"Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush With Madness"

Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 1 “Toxic Certainty” And Its Capacity To Inflict A Brush With “Madness” A Literary Sampling A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 1 —Ralph Waldo Emerson “Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?” asks Emerson. “Every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh,” has been misunderstood. “To be great is to be misunderstood.” To stand up at a pulpit and declaim rigid consistency, for its own sake as “foolish,” as “the hobgoblin of little minds,” is brave, is inspirational, is transformative; but what if you have no pulpit? What if you have no congregation? What if you are alone, with no podium, no platform, no medium of expression, denied pen and paper, perhaps, living under the auspices of one who is rigidly consistent, toxically certain, who possesses the power to more than misunderstand you—to declare you “mad?” The female characters in the stories examined for this paper have no pulpit. Even as they struggle to anchor themselves, even as they grapple with their realities, each in her own way, even as they quest for a deeper understanding of truth, of the mysterious world around them, while maintaining the honest and humble fluidity required of a sojourner on this earth, for whom any attempt at an utterance of conviction is but “fallen talk,” 2 they come face to 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," Emerson: Essays and Lectures, (New York: Library of America, 1983): 265. 2 John Canaday, The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, And The First Atomic Bombs, (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000): 51. “To the natural philosopher in the Middle Ages, struggling to find a new way to talk about God’s creation, no human saying could aspire to imitate the Word of Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 2 face with the tragic tendency of those with “toxic certainty,” to link femininity with “madness.” The link between femininity and madness has been broadly explored in literature, and from different vantage points. This paper will approach the subject from the perspective of a female character’s exposure to “toxic certainty,” which, like kryptonite to superman, can be seen manifest in the works of literature sampled here, as a derailing agent to women of breadth of thought and emotion, who struggle for anchor in their world, or perhaps, for the freedom to flow in their lives, even while inhaling debilitating fumes. For the purpose of this paper, “madness” is defined as an increasing sense of selfdoubt, self-relinquishment, a lessening of faith in ones own perception and understanding, a shift in center of gravity within the female character in question, a la Chekhov’s “something in his stomach snapped,” 3 varying in severity from story to story. “Toxic certainty” is defined as a form of monolithic thinking, a form of rigid thinking based on a division of the world into binary oppositions, manifest, in these stories, in certain male characters, who allow no other opinion to breathe in their vicinity, and exercise manipulative control tactics, maliciously or unwittingly, on their female partner. No global claim is being made here as to the association of a specific gender with either “madness” or “toxic certainty.” Nor is there intent to ignore the complexity of individual characters—replete with their own susceptibilities due to myriad factors—who bring to their perception, both of "toxic certainty" and of "madness," an inflection of God except in a pale Platonic manner; physics could never attain the status of the great I AM or proclaim with finality what nature is. Physics would always remain fallen talk about divine processes.” 3 Anton Chekhov, “The Death of a Clerk,” Stories by Anton Chekhov Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, (New York: Bantam Books, 2000) 4. Chervyakov has inadvertently offended his superior, or so he believes. His efforts to make amends gain intensity the more they are brushed off by his superior, until, in a matter of hours, his life becomes an agony of mental anguish, as his every effort makes matters worse, until they bring about true ire rather than forgiveness. “Something in his stomach snapped,” it says of our poor Chervyakov, who, having infuriated his superior with his incessant conciliatory attempts, shuffles home, lays down, and dies. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 3 meaning born of their own experiences. This paper will, however, display, in specific works examined, the link between a female character’s brush with “madness” and her exposure, in a relationship, to a male character who exudes “toxic certainty.” The works examined will be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 4 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 5 “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 6 “Meneseteung” by Alice Munro, 7 and “Of Traps,” 8 my own fictional story, attached as an appendix to this paper. In each work, specific samples illustrative of a toxic dynamic within a certain relationship will be chosen, and the impact upon the female characters in question will be demonstrated, both in early and in late stages of exposure. Jane Eyre Though the primary relationship in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre is that between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester, and though Bertha Mason is cast explicitly in the role of madwoman, the focus of this section will be on the relationship between Jane and her cousin St John Rivers. It will be left for the next section of this paper, which examines Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea, to examine the characters Edward Rochester and Antoinette Cosway (Bertha Mason). “Toxic certainty” is manifest in the character of St. John Rivers in the form of his utter conviction that he possesses perfect knowledge of the will of God. In fact, says Maria Lamonaca, “St. John’s arrogant certainty of God’s will 9 suggests a dangerous 4 Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (New York: Norton & Company, Inc, 1992). 6 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2009) 1-18. 7 Munro, Alice. “Menesetueng.” Alice Munro: Selected Stories. New York: Vintage Books, (1997): 476-497. 8 Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia, “Of Traps,” Appendix to this paper. 5 9 Maria Lamonaca, “Jane’s Crown Of Thorns: Feminism And Christianity In Jane Eyre,” Studies in the Novel 34 (Fall 2002): 248. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 4 conflation between male spiritual mediators and the Divine itself.” This statement captures well, the perils of human idolatry, quite ironic for a man of such religious zeal. Jane, in turn, is depicted in the novel as falling under his spell. Having been persuaded by St. John to relinquish her studies of German in favor of Hindustani, because he “must have it so,” 10 since he is secretly planning to recruit her as his missionary wife, she describes their lessons, I found him a very patient…yet an exacting master…when I fulfilled his expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely… because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that (my) vivacity…was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said "go," I went; "come," I came; "do this," I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.” 11 Under the influence of St. John’s toxic certainty, Jane feels herself losing her “liberty of mind.” Madness, here, is manifest in her sense of involuntary self-relinquishment, a “servitude,” which she does not love but cannot seem to break away from. His value system, his priorities and his modes of conduct, become hers as well. One day, their lessons completed, St. John asks Jane to accompany him for a walk, during which he reveals his plans to have her marry him and join him as a missionary in India. "God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife,” he says, “It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labor, not for love. A missionary's wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service." 12 She is taken aback. Note how he tells her that she must, note how he says that she shall be his wife. While she feels moved by the ethos of good works, of spreading God’s word through 10 Bronte 426. Bronte 397-398. 12 Bronte 409. 11 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 5 missionary work, he makes clear that his offer of marriage does not involve love. She is willing to accompany him as his colleague, but not as his wife. As Lamonaca says, Jane believes in St. John’s cause…demonstrated by her complete willingness to help spread the Gospel in India, despite…privations, (provided) she be allowed to remain single…Jane must once again deal with a domineering male character who is firmly convinced of God’s will for them both. Because God is all knowing, St. John seems to believe that he himself, as God’s servant, is likewise omniscient…(He) warns Jane, If you reject my offer, it is not me that you deny, but God. 13 Given that St. John is toxically certain of God’s will, Jane’s reluctance to accept his offer forthwith is utterly unacceptable to him. Even as they walk back to Moor House together, she can feel the near palpable brunt of his disapproval, As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission—the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathize: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance. 14 Her resistance to him is seen as a “perversity” of the will of God. It is he, the one possessive of ultimate truth, of toxic certainty, who is exercising Christian patience towards her, patience with someone in whom he has detected feelings and views which do not fit in his binary equation; patience, which he, as a mere man, could not have sustained, since his wish to coerce her onto the right path is so powerful; patience, which he can barely maintain. In fact, the period of grace, which he finds within himself to grant her, for to consider her errors, is filled with exemplary levels of passive aggression, more painful to her than blows might have been, To me, he was… no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue 13 Maria Lamonaca, “Jane’s Crown Of Thorns: Feminism And Christianity In Jane Eyre,” Studies in the Novel 34 (Fall 2002): 250. 14 Bronte 409. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 6 gem; his tongue a speaking instrument—nothing more. All this was torture to me—refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how—if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. 15 What Jane is describing is the power of the toxically certain, not only to wound without trace of blood, but to literally kill. To say that this pattern of behavior has the propensity to drive one mad would seem, if anything, to be an understatement. In fact, after days of deliberation, during which Jane is subject to shifts in treatment by St. John, silent and isolating cruelty, balanced by bouts of kindness meant to remind her of what she is missing when she goes against his wishes, reminders of that which is required of her as duty, as per her calling, as per God’s will, and, of course, his, she finds her own will being swept away. In the words of Maria Yuen, When St John adopts the tactic of gentle persuasion and attacks the most vulnerable chink in her armor—her hunger for affection—Jane feels her defenses giving way. Jane feels physically paralyzed by St. John’s mental power, her will and spirit are about to surrender ‘I was tempted to cease struggling with him—to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own.’ 16 Jane has indeed broken down under the toxic fumes of St. John Rivers. She has indeed succumbed to his influence. She has indeed been rendered “mad” as per the definitions of this paper. “I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch,” says Jane, My refusals were forgotten—my fears overcome—my wrestlings paralyzed. The Impossible…my marriage with St. John—was fast becoming the Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion called— Angels beckoned—God commanded—life rolled together like a scroll— death's gates opening, showed eternity beyond…for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second.” 17 And she may well have married him. She is indeed on the verge of acquiescence, when a 15 Bronte 411. Maria Yuen, “Two Crises Of Decision In Jane Eyre,” English Studies 4 (June 1976): 224. 17 Bronte 418. 16 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 7 prophetic-like voice, one, which she recognizes as the disembodied cry of Edward Rochester from afar, materializes in her ears. “I heard a voice somewhere cry—‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ Nothing more.” 18 Saved by the bell, so to speak, she withdraws from St. John. Rushing back to Edward Rochester, she finds him blind, wounded while trying to save his wife, Bertha, from jumping off the roof of their home, which she had set ablaze. As this paper will examine closely in the next section, Edward Rochester suffers from his own version of toxic certainty, manifest in the process by which he breaks Bertha, nee, Antoinette, and imprisons her in his cold English attic like no more than a bad purchase. In order for Rochester to deserve Jane, to be worthy of her as St. John was not, he must be cured of his toxic certainty. As Sandra Gilbert points out, Many critics have seen Rochester’s injuries as a ‘symbolic castration,’ a punishment for his early profligacy and a sign that Bronte (as well as Jane herself), fearing male sexual power, could only imagine marriage as a union with a diminished Samson… Apparently sightless, Rochester… now sees more clearly than he did when… he married Bertha Mason… Now, as Jane tells him, he is ‘green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots whether you ask them or not.’ And now, being equals, he and Jane can afford to depend upon each other with no fear of one exploiting the other. 19 Especially in light of the fleshed out depiction of the relationship between Rochester and Antoinette/Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea which can be seen as a classic case of madness or breakdown of self on Antoinette/Bertha’s part in the face of the toxic certainty of Edward Rochester, who stifled her, writing her off as an object to be discarded— Rochester’s shift at the end of Jane Eyre can be seen as a repentance process, begun at the moment he attempted to save Bertha from the fire, before she leapt to her death. In reaching out to her, in calling out to her, in the spirit of “Yesh Adam Kone Olamo BiShaa 18 19 Bronte 419. Sandra M. Gilbert, “Plain Jane’s Progress,” Signs 2 (Summer 1977): 802-803. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 8 Achat,” “Man can merit his world (or perhaps, the world to come) in one moment,” 20 in sacrificing himself for her, his toxic certainty has been shattered. His blindness can be viewed as a wiping clean of his own toxic singular perception of the world. Where he saw the world through his own eyes before, now he sees the world through Jane’s eyes. After doing this for a time, after relinquishing his own singular vision—his penance after the act of sacrificial remorse and repentance with Bertha—he can partially regain his sight. This partiality of sight regained can be seen as symbolic of his now nuanced and shared vision, the very inverse of toxic certainty. He can now share a vision with Jane. Hearing Rochester’s call, says Gilbert, Jane’s Response is an immediate act of self-assertion. ‘I broke from St. John… It was my time to assume ascendancy. My powers were in play and in force…’ Her new and apparently telepathic communion with Rochester…has been made possible by her new independence and Rochester’s new humility. 21 Note that both Jane, as well as Rochester, are freed from the maddening effects of toxic certainty in the same moment, though neither was strong enough to escape unaided. Jane needed Rochester’s call—needed to be needed, in effect, by a worthy man, a man capable of loving her—while Rochester needed the critical moment of Bertha’s attack on his home, on her prison, and her need for him, though he fails to save her. In the end, both Jane and Rochester are indebted to Bertha for their redemption. The last act of a woman driven mad by the effects of Rochester’s original toxic certainty is to inspire a wake-up call that rouses both Rochester and Jane to shake off the shackles of toxic certainty and find a new relationship, one in which they can now live a life of parity of vision. 20 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Avoda Zara, (Jerusalem, Israel: The Israel Institute For Talmudic Publications, 2001): 10:2, (my translation). 21 Sandra M. Gilbert, “Plain Jane’s Progress,” Signs 2 (Summer 1977): 801. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 9 Wide Sargasso Sea While the characters of Edward Rochester and of Antoinette Cosway (Bertha Mason), as portrayed in Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea can only be seen as inspired by Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, this paper will treat the character portrayals in each novel as loyal to one another. As such, the focus of this section will be the relationship between Antoinette Cosway (Bertha Mason) and Edward Rochester, and both passages and details from Jane Eyre will be referred to where they illuminate Rhys’ novel. Edward Rochester, (while not named in the text), finds himself in a country quite foreign to him, both in terms of culture and of climate. Due to a business transaction, he finds himself married to Antoinette Cosway, a girl of decidedly un-English breeding. In a letter to his father, Rochester moans, Everything is too much, I felt… Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger. Her pleading expression annoys me. I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks… I have sold my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such a bad bargain? The girl is thought to be beautiful, she is beautiful. And yet… 22 While becoming acquainted with each other, Edward’s discomfort with all things foreign reflects a slant of heart and mind, an intellectual-emotional predisposition to interpret his surroundings, including his wife, in a toxic manner. This tendency is only exacerbated by a letter from, and then a visit to a man named Daniel Cosway, who alleges slanders about Antoinette’s family, including word of her mother’s “madness.” It is in this dubious report that Edward’s unease with all that is un-English comes to roost. I folded the letter carefully and put it into my pocket. I felt no surprise. It was as if I’d expected it, been waiting for it… I passed an orchid with long sprays of golden-brown flowers…I remembered picking some for her one 22 Rhys 70. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 10 day. ‘They are like you,’ I told her. Now I stopped, broke a spray off and trampled it into the mud. 23 It is here that Edward’s toxic certainty with respect to Antoinette solidifies, moving him to “trample” an effigy of his wife “into the mud.” This trampling quickly becomes more than symbolic. Antoinette’s exposure to her new husband’s toxic withdrawal and suspicious regard of her begins to sow the seeds of her unraveling. The victim of a traumatic childhood, in which her mother, rendered ill, turned her back on her daughter, Antoinette must now cope with a sense of abandonment on the part of her husband and his repeated refusal to hear her, or to hear her in what she perceives as earnest. He hides behind a visage, gone stoic, and this blank wall of regard is enough to literally drive her to “madness.” He rebuffs her amorous advances, making her feel humiliated, unattractive, perhaps even perverse. Despairing, at a loss for why her husband has withdrawn from her, she goes to see Christophine, an Obeah woman, a healer, who is like a mother to her. “Christophine, he does not love me,” she says, “I think he hates me. He always sleeps in his dressing-room now... If I get angry he is scornful and silent, sometimes he does not speak to me for hours and I cannot endure it any more, I cannot. What shall I do? He was not like that at first…’ ‘You ask me a hard thing, I tell you a hard thing, pack up and go.’ ‘Go, go where? To some strange place where I shall never see him? …‘I will not do that.’ ‘Why you ask me, if when I answer you say no? Why you come up here if when I tell you the truth, you say no?’ ‘But there must be something else I can do.’ She looked gloomy. ‘When man don’t love you, more you try, more he hate you, man like that…A man don’t treat you good, pick up your skirt and walk out. Do it and he come after you.’ ‘He will not come after me. And you must understand. I am not rich now, I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him.’ ‘What you tell me there?’ she said sharply. ‘That is English law.’” 24 23 24 Rhys 99-100. Rhys 109-110. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 11 Antoinette is trapped indeed. She is now utterly dependant upon Edward Rochester financially, and by treating her as if she were mad, by cringing in her vicinity, he makes her feel worse and worse about herself until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At Christophine’s, driven to desperation by his inexplicable neglect, she begs her for some sort of potion to make him love her again. Christophine tries to reason with her, to make her understand the painful truth: If a man no longer loves you, all you can do is leave. ‘He hates me now… Every night (he) walk(s) up and down the veranda…When he passes my door he says, ‘Good-night, Bertha.’ He never calls me Antoinette now. He has found out it was my mother’s name. ‘I hope you will sleep well, Bertha’—it cannot be worse.’ 25 Infected by Rochester’s toxic certainty regarding her, she begins to see herself through his eyes. Even as she seeks solace and assistance from Christophine, she moves with fear from “I think he hates me,” to a certainty: “He hates me now.” Christophine advises her to keep trying to reason with him, and to speak calmly, “Speak to your husband calm and cool, tell him about your mother and all what happened…why she get sick and what they do to her. Don’t bawl…don’t make crazy faces. Don’t cry either. Crying no good with him. Speak nice and make him understand.’ ‘I have tried,’ I said, ‘but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now.’ 26 Christophine is savvy. She is trying to teach Antoinette how to interact with Rochester in an English way. Passion, though justified, is not an option in his world, and will get her nowhere. Rochester’s conviction that Antoinette is infected with her mother’s madness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, growing into a toxic certainty, which neither of them can escape. Caught in the workings of his convictions as to her legacy, she is infected by his maddening beliefs more than she would ever have been by a dead woman’s condition. 25 26 Rhys 113. Rhys 116. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 12 At Christophine’s urging, Antoinette tries to tell Rochester the story of her mother, yet she is convinced that he will not believe her. This proves true. She can read his tone as surely as if she were able to read his inner thoughts; thoughts such as he had been entertaining early on, which she was surely not savvy enough to pick up on then: “I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but that is not love. I felt very little tenderness for her, she was a stranger to me, a stranger who did not think or feel as I did. 27 It is clear to the reader from these sentiments that the source of Rochester’s toxic certainty as to Antoinette, originated, not in Cosway’s letter, but in his distaste for the unfamiliar; the allegations providing but a roost for his early unease. Desperate, after a long period of withdrawal and silence, “Will you listen to me for God’s sake,” Antoinette pleads, Why do you hate me?’… ‘I do not hate you, I am most distressed about you, I am distraught,’ I said. But this was untrue, I was not distraught, I was calm, it was the first time I had felt calm or self-possessed for many a long day. 28 And here we are privy to his toxic certainty taking firm root, even as she, not privy to his thoughts as we are, picks up his disdainful vibes loud and clear in his glance. She was wearing the white dress I had admired…slipped untidily over one shoulder and seemed too large for her. I watched her holding her left wrist with her right hand, an annoying habit. ‘Then why do you never come near me?’ she said. ‘Or kiss me, or talk to me. Why do you think I can bear it, what reason have you for treating me like that? Have you any reason?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have a reason.” 29 Sad, how quickly his lens has shifted. At the very least, he had found her attractive before. Through this malicious report of madness in the family, she has been rendered suspect, a 27 Rhys 93. Rhys 126. 29 Rhys 128. 28 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 13 burden, lessened in his eyes, seeming too small for her dress, unworthy, of the shoes she is in, or here, of the dress she is in, endearing mannerisms now annoying. ‘I had a letter from a man who calls himself, Daniel Cosway.’ ‘He has no right to that name,’ she said quickly. ‘His real name…is Daniel Boyd. He hates all white people…me the most. He tells lies about us…sure that you will believe him and not listen to the other side.’ ‘Is there another side?’ I said. ‘There is always the other side, always.’ 30 This is her plea for complexity on his part, rather than the binary toxic certainty coming at her for a while now, through his demeanor. ‘I know what he told you. That my mother was mad…infamous…that my little brother who died was born…an idiot, and that I am a mad girl too. That is what he (said) isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, that was his story, and is any of it true?’ I said, cold and calm. “Cold and calm.” He is not listening. His question is insincere. He has made up his mind. I saw the hollows under her eyes, her drooping mouth, her thin, strained face. ‘We won’t talk about it now,’ I said. ‘Rest tonight.’ ‘But we must talk about it,’ Her voice was high and shrill. ‘Only if you promise to be reasonable.’ 31 He will hear her, though not in earnest, and he will hear her on his terms, namely, if she “promise(s) to be reasonable,” meaning, reasonable as per English etiquette, emotion held in check, meaning, he has no real interest in her emotions. “The secret of Wide Sargasso Sea,” Says Kathy Mezei, is Antoinette’s valiant, heroic attempt to tell her story. The secret of the narrative is not her descent into madness…or her lack of madness and conventional society’s excess of it, but her reason for engaging in the act of narration. Antoinette and the others ‘keep’ their secret from Rochester…because (he) does not pause to unravel the story Antoinette is telling: he resists the structures and the functions of her narrative, as well as its histoire, he is neither an ideal listener nor an ideal reader. 32 30 Rhys 128. Rhys 128. 32 Kathy Mezei, “And it Kept its Secret: Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.” Critique 28 (Summer 1987): 196. 31 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 14 Indeed, he does not hear her. Sensing that his mind is made up, her voice develops a shrill tone. Her pitch is a response to his skepticism. Her story continues. Even as she shares the traumatic event of her childhood home being burnt, her brothers’ injury and subsequent death, her mother’s unraveling due to trauma, due to having warned her husband as to what the locals might do, only to be mocked and dismissed, only to be devastated by having been proven correct after ignoring her own instincts, and losing her son—he remains skeptical. I began to wonder how much of all this was true, how much imagined, distorted… As if she’d guessed my thoughts she went on calmly, ‘But I was telling you about my mother… I heard screams…someone laughing very loud. Next morning Aunt Cora told me that my mother was ill and had gone to the country. 33 Christophine had told her to stay calm to be believed. She does her best, to be sure, but as she suspected, as per his tone, to no avail. I said, ‘Antoinette, your nights are not spoiled, or your days, put the sad things away. Don’t think about them and nothing will be spoiled, I promise you.’ But my heart was heavy as lead. 34 She knows very well that he doesn’t mean what he says. She has every reason to be both frightened as well as confused. She concludes, “I have said all I wanted to say. I have tried to make you understand. But nothing has changed.’ She laughed. “Don’t laugh like that, Bertha.” “My name is not Bertha; why do you call me Bertha?” “Because it is a name I am particularly fond of. I think of you as Bertha.” “It doesn’t matter,” she said.” 35 One of the most painful things, emblematic both of her loss of the sense of their love, as well as that of a quake in her sense of self, of her identity, is the fact that Edward has taken to calling her Bertha in lieu of Antoinette. Inherent in this act, from her perspective, is a 33 Rhys 133. Rhys 133. 35 Rhys 135. 34 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 15 theft of her true identity. “Bertha is not my name,” she says, “You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know. That’s Obeah too.” 36 To call his act of renaming her, Obeah, is to recognize his toxic certainty as a spell that he is casting upon her. From his perspective, it may simply be an effort to dissociate her from her mother, from her so-called legacy, whether for his own peace of mind, as he solidifies his toxic certainty regarding her, the binary construct gelling in his mind, or perhaps, simply for appearances going forward. As Deborah A. Kimmey points out, The unnamed husband’s renaming of Antoinette reveals the violence inherent in the politics of naming... given many meanings…Veronica Gregg writes, ‘In renaming Antoinette Bertha the husband does not succeed in changing her, but in splitting her identity. This split becomes the fate that she must confront.’ Ellen Friedman sees power as central to the renaming of Antoinette: “Rochester…renames Antoinette ‘Bertha,’ thus transforming her into Bronte’s lunatic… calls her ‘marionette,’ a puppet (to) control.’ 37 To name something is to own it, to control it, to mold it for your use. Sadly, Antoinette has absorbed Rochester’s toxic certainty regarding her. Though making one last protest against his transformation of her into Bertha, she becomes Bertha with her resigned, “It doesn’t matter.” She seems no longer to have the strength to resist transformation. In a final desperate attempt, she slips him the love potion. It makes him awaken ill, thinking he was poisoned. Utterly convinced of her madness after such an apparent attempt on his life, as he sees it, he seeks solace in the arms of Amelie, who works there. Overhearing this betrayal from the next room, Antoinette emerges enraged. And thus she unravels, losing hope, even as he crystallizes, harder and harder, till his heart is as hard as Pharaoh’s. As he is taking her away, Rochester sounds like rigid madness personified, I was exhausted. All the mad conflicting emotions had gone and left me wearied and empty. Sane. I was tired of these people. I disliked their laughter 36 Rhys 88. Deborah A. Kimmey, “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: Metatextuality and the Politics of Reading in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” Women’s Studies 34 (2005): 122-123. 37 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 16 and their tears, their flattery and envy, conceit and deceit. And I hated the place. I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever color, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty, which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it. 38 To him, she has become but a bad business transaction. He was hoodwinked, it seems. He has decided this in a binary way, in a toxically certain way. There is nothing to talk about after that. There is no way to try to get to know each other, to try to meet in the middle, to help each other become a new kind of unity. She is either a proper Englishwoman, namely, a proper woman, or she is not. She is not. She is no longer Antoinette, flesh and blood human, who flows like nature, whose rhythm is beautiful, intriguing, a mystery to uncover. She is a beast of that hateful hot climate, of creatures, uncivilized, who cannot be reined in by predictable rules of conduct. She is a threat. She is frightening. “Her sexuality itself confirms her threat, her madness,” says Valerie Beattie, “Rochester attempts to excuse his treatment of his mad wife by reference to her ‘pigmy intellect’, and ‘nature most gross, impure, depraved’, Nestor argues that…Bertha’s licentiousness not her madness per se…is cause for revulsion. I do not think it is useful or possible to separate the two: madness, feminine sexuality, and the female body are directly bound up…in both nineteenthcentury and present day discourses on insanity… arguing for their mutual independence ultimately misrepresents both. 39 Her sexual appetite, her passion, rather than being attractive, is equated with an animal lust, unseemly in a woman, or in a man, for that matter. She is baggage now. She is an object, a bum inheritance that he can’t discard. If only she were a mule, or a cow—he might have sold her—but alas she merely behaves like an animal, and is hence, “mad.” 38 Rhys 172. Valerie Beattie, “The Mystery at Thornfield: Representations of Madness in Jane Eyre,” Studies in the Novel 28 (Winter 1996): 496. 39 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 17 How depressed she must have grown day by day. She became an embarrassment somehow. She has no idea how to get back into her husband’s good graces. The ways of women in her country to attract their husbands yield only ire from him. He thinks of her as insane. She is “marooned” from society. She’s been betrayed, abandoned, unloved. So embrace her, no? Be kind to her, no? Heal her, no? Make her feel loved and she will love you tenfold. In nurturing and loving arms would she have become “mad,” like her mother? Would her mother have become “mad,” were she embraced in loving arms? Were she not mocked and dismissed? The verdict has been sealed. There is only one truth. She is a bad case of cat in the bag. He will take her to England, where he can function within the confines of well-ordered predictable English society. He will toss her in the attic with the other useless junk purchased in error. As long as this aberration of a person is kept out of sight, he can get his life back to its binary order. As to Antoinette, he has broken her, step by step—a shining flower has folded in on herself, ashamed, confused, insecure. He has abducted her, removed her from her soil, incarcerated her without sunlight after draining her soul of hope and love. She is a desperate, depressed prisoner, bent on survival, knowing not where to go, even if she could escape, unsure who she is anymore. Confined to her prison cell, she can but ponder repeatedly what has befallen her, what she might have done differently, what is wrong with her, what will be with her, until only the bitter knowledge of outrageous injustice remains, and in the confines of her dark little hell, she can only dream of destroying her evil captor, burning down her prison, freeing herself of a life of hell, ten years, longer than the Holocaust, longer than the length of time that the longest incarcerated concentration camp inmate who survived, had to endure, many of whom killed themselves on the electrified fence sooner than ten years. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 18 “To prevent a false telling of her story by others—the lie—” says Kathy Mezei, “Antoinette must tell herself in the first person, following the conventions of narrative order. When the narrative disintegrates, as it does in part three so does Antoinette. When the narrative stops, Antoinette dies. By the act of narration, she retains her tenuous fragile hold on sanity, on life itself, since to narrate is to live, to order a life, to ‘make sense’ out of it. If narrative is a ‘strategy for survival,’ Antoinette survives only as long as she creates narratives. 40 What meaning to her life in that attic? What life? No color, no sound, no warm embrace, no ocean’s breeze, no way to find a reason upon which to lay blame on herself, a cause for this. No meaning. How can one live with no meaning? No purpose? Deprived of light and warmth and love, she has made the supreme effort of will in sleeping, in dreaming, and in waking, to narrate her own story, and to bring it to conclusion herself. The secret is thus told, and the telling is the secret. 41 Her narrative is her meaning. Her narrative is her purpose. The Yellow Wallpaper The relationship between the narrator in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” who seems to be suffering from a mild form of postpartum depression as the story opens, and her husband John, who wields, not only his supposed authority over his wife, as her husband, but that of a respected member of the medical profession, is exemplar of a rather severe reaction to the toxic certainty dynamic being studied in this paper. John diminishes his wife, treating her like a child; his controlling care of her is nothing short of a frightening tyranny. “He is very careful and loving,” she says, “and hardly 40 Kathy Mezei, “And it Kept its Secret: Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.” Critique 28 (Summer 1987): 197. 41 Kathy Mezei, “And it Kept its Secret: Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.” Critique 28 (Summer 1987): 208. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 19 lets me stir without special direction.” 42 The hair on the back of the reader’s neck cannot help but bristle at this depiction of control. I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can. Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake — O no! The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John. He seems very queer sometimes. 43 Rendered a naughty little child, fearful of a domineering parent who enforces naps, she relishes her microscopic moment of control, in which she is able to pull the wool over John, and his sister Jennie’s eyes, even as she recognizes it as deceitful, as though, she were part of some strange parenting plan of her, in which deceit should not be encouraged. That John should seem queer to her is no great wonder. The entire construct is eerie and incomprehensible, and yes, frightening indeed, even if one was not suffering from post partum depression before this emotional abuse began. No credence is granted to her own adult voice. As per the text of this story, she seems to be denied not only voice, but name. She is a “blessed little goose,” 44 or a “little girl.” 45 She is prohibited from expressing herself even on paper. If narration is indeed survival, as Mezei stressed in her discussion of Antoinette/Bertha, then to deny her voice and pen, is to truly do her violence. “There comes John,” she tells the reader, “and I must put this away, — he hates to have me write a word.” 46 Her suggestions, preferences, ideas, feelings, relating to her very own care, are met curtly by John’s toxic certainty of his way, the way, as he dismisses her every utterance in sickly patronizing tones, and with mockery: “John laughs at me, of course,” she says, “but 42 Gilman 3. Gilman 12. 44 Gilman 5. 45 Gilman 10. 46 Gilman 4. 43 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 20 one expects that in marriage.” 47 Does one? Must one? Clearly she has no resources outside of him. Confined to solitude, for her own good, as per his vision, he is the only reality against which she can measure her sense of self, the very resource, which she should be most encouraged to rely on. He does not merely lack patience for alternate ways of viewing the world, and in particular, that of his wife, but he scoffs openly, even as she finds it “so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about (her) work.” 48 Her only social outlet, his scoffing inflicts serious injury upon her. “John is practical in the extreme,” she says. “He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.” 49 His thinking sounds explicitly like a form of binary mathematical thinking, the very stuff of toxic certainty. She knows this. In her heart of hearts, as hard as it is becoming for her to trust herself, she knows he is harming her, that he is wrong. “John is a physician,” she says, marking him as an authority, “and –perhaps” she tells the reader with hesitation, “(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.” 50 She has the right instincts indeed, both as to the fact that words on paper are a great relief to her mind, and as to her husband’s presenting an obstacle to her healing, but, and this is key, “what is one to do?” She lacks his authority. “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing…but temporary nervous depression…” 51 Who is she to say what she is feeling? 47 Gilman 1. Gilman 5. 49 Gilman 1. 50 Gilman 1. 51 Gilman 1. 48 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 21 The manner in which she describes her medications is telling as well: “So I take phosphates or phospites—whichever it is, and tonics...” She has assumed her husband’s toxic certainty of her ineptitude. She could not possibly be expected to understand these grown up terms. She is “absolutely forbidden to "work" until (she is) well again.” 52 Forbidden. She is forbidden. She is utterly at the mercy of his care. “The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John,” 53 she says as she starts to feel more and more isolated, confined, and stifled. Early attempts at giving credence to her own beliefs, the likes of: “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good,” have faded away in favor of her retreat, deeper and deeper into herself. “But what is one to do?” 54 “I did write for a while in spite of them;” she says, “but it does exhaust me a good deal.” Is this a concession to the claims of these medical professionals? “Having to be so sly about it,” she continues. So it is the need to constantly conceal her positive and healing activities, which exhausts her, not the writing itself, which would be a lot more healing if it did not involve concealment, “or else meet with heavy opposition.” 55 It is their very opposition to what is good for her that is exhausting, her need to hide it. Most disturbing, are the warning tones and glances she receives if she does not desist in her attempts to express herself. “Really dear you are better!" he informs her. "Better in body perhaps — "I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.” "My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament 52 Gilman 2. Gilman 12. 54 Gilman 2. 55 Gilman 2. 53 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 22 like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?" 56 Her very attempt to express, as, one would think, the authority, at least, over her own body and soul, to be counted on to at least report what she feels, is shot down with reproach. “The narrator’s account of her behavior towards her husband shows an increasingly submissive exterior,” say Jeannette King and Pam Morris, The process of self-suppression, evident even in the superficially more assertive opening pages, continues until she has great difficulty in stating any opposition: trying ‘to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him,’ she ends up in tears. His masculine authority is thus confirmed and defined in her feminine weakness. Eventually she can be completely silenced with a single look from her husband. Thus the protagonist regresses towards a form of infancy where writing becomes a greater and greater effort and much of the day is spent sleeping. She advances steadily towards that phantasy mirrorimage seen behind the paper, her projected self, a child-like crawling woman. 57 Intimidated into silence, even as the few words she does let slip, are categorized for her as dangerous, false, foolish, and fancy—meaningless, in the face of his absolute medical authority, and, interestingly enough, dangerous to whom, these few utterances of hers? First to him, then to the baby, and only then is her welfare considered, what choice does she have, but to turn inwards for communication, or to the wallpaper. She becomes increasingly guarded as to her utterances, and, as time wears on, her exhaustion from needing to hide her healing thoughts and activities, only add to her postpartum exhaustion. Her creative channels stifled, her contact with other points of view blocked, she begins to retreat, first, into a defeat, an internal acceptance of John’s dictates, and then, an externalization of her need to revolt, manifest in a mission to help free the lady in the wallpaper, who, in the final 56 Gilman 11. Jeannette King and Pam Morris, “On Not Reading Between The Lines: Models Of Reading In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” Studies in Short Fiction 26.1 (Winter 1989) 30. 57 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 23 breaking point, or (with no intent to “romanticize mental illness”) 58 triumph, merges with her, as inner and outer woman have been freed. To diminish someone is harmful enough if they are not already vulnerable to the physiological havoc brought on by the postpartum state. To diminish someone’s sense of self in that condition is to commit utter violence. “The purpose of this story,” Julie Bates Dock, Daphne Ryan Allen, Jennifer Palais, and Kristen Tracy, quote Gilman as saying, was ‘to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked… to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways. I sent him a copy as soon as it came out, but got no response… years later, I met someone who knew close friends of Dr. Mitchell’s…he had told them that he had changed his treatment of nervous prostration since reading “The Yellow Wallpaper.” If that is a fact, I have not lived in vain. 59 This moving statement of Charlotte Perkins Gilman depicts her understanding of writing as a true calling for the good of humanity. What a powerful testimony to what literature can do to alleviate real suffering. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English quote Gilman extensively, as she describes the actual rest cure prescription inflicted upon her by the infamous Dr. Weir Mitchell when she was stricken with postpartum depression, 58 Elizabeth J. Donaldson, “The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental Illness,” NWSA Journal 14 (Fall 2002): 99-119. “However it is romanticized, madness itself offers women little possibility for true resistance or productive rebellion... Shoshana Felman writes: ‘Depressed and terrified women are not about to seize the means of production and reproduction: quite the opposite of rebellion, madness is the impasse confronting those whom cultural conditioning has deprived of the very means of protest or self-affirmation…‘mental illness’ is a request for help, a manifestation both of cultural impotence and of political castration… Using madness to represent women’s rebellion has undesirable effects…slippage between ‘madness’ and ‘mental illness…’ As Showalter has demonstrated…‘Bertha (Mason)’s violence, dangerousness and rage, her regression to an inhuman condition and her sequestration became such a powerful model for Victorian readers, including psychiatrists, that it influenced even medical accounts of female insanity” 101 “Andrea Yates…diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression… (was depicted in her trial as) rebelling against her domineering husband when she drowned her five children…therefore culpable for their deaths. The defense’s attempts to explain Yates’s medical condition and the delusional systems of thought caused by her mental illness failed to convince the jury…likely…influenced not only by the argument that Yates was a rebellious woman, but (by) popular suspicions and misconceptions surrounding mental illness. The… use of the rebellious madwoman in this trial illustrates… our obligation to… complicate this model.” 113 59 Allen, Daphne Ryan, Julie Bates Dock, Jennifer Palais, Kristen Tracy. “But One Expects That: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and the Shifting Light of Scholarship.” Modern Language Association Publication 111 (January 1996) 62. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 24 ‘Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time.’ (be it remarked that if I did but dress the baby it left me shaking and crying— certainly far from a healthy companionship for her, to say nothing of the effect on me.) ‘Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch a pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.’ Simply jarring to the notions of most mothers in 2010, not to mention most people in 2010, this prescription sounds literally like a recipe for madness, or more bluntly—suicide. How horrifying, to think that this was inflicted on an untold number of women. Gilman dutifully returned home and for some months attempted to follow Dr. Mitchell’s orders to the letter. The result, in her words, was—I came perilously close to losing my mind. The mental agony grew so unbearable that I would sit blankly moving my head from side to side… I would crawl into remote closets and under beds—to hide from the grinding pressure of that distress. Reading this, one has to marvel at the bravery and the tenacity of this woman, who is willing to come out and describe what she lived through, at a time when it was unheard of to talk about—something that is still true in some circles today, over a century later— And who managed to climb out of that state, to recognize what was wrong, and to break out of the paradigm that was harming her: Finally, in a ‘moment of clear vision’ Gilman understood the source of her illness: she did not want to be a wife; she wanted to be a writer and an activist. So, discarding S. Weir Mitchell’s prescription and divorcing her husband, she took off for California with her baby, her pen, her brush and pencil. But she never forgot Mitchell and his near lethal cure. 60 To recognize what was wrong, to speak out, to climb out, to cast off her afflictions, and then to write about it, in order to save others from a similar plight? Truly, Gilman is inspirational. Gilman’s fictional narrator is imprisoned in a decaying, attic-level nursery with bars on the windows, suspicious-looking rings in the walls, with nothing permitted for contemplation but hideous yellow wallpaper with, 60 Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. “The Sexual Politics of Sickness.” For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Press, 1978) 102. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 25 one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin…dull enough to confuse the eye…to…constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting…I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. 61 Indeed, everything about this room, about the prescription for her so-called care, about her confinement, seems to be begging for her to commit suicide. It is no trivial matter that she begins to see such writing on the wall. She would prefer a different room. One would think that if they were there because she was ill, her desire for a pleasing room to rest in might have been considered. I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it. He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another. He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more. 62 In his fiercely practical manner, John has many considerations that come before his wife’s feelings, which, one assumes, are discounted, since they are not visible quantifiable or substantive, to him. Due to his smothering care, “he…hardly let’s me stir without direction,” she feels guilty to inconvenience him, given all he does. Her thoughts, in fact, are not considered, because they are mere fancies. Whilst John’s perceptions are consistently depicted as thoughts - “John thinks,” hers are referred to as fancies, a term she begins to take upon herself, as she succumbs to the fumes of his toxic certainty. “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus,” she suggests, “but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.” 61 62 Gilman 3. Gilman 2-3. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 26 I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least…with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies…I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try. 63 It is interesting. Her “will” may be to express her feelings in a free flowing manner, to write, to do many things which are forbidden to her; her “good sense” sounds like a term inflicted upon her from the outside, from John. Good sense—the inverse of fancy. What does it mean to be in someone’s care? What does it mean that the narrator is kept in a corroding nursery with bars, replete with suspicious looking rings on the walls? Why does she believe that one expects to be mocked and teased in a marriage? She is but ornament to him, his property, frail and fragile, a piece of jewelry, decorative, wallpaper, which has begun to show wear, which has begun to unravel, wallpaper that refuses to conform to the smooth and predictable shape of the wall. Someone, something— her soul—her voice, is trying to get out from behind this constraining exterior. She is confined, forbidden voice, both oral and written, reading, intellectual, spiritual and emotional stimulation, even while being observed in a way that makes her wonder as to the reason for their careful scrutiny. She is not to be trusted. She is patronized. Rest. Just rest. Who would not go mad? This is a recipe for suicide. Bertha in Bronte’s Jane Eyre escapes through suicide. “To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise,” says the narrator here, rather chillingly, “but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.” 64 It is society, then, keeping her stuck behind this ornamental wallpaper, within this woman’s body, within life itself. 63 64 Gilman 5. Gilman 17. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 27 Is the woman, the wallpaper itself, or the woman behind the wallpaper? Is one a face, their visage, their façade, their clothing, the trappings of their society, their culture, or is one a voice, a soul, a heavenly spark, trying to tear away at their clothing, at their body, their body, which traps them, even as an animal might try to gnaw off its own arm or ankle to free a trap? Is the woman tearing her way out of the wallpaper, freed from the wallpaper, naked? Crawling naked, perhaps, assuming the childlike pose, she was set in? The final moments of the story are often read as an utter descent into madness. Some read the final scene as a triumph of sorts: “Rather than simply labeling the narrator a madwoman at the story’s close,” says Greg Johnson, “we might view her behavior as an expression of long-suppressed rage: a rage which causes a temporary breakdown…but which represents a prelude to psychic regeneration and artistic redemption.” 65 This would certainly seem to hold true for Gilman’s own life narrative. Barbara Hochman cautions, “Many readers of the story have argued that the narrator’s developing relation to the wall-paper is a process of self-recognition, one that boldly confronts reality, even though the price is high. However, the narrator’s identification with the figure of the imprisoned woman can be seen, on the contrary, as a practice that divorces her from reality. By the time the narrator triumphantly announces, ‘I’ve got out at last…(and) you can’t put me back,’ she no longer differentiates between herself and the woman in the paper at all.” 66 On the level where this ending can be viewed as triumphant, without denying the narrator’s loss of touch with mainstream reality, it can be seen as a triumph of retrieved control. The narrator has inverted the terms of her imprisonment. No longer is she confined to the prison in which her husband set her. No. It is she who has locked out the world. She has, in fact, locked her husband out in a prison of her choosing. She has locked him out in the prison of a 65 Greg Johnson, “Gilman’s Gothic Allegory: Rage And Redemption In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” Studies in Short Fiction 26 (Fall 1989): 522. 66 Barbara Hochman, “The Reading Habit and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” American Literature 74 (March 2002): 98. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 28 reality, which he has decided exists, and on his own terms. Let him stay locked in that world. She is now free to do as she pleases in her domain. No longer an ornamental object in his house, off comes the wallpaper, perhaps her clothing, her façade. Here I am in all my glory—the ornament has found her voice! “Why there's John at the door!” she says, “It is no use, young man, you can't open it!” Note how she calls him, ‘young man,’ the equivalent of ‘little goose,’ perhaps. The tables have turned, somewhat. How he does call and pound! Now he's crying for an axe. It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door! "John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf! John is now being treated to the gentlest voice, to being called, ‘dear.’ "That silenced him for a few moments. Then he said very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!" "I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!" And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. 67 Not only has the narrator taken control by locking her husband out, but it is he who is now baffled, he who is lost for words, out of quick easy binary answers, usually at his fingertips, but even more victorious is her use of gentle patronizing language on him. In gentle explicit language, she repeats for him, as one would for a child, where the key is, and he is forced to obey. And upon entry, what does he find? He stopped short by the door. "What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!" I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back! " 68 He finds his wife crawling around like the child he has treated her as. And she, somewhat out of touch with his reality, though she may be, has triumphantly made 67 68 Gilman 18. Gilman 18. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 29 peace with her internal and external manifestations of the need for rebellion, for escape, for self-expression, for activity, for voice. But this, he is not sophisticated enough to understand. As per his binary mind, she has gone from recognizable as a typology in his world, to chaotic, unpredictable, indefinable: from “sane” to “mad.” “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!” 69 Of course he fainted. And this may well be the greatest triumph of all. The toxically certain doctor has found himself face to face with an anomaly. Those who are fluid and imaginative can embrace the mysteries of this world, the toxically certain do not yield, but shatter. What he has witnessed cannot fit within any category. Therefore he cannot remain conscious and exposed to it. As to the narrator, she continues to scurry around the room, climbing right over him as a mere obstacle in her way, a pebble, maybe. He has been, she realizes, not the brick wall in the face of her healing, of her flow, but merely an obstacle to crawl over. Menesetueng Though this complex story cannot be said to rest in its majority on the relationship between Almeda Roth and her industrious neighbor, Jarvis Poulter, this paper will focus primarily on the section of Alice Munro’s story, “Meneseteung,” which deals with their courtship and with Almeda’s ultimate unraveling due, this paper claims, in part to the nature of their interaction, that of fluid poetess and rigid man of practicum. Not to be discounted as an accomplice, Almeda’s doctor will receive some attention as well. Jarvis Poulter is a practical man. He is a man of industry, one of singular focus. Toxic certainty in the case of this story is manifest in the dichotomized expectations on the part of 69 Gilman 18. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 30 the civilized part of town, so to speak, on the part of Almeda’s doctor, as well as, and to the extreme, in Jarvis Poulter’s personality, all who seem to represent the salt that Poulter mines for profit, salt, which has the propensity to stem the flow of rivers, rivers such as The River Meneseteung, rivers such as Almeda’s fluid and poetic soul. In discussing her teaching of “Meneseteung” in a college classroom, Pam Houston attempts to sketch two paradigms for viewing the world, two styles of linguistic or of narrative expression: the metaphoric, which, she says “has been associated with the masculine tendency to name…to make one word stand for another, and the masculine tendency for solidity and fixedness,” and the metonymic, which “can be considered feminine in its fluidity, in its dependency on context and difference, in its realization that meaning can only be found through the difference in a synecdochical relationship.” 70 Houston speaks of the two paradigms, not as necessarily linked to man or woman, per se, but as what can be seen as “masculine and feminine matrices.” 71 As she points out, there are plenty of stories written by males within the feminine matrix and vice versa. Houston observes that “if what is male and metaphoric and vertical has been privileged over what is female and metonymic and horizontal…the reason is obvious enough: Metaphor is safe, confinable, solid, while metonym is abyssal, fluid, a big black hole of language.” 72 The Jarvis Poulters of the world, those who view reality through what can be defined as a severe lens of practicum, can be seen then as metaphoric thinkers, operating, as civilized society in Almeda’s milieu calls for, in a “safe, confinable, and solid” way. The Almeda Roths of the world can be seen as metonymic thinkers, those who flow with the thrum of the 70 Pam Houston, “A Hopeful Sign: The Making Of Metonymic Meaning In Munro’s ‘Meneseteung’,” The Kenyon Review 14 (1992): 83. 71 Gayle Elliott, “A Different Tack: Feminist Meta-Narrative in Alice Munro’s ‘Friend of My Youth.’” Journal of Modern Literature 20 (Summer 1996): 77. 72 Pam Houston, “A Hopeful Sign: The Making Of Metonymic Meaning In Munro’s ‘Meneseteung’,” The Kenyon Review 14 (1992): 83. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 31 universe, those who view reality and express themselves through an “abyssal, fluid, black hole of language.” Almeda is a flowing river; she is a wildflower. Civilization has made it so that “you can gather wildflowers in spring in the woodlots, but you’d have to walk through herds of horned cows to get to them.” 73 Jarvis Poulter, man of salt, “came to this part of the country looking for oil… Drilling for oil,” but he Discovered salt. He set to work to make the most of that. When he walks home from church with Almeda Roth, he tells her about his salt wells. They are twelve hundred feet deep. Heated water is pumped down into them, and that dissolves the salt. Then the brine is pumped to the surface. It is poured into great evaporator pans over slow, steady fires, so that the water is steamed off and the pure, excellent salt remains…for which the demand will never fail. 74 As the poetess and the industrialist stroll along, Jarvis, man of acutely practical focus, speaks of the “pure” and “excellent” commodity, which is salt. In meticulous detail he depicts the tedious process by which he converts nature into commodity. His concern is all with the binary of supply and demand. He has identified a demand that “will never fail,” and has devoted his life to its supply. And what is the response of the poetess, woman of fluid associative metonymic thinking? “The salt of the earth,” Almeda says. 75 “Yes,” he says, frowning. He may think this disrespectful. She did not intend it so. He speaks of competitors in other towns who are following his lead and trying to hog the market. Fortunately, their wells are not drilled so deep, or their evaporating is not done so efficiently. There is salt everywhere under this land, but it is not so easy to come by as some people think.” 76 73 Munro 486. Munro 483. 75 Munro 483. 76 Munro 483. 74 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 32 She has only temporarily distracted him with her flow of ideas. He continues, undeterred, to discuss the competitive market, calling her attention to his prowess, in being able to perform the difficult task of extracting salt from the earth. “Does this not mean, Almeda says, that there was once a great sea?” She is drawn to meaning, meaning is precisely what does not interest him. How is that practical? “Very likely, Jarvis Poulter says. Very likely. He goes on to tell her about other enterprises of his—a brickyard, a limekiln. And he explains to her how this operates, and where the good clay is found. He also owns two farms, whose woodlots supply the fuel for its operations.” 77 He is polite to her. He acknowledges that, yes, what she says may be; but now, back to the topic. His singular focus will not be deterred. The topic is, after all, the mechanics of his business endeavors. It is sweet. It is sad. It is even somewhat comical. Neither of them have any idea what the other is talking about. Yet, Everyone takes it for granted that Almeda Roth is thinking of Jarvis Poulter as a husband and would say yes if he asked her. And she is thinking of him. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up too much, she doesn’t want to make a fool of herself. She would like a signal. If he attended church on Sunday evenings, there would be a chance during some months of the year, to walk home after dark. He would carry a lantern…He would swing the lantern to light the way in front of the lady’s feet and observe their narrow and delicate shape. He might catch her arm as they step off the boardwalk. But he does not go to church at night. 78 She has many envisioned ‘he woulds,’ in her mind, but, alas, he does not go to church at night. Even in the structure of this paragraph, the two perspectives can be seen. He would, He would, He would—fluid imaginings, followed by the abrupt deflation of, “But he does not go to church at night, nor does he call for her, and walk with her to church on Sunday 77 78 Munro 483. Munro 484. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 33 mornings. That would be a declaration. He walks her home, past his gate as far as hers; he lifts his hat then leaves her.” 79 To Almeda Roth, Jarvis Poulter’s lens is not only rigidly certain, but toxically so, bearing the propensity of salt, that of the inhibition of growth. Strictly speaking, there are no villains here. Jarvis cannot know his effect on Almeda. He is incapable of seeing outside his binary lens. She marvels at his sense of practicum, “Men—except for her father 80—seem to her deprived in some way, incurious, No doubt that is necessary, so that they will do what they have to do. Would she herself, knowing that there was salt in the earth, discover how to get it out and sell it? Not likely. She would be thinking about the ancient sea. That kind of speculation is what Jarvis Poulter has, quite properly, no time for.” 81 It would never occur to her to extract salt from the earth. She cannot relate to what he is telling her, without her mind wandering off in its quest for meaning. What ultimately reduces Almeda to madness is her inability to be curbed by metaphoric society, shall we say, by toxically certain, binary constructs, as “the meandering creeks (which) have been straightened, turned into ditches with high, muddy banks,” 82 seem to have been. No matter how hard she tries to make grape jelly and court a man who speaks of nothing but the mechanics of mining salt, who cannot, for the life of him, make the lovely associations with “the salt of the earth,” 83 or “does this not mean…that there was once a great sea…” 84 she cannot. Almeda’s eyes seek meaning found in association. There must have been an ancient sea here once, for all the salt he is finding, she thinks. Meanwhile, Poulter may take this comment as a slight, perhaps indicating that his prowess, at being able to mine and extract 79 Munro 484. Almeda herself, even in this moment of pondering her need to curb herself to the masculine paradigm, concedes that not all men conform to this stereotype. Perhaps a man like her father would have been more suitable to her. Perhaps then she might have been able to marry. 81 Munro 485. 82 Munro 486. 83 Munro 483. 84 Munro 483. 80 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 34 salt in this locale is nothing more than luck, due to nature having provided a historic sea here. This might explain his remark, “There is salt everywhere under this land, but it is not so easy to come by as some people think.” 85 Almeda would not even know to think of this. As is common amongst creative thinkers, whose minds are drawn to ponder the universe, even while in bed, longing for sleep, Almeda suffers a good deal from sleeplessness, and the doctor has given her bromides and nerve medicine. She takes the bromides, but the drops gave her dreams that were too vivid and disturbing, so she has put the bottle by for emergency. She told the doctor her eyeballs felt dry, like hot glass, and her joints ached. In classic medical professional form for the time, reminiscent, though not synonymous with, the rest cure depicted at length in the discussion of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” her doctor suggests that she not “read so much, not study; get (her)self good and tired out with housework, take exercise. He believes that her troubles would clear up if she got married. He believes this in spite of the fact that most of his nerve medicine is prescribed for married women.” 86 A priceless line, if there ever was one. What grows in salt? Nothing. For Almeda, who keeps planting her hopes in this man of salt, in whom she thinks that she may have fallen in love, only to find that he goes on and on monotonously about his business, their courtship never manifesting in courtship at all, even as she feels the fluid waves of time, ebb and flow, ebb and flow, as she becomes more anxious, as she attempts to conform to her doctor’s prescription for a woman’s health— engaging in domestic tasks, taking nerve medication, pursuing the goal of marriage. Stemming her creative flow, she literally allows Jarvis’ uber practical salt to dry up her river— Meneseteung, the name of the story, of a river, of her poem. Having been told this was best, following this path, succumbing ever more to this negating of organic self in favor of this 85 86 Munro 483. Munro 487. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 35 preferred way of life proscribed by society—that of money made from salt—the antithesis of growth. Her dreams of washing and darning his socks replaced her creative flow. She made grape jelly. She sewed. She embroidered. Her life force, squelched, built up and built up, welled up and welled up inside of her— Down! Down unruly self, untamable self, free flowing river of a soul that you are— Drop that pen. Make preserves. Dream, not of breeze and gurgling brooks, not of flight of birds, expansive green meadows… Dream of darning a man’s socks—take those tonics, stem your imagination… Civilize yourself! What would you have yourself become? One of those animal-like creatures you can see through your back gate? Hear through your back window? No restraint! Decorum! Who loves you? No one. You are an orphan, are you not? Be sensible. Marry. Ignore your soul, threatening as it is, to burst through all the dams you erect. Ignore your humanity, much as you and all those in front of your house must ignore the poor, the subhuman creatures behind your house. Ignore Humanity! But you cannot, can you? What frustration this man of salt puts you through. Does he love you? Meaningless walks, week after week, during which there is no hint of the slightest bit of any emotion at all in the exterior of this walking monument to society. This is all good and well, or not so good and well, as each of them continues to speak on different plains altogether, neither of their streams of words, or—perhaps, in Jarvis’ case, sound bites—meeting its intended target, but when her pull towards cosmological meaning, inclusive of humanity, sets the two of them upon the ethical stage, she hits breaking point. One night, after following her doctor’s sleep regimen, his healthy life regimen, after taking her sleep medication, She wakes up, the night seems fiery hot and full of threats…She gets out of bed and goes to the window…she can make out distant voices… Some people, like herself, have evidently been wakened from sleep. ‘Shut up!’ they are yelling… A woman is being beaten. She keeps crying…two figures come Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 36 on and grapple, and break loose again, and finally fall down against Almeda’s fence. The sound they make becomes very confused—gagging, vomiting, grunting, pounding. Then a long, vibrating, choking sound of pain and selfabasement, self-abandonment, which could come from either or both. 87 Backing away from the window, sitting down on her bed, shaken, horrified, unsure what to do exactly, but cognizant, as per her sensitivity, as per her cosmological search for meaning, as per her natural propensity to be one with nature, with the thrum of the universe, of the fact that she must do something, Is that the sound of a murder she has heard? What is to be done, what is she to do? She must light a lantern, she must go downstairs and light a lantern— she must go out into the yard, she must go downstairs. Into the yard. The lantern. She falls over on her bed and pulls the pillow to her face. In a minute. The stairs, the lantern. She sees herself already down there, in the back hall, drawing the bolt of the back door. She falls asleep. 88 In her defense, it is important to note that she is under the influence of sleep tonics, prescribed by her doctor, who is representative of the forces, which seek to curb her flow with the rhythm of the universe, to guide her to stasis, to so-called stability, to anchor. She wakes, startled, in the early light. She thinks there is a big crow sitting on her windowsill, talking in a disapproving but unsurprised way about the events of the night before… She puts a wrapper over her nightdress and goes downstairs. The front rooms are still shadowy, the blinds down in the kitchen… She pulls the bolt and goes out the back door… A woman’s body heaped up there, turned on her side with her face squashed down into the earth. Almeda can’t see her face… a bare haunch and leg, the haunch showing a bruise as big as a sunflower...” 89 It does not matter to Almeda, why she fell back to sleep, whether or not it was due, in part, to her being in a medicated state. She has failed on a deep human existential level. She has committed the sin of the society around her. She has rendered the disembodied voice of a woman from the bad or uncivilized part of town, faceless, separate from humanity. She turned her back on the back of her house, that which looks upon the other neighborhood. She 87 Munro 487-488. Munro 488-489. 89 Munro 489. 88 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 37 disregarded the natural flow of her sensitive human instincts. She turned her back on this fellow woman’s implication of her in her very humanity. She is racked with guilt. This is not who she is at her very core. She is ashamed. She is disappointed in herself, to say the least. Given that she has relinquished herself, of late, to the so-called civilizing mores of metaphoric-binary-certain society, embodied by Jarvis Poulter, she runs to him for the answer to this plight in which she finds herself implicated, sure, that he, Mr. Practicum, will have the answer, will help her, somehow, atone for her sin, through current action, however late. Too late, it seems. Barefoot, in her nightgown and flimsy wrapper, Almeda runs away…to Jarvis Poulter’s house... She slaps the flat of her hand many times against the door. “There is the body of a woman,’ she says when Jarvis Poulter appears at last. He is in his dark trousers, held up with braces, and his shirt is half unbuttoned, his face unshaven, his hair standing up on his head. ‘Mr. Poulter, excuse me. A body of a woman. At my back gate.’ He looks at her fiercely. ‘Is she dead?’ His breath is dank, his face creased, his eyes bloodshot. ‘Yes. I think murdered,’ says Almeda…‘In the night I woke up. I heard a racket down on Pearl Street,’ she says, struggling to keep her voice low and sensible. ‘I could hear this—pair. I could hear a man and a woman fighting.’ 90 On the walk to her house, she holds herself back from saying what is on her heart. She wants him to do something, but most of all, she wants his emotional existential moral solace, she wants to unburden herself with a confession of guilt, She holds back what she feels a need to say next—that she is responsible, she could have run out with a lantern, she could have screamed (but who needed more screams?), she could have beat the man off. She could have run for help then, not now…the body is still there. Hunched up, half bare, the same as before. Jarvis Poulter doesn’t hurry or halt. He walks straight over to the body and looks down at it, nudges the leg with the toe of his boot, just as you’d nudge a dog or a sow. ‘You,’ he says, not too loudly but firmly, and nudges again. Almeda tastes bile at the back of her throat. 91 She is sickened. The last thing she needs as her heart and soul bleed with remorse is to witness the gruff manner with which Jarvis Poulter treats the body of this woman she has 90 91 Munro 489-490. Munro 490. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 38 failed, of this human being, for whose fate, she feels utterly responsible. “‘Alive,’ says Jarvis Poulter, and the woman confirms this. She stirs, she grunts weakly. Almeda says, ‘I will get the doctor.’ If she had touched the woman, if she had forced herself to touch her, she would not have made such a mistake.” 92 Her sense of guilt is now compounded by the realization, that had she truly felt proper remorse, she should have atoned for her sins the previous night, by touching the woman, by making human contact, by proving to herself and to the cosmos, that she was indeed one to be appropriately implicated in the humanity of this woman, as in her own. She sees the fact that the woman is alive, misdiagnosed as dead, as her fault as well. ‘Wait,’ says Jarvis Poulter. ‘Wait. Let’s see if she can get up.’ ‘Get up, now,’ he says... ‘Come on. Up, now. Up…’ The body heaves itself onto all fours…and the woman begins to bang this head, hard and rhythmically, against Almeda Roth’s picket fence. As she bangs her head, she finds her voice and lets out an openmouthed yowl, full of strength and what sounds like an anguished pleasure. 93 ‘Far from dead,’ says Jarvis Poulter. ‘And I wouldn’t bother the doctor.’ ‘There’s blood,’ says Almeda as the woman turns her smeared face. ‘From her nose,’ he says. ‘Not fresh.’ He bends down and catches the horrid hair close to the scalp to stop the head-banging. ‘You stop that, now,’ he says. ‘Stop it. Gwan home, now. Gwan home, where you belong…’ He shakes her head slightly, warning her, before he lets go of her hair. ‘Gwan home!’ Released, the woman…pulls herself to her feet. She can walk. She weaves and stumbles down the street…Jarvis Poulter watches her for a moment to make sure that she’s on her way…finds a large burdock leaf, on which he wipes hand. He says, ‘There goes your dead body!’” 94 Shaken enough by her harrowing soul-wrenching experience, feeling badly enough that she did not help the woman, that she did not even realize this morning that she was dead, Jarvis’ dig, “There goes your dead body,” seems like the straw that broke the camels back on top of his already jarring, resolute, but gruff, matter-of-fact manner with this woman. In the words of Naomi Morgenstern, 92 Munro 490. Munro 490. 94 Munro 491. 93 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 39 While Almeda feels compelled to express that the unconscious or possibly even dead woman lying against her fence is in some way her responsibility, Poulter shows no qualms about treating the anonymous woman like an animal and with absolute disgust and disdain… 95 His utter certainty in this case, fiercely practical, his indifference towards this woman, clashes with the ethical turmoil raging in her heart, to the point where this clash is irreversibly toxic to her system. After the woman stumbles off, Almeda will return to her house, consume several drops of ‘nerve medicine’ in her tea, and, in an account resembling ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (another story about madness, freedom, and responsibility for others who are also the self), she will begin to hallucinate: ‘A lot of things to watch. For every one of these patterns, decorations seem charged with life, ready to move and flow and alter. Or possibly to explode.” 96 The river has flooded its banks. Her tormented sense of ethical failure, as faced with the cold practicum of Jarvis Poulter’s boot, derails her, sending her free-flowing, the rivers rushing for all their effort to hold back, as a dam waiting so long to burst, that once it has, it can never be contained or repaired again. Almeda is a long way now from human sympathies or fears or cozy household considerations. She doesn’t think about what could be done for that woman or about keeping Jarvis Poulter’s dinner warm and hanging his long underwear on the line. The basin of grape juice has overflowed and is running over her kitchen floor, staining the boards of the floor, and the stain will never come out.” 97 She is lost to civilization, even peripherally. She has been rendered mad due to exposure to an overdose of toxic certainty on the part of Jarvis Poulter, on the part of the society in the front of her house. 95 Naomi Morgenstern, “The Baby Or The Violin? Ethics And Femininity In The Fiction Of Alice Munro,” Literature Interpretation Theory 14 (2003): 77. 96 Naomi Morgenstern, “The Baby Or The Violin? Ethics And Femininity In The Fiction Of Alice Munro,” Literature Interpretation Theory 14 (2003): 78. 97 Munro 494. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 40 Of Traps In an effort to approach the topic of toxic certainty and madness from a creative perspective in addition to a literary analytical perspective, this original story, “Of Traps,” will be examined for elements informed by tributaries drawn from the stories discussed above. While the characters, Shamai and Chava Amcha Kopfhecher, are unique to this story, extant within their own particular milieu, that of Jerusalem, Israel, in the nineteen-nineties, and are not intended as composites of any of the other literary characters examined, given that this story was written in the thematic spirit of toxic certainty and its capacity to inflict a brush with madness, critical insight into the relationship between Chava and Shamai can be gained by comparing their dynamic to the interactions in Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and “Meneseteung.” Shamai’s toxic certainty, as manifest in this story, exhibits components already identified in the male characters of these other stories, and both Chava’s reaction and the particular shadings of her “madness” have much in common with her forebears. This examination of the relationship between Shamai and Chava does not intend to minimize the fact that Chava bears an additional burden of ambiguity with regards to proscribed gender roles, given her upbringing in the shadow of the Holocaust, under the wing of her heroic Partizan grandfather, depicted as the savior of his weak pregnant wife Leah on the selection line, and given her focus upon the study of Talmud, a traditionally male occupation. If anything, this paper contends, these factors render all the more painful, her finding herself succumbing somehow, to the controlling mechanisms of Shamai’s toxic certainty. What is it about Shamai that has Chava feeling like she can’t breathe, feeling at the same time, that it’s her fault? How does Shamai manage to stem her flow? How has he made Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 41 her doubt herself? His modus operandi seems to be threat of abandonment. “Sometimes I wonder whether or not we’re compatible after all.” Shamai replie(s) stone-faced as he glare(s) at Chava through narrowed eyes,” his method of ending an argument victorious, “even as he continue(s) to snuggle Mindy close to his chest.” 98 Early on, Chava was still able to stand up for herself. Somehow, now, she seems caught between a need for his affirmation—some semblance of security, that she can trust him not to leave her, as he keeps threatening to do, whenever she disagrees with him—and being her own anchor, her own center of gravity, as she seems to remember being. She realizes that she has become dependant upon him for her sense of self, and this worries her. She has lost touch with her passion, her spunk, her broad knowledge, which always served to buoy her, allowing her to stand up for her causes, to fight the good fight. She used to ride on the wings of her passion, but her passion annoys him. Her mind, her studies, her knowledge base were always critical to her forming independent opinions. They gave her self-respect. Shamai puts her down. He dismisses her as emotional. He calls her sanity into question. Not only does he say that he doesn’t take her seriously, but he questions how anyone could. “You sound hysterical, Chava.” Shamai said flatly. “How am I supposed to take you seriously? How is anybody supposed to take you seriously?” “Don’t do that to me, Shamai.” She warned. “Don’t you dare do that to me.” 99 Shamai calls both her integrity as well as her lucidity into question. His focus is on the word “seriously.” To Shamai, to be “serious” is the ultimate good, but, to some extent, this seriousness is defined rather narrowly, more by appearances, by official stances, than by content. He dodges the substance of Chava’s words by shifting the focus onto their delivery, 98 99 Gordon Guedalia p. 13 Gordon Guedalia p. 12 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 42 denouncing them for failing to match some vague, abstract standard known only to him. Ultimately, “seriously” means “in a manner that is palatable to me.” Thus, she is reified by his approach. She becomes mere vessel. Chava senses the objectification inherent in Shamai’s response. She feels attacked, blind-sided. Worst of all, Shamai does this when she’s vulnerable, when she’s pregnant, when she’s subject both to the hormonal shifts and the physical discomforts of pregnancy, a state when any woman needs to be able to trust the partner in her corner to strengthen her resolve, and to assure her that she is sacrificing what she is, for the common cause of their love, of their family. Does he love her? He finds her loud, annoying, uncivilized. Like St. John, it seems that Shamai knows God’s truth with utmost certainty. As Maria Lamonaca says, in depicting the perils of human idolatry, St. John’s arrogant certainty of God’s will, suggest a dangerous conflation between male spiritual mediators and the Divine itself. Rather than regard her husband as the mouthpiece of God, the novel suggests, a woman might come to mistake her husband for God. 100 Chava’s error, perhaps, is that she refuses to do this, to grant his worldview supremacy. Worthy of love and respect, in Shamai’s world, however, are those who hold the correct view, his view. He will allow no room for an alternate view of God’s calling. He is like Talmudic Shamai, one who will not allow for any other view. The Talmud, in fact, rejects Shamai’s view as unlivable—St. John’s view of the world denies reality as well. To reject Shamai’s view is not merely to voice another facet of truth, but a strike against him, a strike against the Torah, a strike against God. Chava becomes a negative force, to shield Mindy from, in the name of truth, and in the name of God, unless she can be emotionally and morally bent to the right path. But she is Mindy’s mother, is she not? 100 Lamonaca, Maria. “Jane’s Crown Of Thorns: Feminism And Christianity In Jane Eyre.” Studies in the Novel 34 (Fall 2002): 248. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 43 Like Rochester, Shamai will not allow Chava her voice. He has already decided that she is loud and uncivilized, that she is classless, that she is not serious in her opinions, that her opinions are emotional rather than truth based—a real blow to a bright and studious human being like Chava, who has studied all her life. Like Rochester, rather than find her passion attractive, Shamai is off put by her, finding her advances aggressive. He cringes at her pleas for love. “That was sweet, Shamai. Don’t you think?” Chava asked as soon as the professor was out of earshot, facing him, leaning in, her fingers gently grasping his crossed arms, rising up on tiptoes. “He’s in love.” She looked up, peering warmly into Shamai’s eyes. “Oh great.” he grunted at her, averting his eyes with an awkward smirk bordering on a grimace, looking around at other passersby. “Don’t get all mushy on me now.” “Whatever…” she dropped her hands, her heels, looking away, dejected, starting Mindy’s stroller again in the direction of the pedestrian mall.” 101 The man who is supposed to love her, pushes her away. Her passion is off-putting to him. She initiates love and he cringes, rebuffing her unless it is for procreation, in explicit violation of Talmudic law, which requires a man to please his wife. Shamai’s disdain extends to the other women in Chava’s family as well. Chava sighed as she watched their somewhat strained interaction. In particular, she noticed the uber polite way with which he spoke to her (sister), and the way that his hands were shoved deeply into his pockets as he engaged her noncommittally. Chava knew that her family annoyed him lately, that he found them loud, that he found them intense, and that it was the women in particular whom he felt put off by. Once again Shamai’s preoccupation with appearances is displayed. He does not engage the substance of Chava’s sisters. He does not listen to them in earnest. He rejects them for being “loud” and “intense.” He cannot seem to find it within himself to see past what he finds uncouth in their external demeanor, unable to engage with their full humanity, to appreciate their essence, obsessed as he is with the alterity of their mode of interaction. 101 Gordon Guedalia p. 27. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 44 In response, Chava begins to question her own substance. In an effort to recoup her sense of self, she tries harder to win Shamai’s validation. In the process, ironically, she exposes more and more of her inner self to the caustic abrasions of his disregard. Lately she found herself plagued with self doubt, trying harder to make herself heard the more he attempted to quiet her with his usual to-the-point answers. This, in turn, led him to retreat more, as he claimed that her volume was enough to drive him completely out of his inner calm. Recently, he had put up a bookshelf in the bathroom where he kept some of his favorite books as well as the latest periodicals on theoretical mathematics for when he escaped there, something she found him doing more and more frequently lately.” 102 By locking himself in the bathroom, he is denying her the ability to communicate, to tell her story, to share. His silencing of her does violence to her sense of self. Being stifled is corroding her sense of self. “Although, according to Kenneth Burke,” says Kathy Mezei, “the construction of symbolic actions such as the telling of stories is the defining feature of human beings, for women narrators, this symbolic action may be a necessary strategy for survival.” 103 To be able to speak, to be heard, to be able to communicate, is a matter of survival. Shamai will not hear her. Like John in The Yellow Wallpaper, 104 Shamai mocks Chava’s every instinct, until she begins to feel that she should not take herself seriously. Chava felt stung by his mocking tone. There was something about the way in which he spoke to her at times which made her falter in her sense of self. She thought that she could remember being stronger once…She thought that she could remember a time when she felt that she could trust her instincts… 105 Chava “thought” she could remember trusting herself, but she can no longer feel that selftrust. Instead, she is roiled with self-doubt, suffering both psychological and practical repercussions. 102 Gordon Guedalia pp. 30-31. Kathy Mezei, “And it Kept its Secret: Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea,” Critique 28 (Summer 1987) p. 197. 104 Gilman 1. “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage.” 105 Gordon Guedalia pp. 28-29. 103 Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 45 Spotting a suspicious looking man with a huge bulge under his shirt, walking in and out of the Burger Ranch on the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem where they are standing with their daughter Mindy, Chava shares her concerns with Shamai, only to be ridiculed, “He just didn’t know that Chava would be here.” Shamai continued vocally. “Someone arrest this man for having to pee!” He declared, pointing his thumb in the direction of the Burger Ranch door through which the man in the yellow shirt was no longer visible. Perhaps he just needed a bathroom after all, Chava thought, her face beginning to burn as Shamai laughed, grabbing Mindy from her and scooping her up into the air, swooping her around like an airplane, saying, ‘the man has to pee!’ in a silly high pitched voice as Mindy screeched with laughter, ‘the man has to pee!’” In a combination of a desperate wish for love from him, which she cannot seem to gain, and a wish not to be mocked again, she begins to conform to his dictates in order to feel emotionally safe. The trouble is, this method yields no love, and certainly no safety to her sense of self. By whipping Mindy around, laughing, yelling, “The man has to pee,” Shamai is planting the seeds of future collusion with her in mocking Chava and dismissing her, which has the propensity, in turn, to undermine Chava’s standing, not only as woman and as human being, but as a mother, as a parent, as an adult worthy of the children’s respect. When Almeda in “Meneseteung” imagines what it would be like if Jarvis took her out for a buggy ride in the country, she has mixed feelings about it, Instead of calling for her and walking her to church, Jarvis Poulter might make another, more venturesome declaration. He could hire a horse and take her for a drive out to the country. If he did this, she would be both glad and sorry. Glad to be beside him, driven by him, receiving this attention from him in front of the world. And sorry to have the countryside removed for her—filmed over, in a way, by his talk and preoccupations. The countryside that she has written about in her poems actually takes diligence and determination to see. 106 106 Munro 486. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 46 Jarvis, an exceedingly practical and single-minded man, has no ability to appreciate the poetic. Almeda is concerned that a moment, a view, a sound, which might be cherished, would be tainted by the man of salt, stemmer of poetic flows, were he to drone on about the mechanical details of his business ventures. In Chava’s case, it is Shamai’s cynicism and ridicule that has her cognizant of a nervous buzz of tension in every part of her body . . . . He had a way of sucking the meaning out of moments, she thought, rendering them tasteless, insignificant, and along with them, life itself. For what is life, if not a series of profound moments in which to find beauty? And how so very fragile and vulnerable the appreciation of beauty, and how so very easy to destroy, the slightest breeze can extinguish a flame, and how much more so a malicious wind— 107 Even as she sits there, doubting herself, pondering Shamai’s making things that matter to her meaningless, the suspicious man pulls out a huge bread knife, with intent to kill. The only reason that she is still sitting anywhere in the vicinity of the Burger Ranch is because she doubted her instincts. While she trusted herself enough to send her sister Tali to get some soldiers to check out the man, she did not trust herself enough to let Shamai know what she was telling Tali, or to insist that they were to get as far away as possible with Mindy, and immediately. A similar tragic dynamic can be seen in Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, when Antoinette’s mother warns her husband, Mr. Mason, again and again, that they need to leave the area, lest the locals rise up and do them harm, and he not only refuses to listen to her, but he dismisses her concerns with mockery. Alas, she is proven right, but only after their house is burned down, and her son, critically wounded, dies. In response, Annette goes mad, She began to scream abuse at Mr. Mason, calling him a fool, a cruel stupid fool. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘I told you what would happen again and again.’ Her voice broke, but still she screamed, ‘You would not listen, you sneered at me, you grinning hypocrite, you ought not to live either, you know so much, 107 Gordon Guedalia 33. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 47 don’t you? Why don’t you go out and ask them to let you go? Say how innocent you are. Say you have always trusted them.’ 108 While Annette descends into a furious madness, Chava’s response is that of shock, Her gaze shifted back to the left, to where she saw - as in slow motion - a beard - a yellow shirt - a right arm rising - a knife grasped in hand - a huge knife – a knife the length of the very arm – a bread knife – a jagged bread knife. White bread, rye bread, pumpernickel, Chava thought unbidden, as an unfamiliar guttural shriek propelled itself from deep inside the very core of her being and out of her gaping mouth– “Sakin!” she shrieked. “A Knife! He’s got a knife!” Ironically, Shamai, who did not even give credence to her concern regarding the man in the yellow shirt, causing her to doubt herself, to waver in her thoughts of needing to do the right thing, now finds fault with Chava’s failure to act: “What are you doing?!? Shamai’s voice broke into her bubble of fear. “Are you out of your mind? You don’t stop! You keep running!” He grabbed her left arm firmly with his right, pulled her back up to standing, kicked the stroller out of the way, and continued running towards Jaffa Road with Mindy under his arm. 109 Shamai utterly fails to accept responsibility for the fact that his rejection of Chava, his mockery, put the lives of his daughter—as well as those of other pedestrians on Ben Yehuda—in danger. Indeed, he externalizes his own inadequacy and lack of insight by blaming Chava for running away too slowly, and for ducking into a building to hide. Once again, Shamai has failed to see beneath the veneer of appearances to the deeper level of character and intent. He proves himself equally incapable of recognizing his wife’s strengths and virtues as a terrorist’s murderous intent. The story ends with Chava in labor, yet disconnected from her body in a way that makes her unaware that she is in labor. Her labor pains have taken on their symbolic 108 109 Rhys p. 40. Gordon Guedalia p. 35. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 48 significance, that of feeling closed in on, suffocated, her consciousness, at least temporarily, having shed the literal corporeal awareness of what she is going through. Not only does she feel undermined, unloved, and unsure of herself, wishing somehow to transcend this corporeal trap, but—in wondering whether or not Mindy and Shamai will even notice her missing—she wonders whether she has not become, perhaps, but an object through which Shamai might produce children for himself. She is tormented by the fear that this baby too, the one in her belly, the one who makes her feel less alone in her trap, will come under Shamai’s control and be taught to mock and dismiss her while she incubates yet another child for his pride and continued traditional line. Conclusion This paper displays five literary instances in which toxic certainty in a male character is shown to have an adverse reaction upon the female character with whom he is in a close relationship, driving the said female character to some manifestation of madness as delineated above. With regards to Jane Eyre, toxic certainty is manifest in St. John Rivers in the form of his utter conviction that he possesses perfect knowledge of the will of God. Jane, in turn, is depicted as falling under his spell, and slipping into temporary selfrelinquishment. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Edward Rochester is seen falling into toxic certainty regarding his wife and her history, based on hearsay accounts of madness in her family. This dubious report becomes an anchor of sorts upon which he settles his unease about all that is foreign in his wife’s country, and in her. As Edward’s toxic certainty towards Antoinette solidifies, her exposure to her new husband’s toxic withdrawal and suspicious regard of her sow the seeds of her unraveling. The victim of a traumatic childhood, in which her mother, rendered Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 49 ill, turns her back on her daughter, Antoinette is acutely aware of her husband’s abandonment, and of his repeated refusal to hear her, or to hear her in earnest. His visage, gone stoic, is enough to drive her to madness. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the relationship between the anonymous narrator, who seems to be suffering from a mild form of postpartum depression as the story opens, and her husband John, who wields, not only his supposed authority over his wife, as her husband, but that of a respected member of the medical profession, serves as exemplar of the most severe instance of the toxic certainty dynamic studied in this paper. By diminishing and controlling his wife, treating her like a child, John manifests a frightening tyranny, driving her ever inwards, until she loses touch with reality altogether, and he, ironically, is rendered unconscious by his wife’s unraveling. In “Meneseteung,” Jarvis Poulter, utterly practical man of industry, serves as yet another typological sample of toxic certainty, in that he seemed to represent the very salt that he mined for profit, salt, which has the propensity to stem the flow of rivers, rivers such as the Meneseteung, and ultimately, the river of Almeda’s fluid and poetic soul. What ultimately reduces Almeda to madness, is her inability to be curbed by utterly practical society, epitomized by Jarvis, in which emotions are held in check, and “meandering creeks” are “straightened, turned into ditches with high, muddy banks.” “Of Traps” is shown to incorporate elements relating to the theme of toxic certainty from each of the other stories examined. Shamai resembles St. John in his claim on God’s word; Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea in that he makes Chava feel as though she is aggressive, even as he denies her the expression of her voice; John in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in his mockery of Chava; and Jarvis Poulter in his binary, mathematical, practical mind, whose eye is untrained in color, ambiguity or emotion. Chava, resembles Jane in her struggle to Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 50 maintain her own religious and moral convictions; Antoinette, in her painful reaction to her husbands’ withdrawal and her fears of his abandonment; Annette, Antoinette’s mother, in that she too, had her faith in her own instincts damaged to the point where she does not act with full conviction under crisis as she might otherwise have; Jane in “The Yellow Wallpaper” in that she begins to withdraw and withhold her thoughts and feelings lest she be mocked; and Almeda, since she too feels that her male counterpart has the ability to suck the meaning and the beauty out of moments that she hopes to preserve untarnished. The significance of toxic certainty as manifest in these literary works, and its relevance to the lives of readers, can be couched in a variety of metaphorical frameworks, perhaps most clearly and compellingly in religious terms, “Eylu VeEylu Divrei Elohim Khayim” “These, and these too, are the living words of God,” 110 says the Talmud. Essentially, there are myriad truths, all living words of God. No one lens through which to view the world, no one path to journey within it has any right to claim supremacy over another. Every living soul possesses an individual and distinct spark of the Divine. Intrinsic to every human being is a singular facet of that which the Divine inspired in this world. To each their face; to each their calling. For any individual to insist that his or her way is the one and only, for that individual to attempt to control and belittle the other (as per their perception), till they conform to another’s vision of the world, till their very face, their very soul, contorts itself in an attempt to adopt a posture unintended for them, is to violently rob this world of a vital spark. This Talmudic statement, “These, and these too, are the living words of God,” represents an antidote to toxic certainty. This is why the Talmud rejects Rabbi Shamai’s singular and stringent viewpoint in every case but one. It is unlivable. As the Talmud says, 110 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Eruvin, (Jerusalem, Israel: The Israel Institute For Talmudic Publications, 2001): 13:2, (my translation). Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 51 A voice came down from Heaven and said: These, and these too, are the living words of God, and the Halakhah is in accordance with the House of Hillel. And why, if these, and these too, are the living words of God, did the House of Hillel merit that the Halakhah should be in accordance with them? Because they were pleasant to their fellow man and accepting of insult against them. 111 The Talmud ever prefers the mercy of Rabbi Hillel—merciful, as God is merciful; merciful, as humanity is bid to be merciful, inherent in our having been formed in Imago Dei, in the image of God, and therefore commanded with Imitateo Dei, to emulate God, the merciful and all embracing. Jane’s call, as per Maria Lamonaca, is for “an intimate, direct, and unmediated relationship between the soul and its Creator,” 112 that of the soul calling for the individual relationship of “the heart” 113 with God. St. John’s is for the rigid singular calling. It is not that St. John is “wrong,” it is that he claims to be “righter,” to know better for others than they do for themselves. His worldview is representative of a general attitude, toxic on some level, in some measure, to anyone but himself, and ultimately, in his living and dying alone, surely to himself as well. St. John’s attitude, as well as Rochester’s, John’s, Jarvis’ and Shamai’s, continues to be a toxic presence in every society. Even in the purportedly most liberal of societies, there are doctrines—political, social, medical, and supposedly ethical; norms of etiquette; class, gender, educational and cultural biases—that claim supremacy over others, in manners ranging from the subtle to the legal and coercive. “Madness,” by any name utilized, continues to be a threatening label in the hands of the seemingly mighty of the time, to diminish the life force of the visionary. Life, like the blood in our veins, like the water of 111 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Eruvin, (Jerusalem, Israel: The Israel Institute For Talmudic Publications, 2001): 13:2, (my translation). 112 Maria Lamonaca, “Jane’s Crown Of Thorns: Feminism And Christianity In Jane Eyre,” Studies in the Novel 34 (Fall 2002): 249. 113 Maria Lamonaca, “Jane’s Crown Of Thorns: Feminism And Christianity In Jane Eyre,” Studies in the Novel 34 (Fall 2002): 252. Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 52 rivers, like the thrum of the universe, is fluid and changing and mysterious. To attempt to define this mystery, to capture it, to trap it, to conquer it, to control it, is not only arrogant, as arrogant and misguided as the attempt to construct the tower of Babel, but toxic to the flow of life, rendering life blood—mere salt. It is to take biblical Chava, Eve, mother of all life, and to render her Lot’s wife, paralyzed, crystallized for eternity in salt. This paper has examined the characters of Shamai Kopfhecher, St. John Rivers, Edward Rochester, Dr. John, and Jarvis Poulter, and found them lacking, not merely in their inability to flow with the river of life, to embrace its mystery, to sway with the passion of its lovely and chaotic winds, to heed God’s calling to the ecstatic as well as to the reasoned ascetic—to each its season, and in synthesis—vivid, holy and creative; but in their violent infliction upon their beautiful and fluid partners of the shackles of un-tempered law and reason, of the salt of Sodom, made for destruction, capable of paralyzing a woman for all eternity—the very antithesis of the waters of life. Chava, Eve, along with Jane, Antoinette, the unnamed narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and Almeda, have been charged with being unconventional, willful, intemperate, even heretical—the sin of the creative flow of life—bid to cease in their flow, lest they be made to cease. Guilty. They are guilty of attempting to defy the binary construct; guilty of defying those who strive to control them with so-called truth; guilty of trying to respond with nuance and sensitivity to a complex and shifting set of appearances; guilty of questing, of striving to understand the truth of the world around them, sensitively, intelligently and passionately, while maintaining the intellectual and emotional honesty not to hold fast to a position they once uttered, just because they once uttered it, even while context and new revelations have shown them otherwise. Guilty of acting on their awareness that they are human, fallible, partially formed, prone to falter, gasping for air when faced with their Toxic Certainty and its Capacity to Inflict a Brush with Madness—Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia© 2010 53 partner’s illusorily fully formed immovable wall of toxic certainty. This faltering, this sensitivity—their “Madness.” By illuminating scenarios such as those depicted in these stories, each hailing from an alternate setting, culturally, geographically, and linearly, the hope is that the textures that arise from their juxtapositions will engender an awareness of dynamics, still in play, worthy of further examination, both in literature as well as in the lives of women and families today in different communities and geographic locales. There is strength in knowledge. There is strength in education. 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