" Clearly to her husband, she is crazy. But in a sense, the narrator did become and individual and get out of her situation mentally, rather than physically.
             Since these female protagonists have gone mad, I can only see it fit to relate these texts to the popular show, American Horror Story: Asylum. This show takes place in the 60s in an asylum run by a Monsignor and nuns. Sister Jude, the head nun (played by Jessica Lange), dictates what happens to the patients should they need punishments. Except she slowly realizes that not everyone is what they seem. Sister Jude finds out that the Monsignor is allowing Dr. Arden, the only doctor in the ward, to experiment on patients, many of which suffer and turn into monsters. She's threatened to be stripped of her position which weighs heavily on her mind, plus her reoccurring past where she was involved in a hit and run and only later realizes that she never actually killed anyone. She tries to get Dr. Arden arrested for his actions but she fails as she slips into insanity. The Monsignor admits her to the asylum, hides her in the catacombs of the asylum, and fakes her death so that the public won't know what has become of her. Sadly, she sits in the asylum for at least 20 years rotting away in silence. Eventually Kit Walker, one of the sane patients that was wrongly admitted, gets her out and takes care of her. With the help of his children, they are able to bring her back to normal to the point where she can communicate and enjoy life. A few months pass and she knows she is going to die soon, and she dies content with life and content with who she ended up being. So just like Edna, Nora, and the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper, Jude had ups and downs throughout her adult life but she was able to make everything ok in the end and was content with who she was and just like Edna, died peacefully.
             In conclusion, I don't blame any of these women for doing what they did. If I were put in any of their situations, I would probably go crazy too and look for some way out. But it's interesting to read literature like this because we can get a feel for what women in these time periods were going through and it's interesting to see that they would literally do anything to become and individual. Whether it meant giving up their marriage, their children, or their life, they were willing to do anything to finally become an individual.