Narrating Women’s Madness In Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest: An Ecofeminist Analysis

Madness as a Form of “Female Malady” or Resistance

For centuries, it has been revealed that the number of women in mental institutions outnumbers that of men (Showalter, 1985) and implied that madness was an exclusively female condition, with the coinage of the term ‘female malady’. In short, women are prone to mental illnesses as compared to men. It is further supported by several women writers such as Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkin Gilman, Charlotte Brontë and others who depict female malady as women’s syndrome associated with the volatility of women’s emotion. Jackson delves more into the intricacies of women’s madness, and the trials Elizabeth Richmond faces on a daily basis and soon being diagnosed as multiple personality disorder.

Multiple personality disorder is a disorder that is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct and complex identities or personality. It is also known as dissociative identity disorder. Jackson also offers readers glimpses into how women’s madness is fabricated in the text, as she does not necessarily portray it as something enormously negative but instead, depicted as a young woman’s battle against the social conventions termed as “psychiatric imperialism” (Chesler, 2005). The mixed perspectives also present Elizabeth from several points of views that create a deeper understanding of who she is and how she is like. Jackson spun the tale of a young woman’s gradual descent into madness into something complex that should be taken seriously by providing a platform through the mixed narratives that allow the readers to relate to Elizabeth and the struggles she faced. The four personalities within Elizabeth Richmond suggest a fragmentation of identity, which symbolically represents a form of resistance against the rigid social constructions, or rather, against patriarchy itself. The personalities within her that gradually emerged are vastly different from the frail and weak Elizabeth Richmond. Consequently, she sits in a very unique position that enables her to switch from one personality to another as an act of protest and rebellion against the subjugation women faced.

Elizabeth Richmond’s Environmental Identity

Clayton and Opotow (2003) argues that “because the social aspects of identity are so obvious and so important, psychologists often overlook the impact of nonsocial (or at least nonhuman) objects in defining identity” (p. 45). In The Bird’s Nest , different personalities are triggered as a result of the place itself, and what emotions the specific place evokes within Elizabeth. The notion of “place” and identity are inevitably connected, it is the surrounding environments that insistently shape an individual’s sense of Self. As identity and place are inexorably linked and thus, Elizabeth Richmond’s multiple personality disorder is better understood as to why certain personalities only reveal themselves in certain places. In order to unravel Elizabeth’s environmental identity, the present study will examine the notion of place she is in (i.e. natural environment and social environment). Social aspects of identity are often overlooked in the construction of one’s identity. Hence, Clayton, and Opotow (2003) argues that environmental identity interacts with the natural or social world to construct a sense of Self in society. Clayton further elaborates that it is:

A sense of connection to some part of the non-human natural environments…a belief that the environment is important to us and an important part of who we are and can be similar to another collective identity in providing us with a sense of connection, of being part of a larger whole, and with a recognition of the similarity between ourselves and others (p. 45-46).

The shaping of one’s identity is influenced by both environments, especially during the 1950s, in which patriarchal mentality shroud the meaning of being a woman. Women’s restricted roles in the patriarchal society segregate and place women in the locus of passivity. However, Elizabeth Richmond, being positioned in a powerless situation, her multiple personalities represent a quandary that helps her to regain her sense of agency and further challenge the authority in the novel. The understanding of her own mental conditions unleash her inner trauma and aids her to reconstruct her sense of Self.

Elizabeth Richmond’s Madness in the Multifaceted Environment

The title of Jackson’s novel symbolically represents a place , like a bird’s nest, aims to accommodate the three other alter-personalities. As mentioned earlier, the present and subsequent sections examine Elizabeth Richmond’s resistance towards patriarchy in both social and natural environments. The social environment in the discussion refers to a place with finitude and physicality, where meaningful interactions are made. The meaningful interaction at the particular place includes a discussion on Elizabeth’s limited social circle, mainly with Aunt Morgen, Doctor Wright and the alter-personalities within herself (i.e. Beth, Betsy, and Bess). The multifaceted environments include the house she lives in with Aunt Morgen, her workplace, the museum, Doctor Wright’s office and finally, New York. Jackson’s mastery of gothic elements in her work illustrates the isolation of natural elements from its social context that eventually contribute to the creation of an oppressed environment. In the museum where she works:

Elizabeth Richmond had a corner of an office on the third floor; it was the section of the museum closet, as it were, to the surface, the section where correspondence with the large world outside was carried on freely, where least shelter was offered to cringing scholarly souls (Jackson, 1954, p. 2).

At home, Aunt Morgen, her only relative who takes care of her is being portrayed as a masculine figure throughout the novel and it is shown in the following excerpt:

Type of woman freely described as “masculine,” if she had been a man she would have cut a very poor figure indeed. If she had been a man, she would have been middle-sized, weak-jawed, shifty-eyed, and clumsy; fortunately, having been born not a man, she had turned out a woman, and had of necessity adopted from adolescence (with what grief, perhaps, and frantic railings against the iniquities of fate, which made her sister lovely) the personality of the gruff, loud-voiced woman so invariably described as “masculine” (Jackson, 1954, p. 8).

The theory of ecofeminism is substantial in exploring the connection between women and their place to achieve selfhood. Ecofeminism thoroughly probes into the connections between women to their environments; to arrive at a conclusion that they are essentially viable in the construction of one’s identity. Even though the cause of her headache is unknown, it is partly due to the unruly environments of the place itself.

The present study also unveils Elizabeth Richmond’s multiple personality disorder as a form of resistance against patriarchal imprisonment. Women’s madness is depicted as a form of expression to go against the hegemonic power structure in the postmodern setting. Thus, although Elizabeth’s body itself represents a site for powerlessness and misogyny, her madness allows her to delve deeper into her traumatic experiences. Nevertheless, the domination by certain alter-personalities through Doctor Wright’s unsuccessful psychiatrist treatments further destabilize Elizabeth’s mind and her body as the alter-personalities gradually taking control over her sense of Self . The multifaceted environments in The Bird’s Nest affect the emergence of her multiple personalities significantly. Elizabeth Richmond’s madness is perceived as atypical in the postmodern setting. The problem lies with the social environment where Elizabeth is in. For example, Doctor Wright’s treatment separates and distinguishes the alter-personalities.

Elizabeth’s alter-personalities trigger a sense of consciousness within her that later reveals the root of her trauma. Interestingly, the different environments further trigger Elizabeth’s alter-personalities to unlock her childhood trauma that eventually causes the splitting of Self into several personalities. Memories of her wounds are paradoxically unimpeded through the alter-personalities’ consciousness to reenact with her traumatic past. The traumatic reliving of her childhood wounds returns typically at certain environments, via certain alter-personalities that was previously repressed by Elizabeth. The traumatic experiences thrust into Elizabeth’s consciousness as her alter-personality is basically fixated to her trauma. Elizabeth unconsciously obstructs certain episodes that include her mother’s new boyfriend, Robin. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth is mainly concerned about her relationship with her dead mother. Elizabeth tries very hard to repress her memories of her mother. Captivatingly, Elizabeth’s traumatic memories re-emerge in the conscious mind of her alter-personality. The different pieces of memories, narrated by her alter-personalities enable the readers to reconnect with Elizabeth’s madness.

Environmental Identity and Women’s Madness

In the postmodern setting, multiple personality disorder, a relatively new form of madness receives very little attention in the discourse of madness. Similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who possesses two different personalities, Shirley Jackson’s woman protagonist in The Bird’s Nest , Elizabeth Richmond unknowingly splits her Self into four different personalities. According to Showalter (2013, p. 164), it is the “multiplicity [that] has offered women a way to express forbidden aspects of the self.” The emergence of different personalities in the novel illustrates the madwoman’s resistance towards patriarchal dominance in relation to the discourse of madness. Hence, the present study interprets the issue of women’s madness from an ecofeminist perspective that focuses on Elizabeth’s environmental identity where different environments are probable in undermining her sense of identity. According to Clayton and Opotow (2003),

Identities describe social roles, and roles entail responsibilities. An environmental identity—how we orient ourselves to the natural world—can describe the way in which abstract global issues become immediate and personal for an individual. An environmental identity also prescribes a course of action that is compatible with individuals’ sense of who they are (p. 2).

Kluft (2010) describes multiple personality disorder as “conditions in which an individual’s customary personality or way of being is replaced by an alternate personality or way of being, whose activities are unknown to the customary personality” (p. 61). Hence, Showalter (2013) laments the usage of different terms to address this multiple personality disorder such as “split or multiple personalities, double consciousness, and alternating personality” (p. 160) and Showalter further argues that it is previously linked to spiritualism. Kluft (2010) states that “multiple personalities involve problems with identity, memory, thinking, containment, cohesive conation, and the switching process.” (p. 62) Therefore, a multiple personality disorder patient tends to generate different personalities, where “they are relatively stable and enduring entities with fairly consistent ways of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self” (p. 62).

This brings our attention to the possibility of socio-cultural influences on the fluidity of madwoman’s environmental identity. According to Clayton and Opotow (2003) “identities describe social roles, and roles entail responsibilities” (p. 2). On a similar note, an environmental identity connects us to the environment and make sense of who we are (Clayton & Opotow 2003). Chawla (1999) argues that environmental identities derive from the meaningful interactions between the individual with his/her natural and social environments. These interactions significantly and emotionally assist the individual to understand their sense of Self. In The Bird’s Nest , the different environments trigger the different sides of Elizabeth, bring into being the different sides of Elizabeth Richmond, the compartmentalized Self. The different personalities play their own roles and function to protect Elizabeth when she is most vulnerable at a certain place. Hence, the alter-personalities compensate Elizabeth’s marginalized Self. Unlike other forms of mental disorder, Allison and Schwarz (1999) state that “multiple personality disorder is actually a coping mechanism of the mind. It is a way of handling problems that otherwise seems overwhelming. Where the whole individual can’t cope, a separate alter-personality is created to handle different emotions” (p. 37).

Shirley Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest echoes the internal conflict of a young woman, living in a patriarchal society where a mental disorder is a form of the disease, inherited from her mother. Jackson’s madwoman archetype is given a voice to narrate her trauma and mad experiences, whereas most madwomen characters are silenced throughout the discourse of madness.