Insanity and Feminism Throughout Literature

The first thing I thought of when we began talking about and reading Wide Sargasso Sea, was a short story I read last year in class called The Yellow Wallpaper.  The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman, who has supposedly gone insane, and is banished to the attic in the summer home of her and her husband.  While locked in the attic, it becomes the only safe place for her to be, and inside the wallpaper she believes is a woman trapped behind the ugliness and smell of the paper.  She is determined to take down the paper and free the woman trapped behind the paper.  In the beginning of the story, you are told she had just given birth to a baby, so all of these actions would today be known as postpartum depression.  The story is a lot more involved and at the end, she crawls around the room as though she is the women that she has just set free from behind the wallpaper, and actually is pretty funny and creepy how it is written.  Here is a link to the full text of the writing, I really enjoyed the piece and it isn’t too long, definitely worth at least looking over: http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

In the beginning of The Yellow Wallpaper as in the beginning of Wide Sargasso Sea, neither woman seems to be as insane as the people labeling them like to think that they are.  It’s only until they are locked away in a room to continuously think and over analyze what is happening and what they are feeling that the insanity becomes more and more prominent.  Like what was said in class, when anyone is forced into solitude and all they have are the thoughts going around in their mind, the sanest person would eventually go insane.  These novels all take an interesting spin on feminism and how a woman is treated in a patriarchal society.  How differently things would be, had they not been married to the man they were married to.  For many, that is what the women in The Yellow Wallpaper saying she is finally free is about, finally being free from the marriage that has made her so miserable.  Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette definitely had her moments of insanity before she was locked away to a room, but wouldn’t anyone go somewhat mad, after being raised by a mother like hers and having lived a young life the way she did?  Antoinette has a need for protection and to feel safe, she is in constant need of these feelings.  And for the most part, feels more comfortable around black people and not her own people.  The constant not being able to be a part of society that accepts her for who she is, and having a husband that won’t give her the comfort that she needs, is enough to drive her to insanity.  This insanity though comes from never fitting in and always being a part of a patriarchal society that didn’t understand her needs.  Most in our society that don’t feel like they fit in or are outcasts, eventually are driven to outlandish insanity too.