Notes from the Attic-Ruminations on Attics, Angels and Madness
(From a story written in 2008) I mentioned the idea of the Madwoman in the Attic and the Angel in House in my last blog. Essentially this is the way that that goes: In 1979, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gunbar came out with a profound criticism asserting that the male voice had been heard for too long in literature.
The name of their ground-breaking work, Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, identified the two aforementioned stereotypes. The Angel in the House realizes that material and physical comforts are gifts from her husband and her goal in life is to please her husband and her children. Virginia Woolf’s reference to her own mother as “intensely sympathetic, immensely charming, utterly unselfish, excelling in the difficult arts of family life…..she sacrificed herself daily.” Woolf claimed she heard her mother’s voice until she wrote To the Lighthouse whereby she “exorcised the voice of the angel and all expectations that came with it.”
Well…..I don’t know where Virginia’s Room of One’s Own was located but I’m guessing the attic was probably in the running since she filled her pockets with rocks and walked peacefully into the water to her death. One must wonder if that voice of the Angel in the House was ever completely exorcised?
I think of all of the madwomen in literature that have been relegated to the “Attic” and it is heartbreaking. Chances are it’s not one of those trendy renovated attics like we see on HGTV. It’s more the cobwebby, dank and dark attics of our youth. Of course Jane Eyre, the angel in the house that she was…..a little rebellious, yes but in the end, she returns to Rochester and despite the fact that he kept Bertha, his first wife, locked in the attic for years, Jane dons the dress and walks the aisle. I would be willing to bet that when the mansion was rebuilt after Bertha burned it down, it did not have an attic. Surely Jane had enough wherewithal to prevent a repeat of the “Upper Room” syndrome.
The absolute most frightening case of the “Madwoman in the Attic” is in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper. Here a woman is stripped of all meaningful and productive work, medicated by her arrogant and maniacal doctor/husband and, with no other stimuli than the wallpaper, the pattern and designs become increasingly intriguing, and a “figure of a woman soon appears” in the design. Out of sheer madness brought on my a life with no purpose and a life isolated in the tower room, she begins to envision a woman creeping on all fours behind the “bars” created by the shadows trying to escape her prison. It’s terrifying especially for an attic-dweller like me.
This is a cautionary tale to those of us who need to feel productive, who long for her own voice long ago muted by duty. I have been a stand by your man woman. I am not anymore. That is for another day; however, I have also been the diagnosed “patient” convinced that she is unfit, unworthy, unimportant. Luckily, I escaped that particular tower room. There’s danger ahead for those who are asked to give it up whatever that “it” is that makes you — — YOU — that’s all I’ll say about that. Well actually, that came from the woman in wallpaper who I talked to each morning
Oh, and one more little tidbit that is just the icing on the cake for the Madwoman — she is “sexually fallen” whatever that means! I’m not touching that one with a ten foot pole dance.
When I think about attics and angels and madness I wonder how far we have come? I know that growing up in the South it certainly behooves a maiden to be able to baste a turkey, bake a cake, clean an oven, nurture a crying baby, wake up early and make the coffee, stand at the door with your lipstick on……and, of course, be a hellcat in the bedroom. This is an old stereotype though, right? I walk along the fringe of the stereotype at times: I have worn red lipstick, I love sexy shoes, I wear makeup, and sometimes, admittedly, I wear mascara to bed makes me feel better about myself. Here’s the thing: when the angel in the house decides to fly the coop, where oh where does she go? Is she replaced with another halo-hanging sweetie pie while she screams her head off in the attic? I don’t know — -where is Bertha when you need her?
Well…enough ruminating for the day…..It’s time to come down the attic stairs and put the casserole in the oven.
