Yellow Wallpaper and Fight Club - Analysis of Madness in the eyes of society

Analysis of both the yellow wallpaper and Fightclub and the representation of madness in terms of critics and my relation of them to capitalism (many things are to be added to this soon)

Ideology is an implicit element of literary texts. In both The Yellow Wallpaper and Fight club, the narrators are labelled as insane by the ruling class. However, this essay will be focusing on the traits of madness as a pathological issue and a sociological label that is attributed to characters, to then conclude the link between both.

 

Madness can be defined as “(a) illnesses characterized by the presence of physical symptoms, (b) the absence of physical signs, or any evidence of physical pathology, and (c) behaviour suggesting that the symptoms fulfil some psychological function.” (Rycroft 1972) In both The Yellow Wallpaper and Fight Club, the reader has no presented physical symptoms of the characters’ madness at first, however symptoms tend to appear after they have been mentally coerced in thinking they are mad. In more detail to Fight Club, the preface of Sanity, Madness and the Family by Laing tells us that Schizophrenia -what is apparently affecting the narrator in Fight Club is “Schizophrenia is not accepted as being a biochemical, neurophysiological, psychological fact, and we regard it as palpable error […] we propose no model of it” (Laing 1970: VIII/preface 2^nd ed.) This only applies to the narrator of Fight Club in the sense that we can never know for sure if he is actually schizophrenic or if the author uses this illness to emphasise the inevitable madness that ensues from capitalism. An additional way of defining madness is through Lacanean terms, for which an individual truly becomes mad when he loses grasp of the Symbolic realm or the Imaginary, thus leaving that individual with the realm of the REAL. To lose grasp of either the Symbolic (sign, signifiers and signified, in other words the linguistic constructs of reality) or the Imaginary (exaggeration of the external world, the self and so on) would entail a loss of understanding, and an inability to communicate with the external world in a normal or understandable manner. A clear example of this is the scene of the heath in Shakespeare's King Lear in which he loses complete ability to communicate understandably with people and the external world. Furthermore, Foucault’s formulation of madness as a discourse is similar to Lacan’s, as he explains that it is “un simple discours délirant où ne se manifestent que le vide et le néant de l’erreur” (Russ 1979: 20). If one does not have evidence for someone’s madness, then the latter’s madness is simply a socially relative label, in the sense that their discursive patterns have become irregular and out of bounds with the current social norms. For example, in The Yellow Wallpaper, there is no evidence, at first, for the narrator’s madness other than her apparent straying from the conventional role of a woman, but she does not lose grasp of reality nor communication “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband […] what is one to do?” She is still able to reflect upon the situation in a clear manner thus, the reader has no empirical evidence for her insanity for the time being. Yet, her husband decides she is mentally unstable and thus becomes what Foucault described as “le médecin qui guérit lorsqu’il met en jeu les figures immémoriales du Père, du Juge, de la Famille et de la Loi” (Russ 1979: 33) In Fight Club, the narrator’s constant irony towards the stupidity of consumer capitalism reflects ‘too much awareness’ of the system for him to actually be mad “the gun in my mouth, I’m wondering how clean this gun is. We just totally forget about Tyler’s whole murder-suicide thing while we watch another file cabinet slip” (Palahniuk 2006: 13) The narrator ironically comments on the intense attention the consumer capitalist system puts on products, in this case, the cleanliness of the gun, the file cabinets being lost, and so on.

 

From this, both texts show the main characters as undergoing a certain journey towards their madness since they have both been labelled by society/ patriarchal power. We can see a link between Fight Club and The Yellow Wallpaper, in that both characters are regressed to a childlike state from adulthood; this, arguably, strips them of their power in society.

In Fight Club, the narrator regresses to a child as he cries with Big Bob,“Bob wraps his arms around me, and I cry. You cry, Bob says and inhales and sob, sob, sobs, Go on now and cry he says” Big Bob ironically becomes a maternal figure after having gone through testicular cancer and is now a comforting figure for Fight Club’s narrator. Similarly in The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is reduced to a child as her husband places her in a nursery room and changes his discourse patterns with her to one of a child ““Bless her little heart! Said he with a big hug, “She shall be as sick as she pleases!”” MacPike additionally supports this as he suggests that: “The nursery, then, is an appropriate symbol for the desired state of childlikeness vis-à-vis the adult world that her husband wishes to enforce”. This whole regression to the childlike state is something Foucault recognised as a power move from the hegemony holding class in his Histoire De La Folie “Tuke et Pinel introduisent dans l’asile un personnage dont les pouvoirs sont de l’ordre de la moralité et prennent racine dans un phénomène nouveau: le fou considéré comme un mineur, comme un enfant” (Russ 1979: 33)

 

This leads us to the question of why society would label both characters in both texts as insane. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is given the role of a mother by society as she has a child, thus she must conform and live her life accordingly to the standards of ‘a normal mother’. It is unimportant whether she declines taking care of her child or if she cannot cope with caring for it; whichever it is, she is rejecting the social norm of the role of a mother. This becomes problematic to the patriarchal dominant males of society, as a woman must obey their hegemony. We see as readers, that her straying from the conventional roles of a woman leads to the narrator having to hide her ‘writing and work’ from everyone “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work” Ironically, even the housekeeper denies the narrator’s rejection of the female ideology as she disagrees with the narrator’s freedom of writing “I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick! " But I can write when she is out.” Macpike’s quote can reinforce this in the sense that “The narrator’s work threatens to destroy her status by gaining her recognition in the adult world; this is reason enough for her husband to forbid her to work. Her work is, as he suggests, dangerous; but its danger is for him, not her, because it removes her from his control.” (Macpike 1975: 287) This quote and the fact she has to be restrained in a nursery room shows that she has to be physically and mentally restrained for the patriarchs not to be endangered by her awareness of female power and ideology. She has to be shut away and dealt with before she becomes aware of the truth that women can hold as much power as men. One may add that women hold the ultimate power, in the sense that they give birth and thus, the power of giving life (however, this is not to be discussed in this essay). Furthermore, it is also a problem for the ruling class ideology, in the sense that men are portrayed as the apex of power and thus, women writing and thinking for themselves might put them on the same level of men, but this cannot be allowed in the eyes of the hegemony because for them, women are not men. This would defeat the ideology of the ruling class, or at least question their authority. The shutting away of the female is ironically very similar to the novel that came 50 years before it: Jane Eyre and the shutting away of Bertha Mason for her overly apparent sexual character. Fight Club evokes to the reader the similar answer to the question: "why would society deem the narrator insane?" Althusser explained that we acquire our identities from ideology, but individuals can find recognising themselves problematic, as some may have too extreme a comprehension of their ideology causing them to come to an existential crisis. This existential crisis can cause conflict within society because it leads them to stray away from their original ideology. In both The Yellow Wallpaper and Fight Club, the main characters come to an existential crisis and stray from their original socially stemmed ideology.

 

In Fight Club, the narrator’s existential crisis originates in the failed fulfilment of work, he has worked throughout his life to attain happiness. The happiness that has been suggested by the media is shown as only being attainable through mass consuming. This is a product of what Marx called ‘commodity fetishism’, meaning there is an implicit relationship between the ontology, ontological value of the individual and the products and the work that they do. This was developed in the 1980’s by Balibar, who claimed that in the post-modern era, social standing and hence ontology were now defined and controlled by the consumption of commodity. Consumers are therefore encouraged under post-modern ideologies, to define themselves by their habits of consumption. The narrator’s existential consumer crisis is supported by his depiction of his apartment, “ I loved every stick of furniture. That was my whole life. Everything, the lamps, the chair, the rugs were me”, this is expressed through Adorno’s essays “What happens at work, in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped from by approximation to it in one’s leisure time” (Adorno 1997: 17) in the narrator’s case, his approximation of his work is in buying new furniture. He is ironically aware of this as he expresses “Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you”.

Adding to this, the only space where language enables the narrator in Fight Club to feel is the support groups, “This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom […] Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I’d ever felt”. These support groups are a product of people themselves having been unable to ‘feel’ due to commodity fetishism and the movement of capital, and therefore, the language within these groups is strictly used for people to feel, as the people there have cancer or terminal diseases, and thus the language used in the groups is not part of the consumerist capitalist ideology: “we imagined our pain as a ball of white healing light floating around our feet and rising to our knees, our waits, our chest.” (Palahniuk 2006: 20)

These support groups can be seen as correlating with The Yellow Wallpaper’s narrator angrily tearing away at the wallpaper, as she finds peace in doing so: “If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little”.

 

 

The narrator of Fight Club’s existential crisis is also a product of the homogeneity of everything. Tyler Durden wants to do unique things, he wants to break through this cycle of mass consumption and seeks uniqueness and authenticity “The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler had sat in the palm of a perfection he’d created himself”. By creating this unique shadow that does not last long, Tyler is ‘feeling’ unique and authentic for a short minute but a short minute of perfection, this is highlighted as Tyler adds “A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection”, Tyler’s tone implies the enjoyment of perfection is above all other materialistic enjoyments, because perfection cannot be attained through materialistic possessions, it can only be obtained in your own personal work, such as Tyler’s giant shadow hand. We, as readers, see a strong similarity with the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper and her constant fascination towards the wallpaper and the ripping away of it. This can arguably signify that the narrator sees achievement in the ripping away of it, as she emphasises she wants to be the only one in contact with it “I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” In the sense that she sees the seeking of uniqueness and authenticity in ripping away the yellow wallpaper, as John and Jane do not have the power to do so.

 

 

In conclusion, both characters in both texts are not mad at their time of labelling as mad, this is so because if they were they would have lost the ability to discursively communicate with other people and themselves, and to an extent the external world. If not even that, the reader would have had at least some evidence to their madness, however, we are only presented with evidence of their madness at the end of both texts. In The Yellow Wallpaper, we see she becomes overly physical and animalistic with the motif of creeping, “this great room and creep around as I please […] but here I can creep smoothly on the floor” and her animalistic eruption “I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner " but it hurt my teeth”. In Fight Club, we see that the narrator has gained lucidity about his schizophrenia but has lost all ability to understand the way of life, “People write to me in heaven and tell me I’m remembered […] I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong” There is intense irony in the fact that the narrator of Fight Club find himself at the apex of state power after having thought dying would let him leave the capitalist system. He find himself at an asylum, where Foucault would have agreed is a metonymic and symbolic place for hegemonic power. Concluding, both characters are originally labelled as mad because they both become too aware of themselves and the ideology that is coerced upon them. In The Yellow Wallpaper, she is too aware of the power of women hence why she finds it hard to conform after having broken the pattern “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! […]as I please!”. Additionally, “Her refusal to accept the wallpaper as either ugly or meaningless is a representation of the tenacity of her own character, which can yield to such outside constraints as a prison nursery but will never surrender its right to remain outside interpretation, as does the wallpaper” (Macpike 1975: 288) This is ironically the same as in Fight Club, in the sense that the men who fight in the fight clubs all refuse to accept the reality that they are treated as just commodities in the eyes of the capitalist superpower/system. Furthermore, Fight Club’s narrator becomes too aware of the inevitability of the coercive consumer capitalist system and thus, decides to destroy everything “I wanted to destroy something beautiful […] Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone”. However, because they are socially labelled as mad, the state or the ruling class takes steps in order to prevent them from rebelling; these steps include the regression to childlike state and coercion of ruling ideology and, in turn, this drives them to their insanity. Both characters’ insanity is only lead by the fact that both characters have been denied their most essential qualities as humans (power/sex and emotional value/identity), this is emphasised by the fact that Fight Club itself is a satirical comedy ending with the characters rejecting their consumer capitalist ideologies but sadly, they have all become nihilistic martyrs “One monkey between his legs with a knife […] or we’ll tell the world that his esteemed honour does not have any balls”. This portrays how individuals that are able to detach themselves from the dominant ideology, are labelled as mad when they do, because they do not conform to the social norms. This can be strengthened by Žižek, as he comments on the inevitability of ideology and expresses that once someone has ‘escaped’ their ideology, they become mad.

 

Both characters are ascribed different types of madness, and in this respect, these are both significantly different texts but the cogs that make these texts function have a fundamental relation in the sense that they ‘raise awareness’ of the mechanics of ideology and it’s destructive powers in relation to one’s ontology.

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

-       Gilman, Charlotte (1899), The Yellow Wallpaper (Boston: Small & Maynard)

-       Gilman, Charlotte (1913), Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper (The Forerunner)

-       Rycroft, Charles (1972), A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (England: Penguin Books)

-       Russ, Jacqueline (1979), Histoire de la folie " Foucault (Paris: Hatier)

-       Chevalier, Jean and Gheerbrant, Alain (1996) Dictionary of Symbols (England: Penguin Books)

-       Elliott, Anthony (1994), Psychoanalytic Theory " An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell)

-       Laing, R.D. and Esterson, A. (1970), Sanity, Madness and the Family (London and New York: Routledge)

-       Merleau Ponty, Maurice (1961), Sens et Non-sens (Genève: Editions Nagel)

-       Still, Arthur and Velody, Irving (1992), Rewriting the History of Madness " Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la folie (London and New York: Routledge)

-       Althusser, Louis (2008), On Ideology (London and New York: Verso)

-       Žižek, Slavoj (2006), Interrogating the Real " “The real of sexual difference (USA: Continuum)

-       Flisfeder, Matthew (2012), ‘Subject of Desire/Subject of Drive: The Emergence of Žižekian Media Studies’, Cultural Theory, 3: 140-256

-       MacPike, Loralee (1975), ‘Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in “The Yellow Wallpaper” ‘, American Literary Realism, 8 no. 3: 286-288

-       Hegel, G.W.F (1967), Phenomenology Of Mind (New York: Harper Torchbooks)

-       Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel (2009) Making Minds and Madness " From Hysteria to Depression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

-       Lacan, Jacques (1973) Les Quatre Concepts Fondamentaux De La Psychanalyse (Editions du Seuil)

-       Lacan, Jacques (1998) Les Ecrits Techniques de Freud (Editions du Seuil)

-       Lacan, Jacques (1999) Ecrits: I (Editions du Seuil)

-       Veblen, Thorstein (2007) The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford University Press)

-       Žižek, Slavoj (1989) The Sublime object of Ideology (Great Britain: Verso)

-       Balibar, Etienne (1995) The Philosophy of Marx (Great Britain: Verso)

-       Adorno, Theodor (1997) Dialectic of Enlightenment (Great Britain: Verso)

-       Palahniuk, Chuck (2006) Fight Club (London: Vintage Books)

Reviews

[Sue Hart]

Amazing. The dictates of society to rule what is sane and what is not. What is good and that which is bad. I've never read anything quite like this before. But you don't find it published much either except for college and the like. It took a lot of work to do this and I appreciate you sharing the findings. For me, I will reread it and let more sink inside my brain. Once is like reading the constitution just once and understanding all of it. Can't be done.

[Tam Warink]

Hello Victor,

A cogent and well-written analytical essay... even reading it backward it is granular and atomic enough in thought that the conceptual linkages stand firm enough for a two-way concourse. (I often like to read from the bottom up and inside-out.) I am afraid your audience (here) may be limited to a few stray mongrels (myself included in that). As for the thesis, I am uncertain of the reason for trying to connect a literary character's ideology with the "...traits of madness as a pathological issue and a sociological label that is attributed to characters." On specifics I think it succeeds but as a generality it is possible that it fails somewhat. Of course it is possible that I have not fully understood what you are trying to achieve other than as an exercise in the essay form. That is not to say it is without worth but, more simply put, I am hard pressed to understand the motivation and context for this effort. I do appreciate the bibliography. It's the first one I've seen on this site! :) If I have one revision-like comment it would be to provide your working translations for the French. Not everyone is fluent and even those that are may not interpret it the same way in English. It might help to disambiguate those points and provide a defence should they prove questionable in some way. Thank you for sharing your ideas. I found them very interesting.

-Tam

[James Hades]

Thank you so much for the analytical feedback! I will be editing it and providing a translation for the foucault's french quotes. And the overall thesis is to be added but so far, the overall meaning of this piece is about how the representation of madness in both texts is false. Madness is not something that actually originates as a pathology, nor originates in the character itself, it is a social construct attributed to those who appear to stray from their "ideology" that is given by the ruling class, or social conventions. I will of course be adding much more evidence soon and am writing a second part to it now. I do realise the audience here is probably not best suited but i wanted to get some minimal feedback inso far as it would help me go forward and it has thanks to you and placebo's comment below. Thanks again :)

[Enigma]

Definitely on the editorial and article side of pieces. The first of which I've actually come across in my time on Writers Cafe so it was certainly a big change for me to come across something as interesting as this. Your ideology and how you described each of the two pieces and tied them into one greater meaning is definitely different, and I liked it. You think rationally and it suits your style of writing. This was definitely an enjoyable thing to read and makes me rethink my entire opinion of Fight Club... Which is a beautiful thing.

Keep on writing xo

[Scott Metro]

An interesting and unusual write.
You should be doing articles in Magazines...

Enjoyed it.
Scott