A THOUSAND AND ONE THRESHOLDS OF ARDOR: 
A Critical Analysis of Female Madness in 21st Century Western
Literature
by
HILLARY ELLMAN
A THESIS
Presented to the Department of English
and the Robert D. Clark Honors College 
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts
June 2020
An Abstract of the Thesis of
Hillary Ellman for the degree of Bachelor of Arts
in the Department of English to be taken June 2020
Title: A Thousand and One Thresholds of Ardor: A Critical Analysis of Female
Madness in 21st-Century Western Literature
Approved:               Mary E. Wood                          
Primary Thesis Advisor
This project examines depictions of female psychological difference in two 
Western contemporary primary texts: Elyn Saks’ 2007 memoir, The Center Cannot 
Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Harper & Row, New York) and Mira T. Lee’s 
2019 novel, Everything Here is Beautiful (Penguin Books, New York). Following a 
detailed discussion of the historical conversation surrounding female literary madness, I
argue, using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, that recent narratives by women
portray feminine malaise in a manner which subverts dominant hegemonic discourse by
challenging the third-person social and clinical practices that currently exist to define 
and contend with gendered and psychological categories of identity. In specific, I 
demonstrate how primary texts, in both memoir and novel form, destabilize the “speech/
noise” binary, a cultural practice which French philosopher, Jacques Ranciere, outlines 
and censures in his 1999 text, Disagreement (Regents of the University of Minnesota). 
The “speech/noise” binary is the process by which society discredits any discourse that 
deviates from the dominant mode of communication, defining it as unintelligible 
“noise” rather than rational “speech.”
In addition to exploring the discrepancies between first-person and outside 
understandings of madness, I also examine the complexities of identity, emphasizing 
the fruitfulness of using literary analysis to understand the role of sociocultural factors 
beyond gender and psychological condition, such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic 
status, in the development of ideological understandings and literary narrations of 
human experiences.
ii
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank my Thesis Committee: Professor Mary Wood, my 
Primary Advisor; Professor David Frank, my Thesis Prospectus Class Instructor, Clark 
Honors College Representative and Academic Advisor; and Assistant Professor José 
Cortez, my English Department Second Reader, for helping me to fully examine my 
specific topic, which is personal to my own life experiences, and to consider the various
literary perspectives and interdisciplinary contexts related to the subject matter with 
which I have worked. I am extremely grateful that each of these uniquely qualified and 
equally dedicated faculty members has had the kindness, patience and expertise to work
with me throughout this rigorous yet rewarding process. In particular, I would like to 
thank Professors Wood and Frank for having the flexibility to accommodate the 
particular barriers I encountered which made the process much more challenging, both 
emotionally and logistically; I could not have completed this work without their 
unending support and understanding. I would also like to give a special thanks to 
Professor Cortez, whose Fall 2019 English 468 Border Theory class transformed my 
ability to evaluate sensitive subjects and acknowledge the nuance that exists in literary 
descriptions of the human experience. His course material contributed significantly to 
the theoretical framework I employ in my argument, and my final product would not 
have been the same without his support. I would also like to offer a big thank you to the 
Clark Honors College and its professors and administrators for the outstanding 
academic experience that I have had the privilege of receiving over the past four years. I
would not change it for the world.
iii
I also extend an emphatic thank-you to my mother, Kathleen Ellman, and 
stepfather, Monte Wood, for the endless love and commitment with which they have 
blessed me throughout my college experience, and particularly for their faith in my 
ability to successfully complete the Thesis requirement.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge two people who are no longer with us but 
whose impact on my life has gone unforgotten during my University experience and 
this process specifically. To my late father, David Ellman, everything I do is to honor 
you and make you proud. You are in my thoughts every day and I owe my academic 
success to your memory. To my friend Alex Oyombe Gradin, who passed away last 
May at the beginning of my Thesis project, though I only knew you for a short time, I 
write this paper in memory of you and in honor of the beautiful soul and limitless 
potential that were robbed from the world the night we lost you.
iv
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements iii
Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review 1
Introduction 1
Review of Relevant Literature 3
First Phase: Gilbert & Gubar, Baym, Showalter 4
Second Phase: The Femininity/Patriarchy Binary 9
Third Phase: 21st Century Understanding of Nuance 10
Chapter 2: Phenomenology 15
Hornstein’s Theory of Phenomenology 15
Phenomenology in The Center Cannot Hold 16
Phenomenology and Feminism 20
Chapter 3: Speech, Noise, and Psychosis 22
Ranciere’s Disagreement 22
Speech, Noise and Schizophrenia 23
Speech and Noise in Saks 24
Language in Novel Form 27
Chapter 4: The Complexities of Identity 32
Feminist-Disability Theory and Female Literary Madness 32
The Laugh of the Medusa 36
Cixous vs. Baym 37
Chapter 5: Conclusions 41
Bibliography 44
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Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review
Introduction
Representations of female madness1 are everywhere. Mass media, advertising, 
the press, literature, and many other platforms participate in discourse surrounding 
women and their psychosocial condition. Despite society’s changing relationship with, 
and understanding of, those who live with non-normative psychological conditions, 
human beings are apt to use loaded terms in labeling others, particularly women, such 
as “crazy,” “nuts,” “schizo,” “unstable,” “psycho,” “hysterical,” “unhinged,” and 
myriad other words which indicate a lack of understanding or empathy towards those 
who live with mental health conditions. According to the National Institute of Mental 
Health, “22.3% of women in the United States experience mental illness” (U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services). Despite the undeniable prevalence of the 
condition, stereotypes and social oppression still prevail against affected populations.
In regard to academia, psychological difference is relevant in many different 
fields, including literature, history, sociology, psychology, neuroscience and more. 
Throughout my undergraduate studies of English Literature at the University of Oregon,
I have encountered frequent literary representations of female madness. For example, in
Charlotte Brontë’s prominent Victorian novel, Jane Eyre (1847), she employs the well-
1 In the disability studies field, terminology is a subject of controversy and fosters a spectrum of belief in 
regard to the sensitivity of certain terms. This paper will avoid using terms such as “illness” and 
“disorder” in relation to psychosocial condition, challenging the tendency to label both physical and 
mental conditions which diverge from social norms as “impairments” in order to subvert the general 
stigma that has historically accompanied differences of this nature. For this reason, I will use objective 
discourse that destigmatizes the conditions I discuss, such as “psychosocial difference,” “behavioral non-
normativity” and “psychological condition.” Furthermore, within the context of this paper, the word 
“madness,” despite its subjective and negatively connotative implications, derives from the long-standing 
literary tradition of using this specific term in relation to the thematic textual engagement with 
psychological non-normativity.
known trope of the “madwoman in the attic” through the character of Mr. Rochester’s 
secret wife, Bertha Mason. Additionally, in my Junior year, I took an English 399 class, 
the topic of which was Electronic Literature, and due in part to the unconventional 
nature of these texts, the themes of gender and psychological condition were relevant. 
In a piece of 2017 literary theory we read for the class, entitled “Hypertext: Storyspace 
to Twine,” the authors, Astrid Ensslin and Lyle Skains, state that “frequently 
recommended Twine games… all incorporate innovative gameplay and interaction, 
focusing the reader/player’s attention on questions of love, gender, sexuality, body 
awareness, and mental illness—using the text-dominance and intimacy afforded by 
hypertext to explore deeply personal topics that mainstream gaming rarely addresses” 
(Ensslin & Skains 302). As I stated previously, I have worked intermittently to 
understand this subject and how it functions in a literary context and within the scope of
the relevant courses. However, I have yet to engage deeply with the theme, nor have I 
had the opportunity to place it into a broader, more interdisciplinary academic 
background. 
Female psychological difference is a subject that is extremely personal to me. 
Not only do I live with it myself, it also affects the daily lives of many women about 
whom I care deeply. Furthermore, over the course of my undergraduate education, I 
have been passionate about literary analysis, not only because of the systematic and 
logical skill that the discipline instills in its scholars, but also because of the ways in 
which literature both informs and interacts with various elements of society and self. 
Literary criticism is a particularly effective way to examine and question cultural 
understandings of madness, because primary texts with this thematic focus provide 
2
unique artistic insight into the firsthand experience of mental and emotional distress. A 
literary approach also allows for the close-reading and theoretical analysis of the kinds 
of language that repress women and other nondominant groups through harmful 
ideological frameworks and, conversely, the discursive choices that appear in works by 
women and assist them in subverting these labels.
3
Review of Relevant Literature
In terms of the existing critical discussion of the topic at hand, I have identified 
three main waves of argument in the field. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar initiate the 
first phase of criticism through their 1979 book entitled The Madwoman in the Attic 
(Yale University, Conneticut), in which they discuss Victorian literature through the 
context of feminist literary theory. This movement also includes counterarguments from
other critics, such as Nina Baym, who highlight the internalized misogyny present in 
Gilbert and Gubar’s work. Finally, this period marks the beginning of more 
interdisciplinary explorations of female madness, such as Elaine Showalter’s 1985 
work, The Female Malady (Pantheon Books, New York), which examines the history of
female madness in the context of English cultural and psychiatric discourse and 
practices. This first phase of discussion, while it engages with themes of madness, 
focuses generally on the female role within literature and society. The field becomes 
more specific in its second phase as female madness becomes a literary focus of its 
own. Finally, more contemporary, 21st-century criticisms tend to move away from this 
binary opposition between the patriarchy and female madness, fostering understandings 
which acknowledge the multifacetedness of human identity and engaging more 
holistically with the intersections between madness, gender, race, and other 
sociocultural factors which also influence the literature significantly.
First Phase: Gilbert & Gubar, Baym, Showalter
When Gilbert and Gubar wrote The Madwoman in the Attic, the academic 
literary canon in the West had almost entirely limited itself to the work of white, British
and American men. Though academics had begun to look at singular feminist texts, 
4
such as Virginia Woolf’s 1929 extended essay A Room of One’s Own (Hogarth Press, 
London), within the context of traditional discourse, academics had only just begun to 
identify literature by women as a unique genre, or as Gilbert and Gubar state in their 
introduction, “a distinctively female literary tradition… which no one had yet defined in
its entirety” (26). Much of their work in The Madwoman in the Attic focuses on the 
female place within a patriarchal and misogynistic literary tradition, and the resulting 
anxieties that present themselves in literature written by females. In fact, the book 
begins by asking: “Is a pen a metaphorical penis?” (37). Later, the authors ask: “If the 
pen is a metaphorical penis, with what organ can females generate texts?” (46). 
Essentially, Gilbert and Gubar understand literary tradition as a subject of male 
ownership, and even further, the literary male, as crafted by men, is malleable given that
male authors have the opportunity to represent their own gender however they see fit. 
Gilbert and Gubar state that the female position within literary works is quite different, 
as “the chief creature man has generated is woman,” meaning men, who occupy the 
foremost literary stage, construct cultural understandings of women, who then do not 
have the opportunity to define themselves (58).
In terms of madness and its role within this understanding of the literary system,
Gilbert and Gubar argue that male authors have created “eternal types” which constrain 
women’s identities to dichotomous labels: the “angel” and the “monster.” The angel 
represents the docile, repressed, selfless, male-pleasing character who occupies the 
traditional female space in a narrative; Virginia Woolf defines her as the “angel in the 
house” (Gilbert and Gubar 75). The monster is the angel’s dark opposite, representing 
men’s anxieties towards the female subversion of her expected angelic qualities. One 
5
salient example Gilbert and Gubar delineate in regard to this angel-monster binary is 
Snow White and her evil stepmother. They state that: 
It seems as if there is a sense in which the intense desperation with which
the Queen enacts her rituals of self-absorption causes (or is caused by) 
her hatred of Snow White. Innocent, passive, and selflessly free of the 
mirror madness that consumes the Queen, Snow White represents the 
ideal of renunciation that the Queen has already renounced at the 
beginning of the story. Thus Snow White is destined to replace the 
Queen because the Queen hates her, rather than vice versa (Gilbert and 
Gubar 119).
Gilbert and Gubar argue here that Snow White’s angelic qualities come into direct 
conflict with the Queen’s characteristics and intentions in the story. Even further, the 
Queen’s monstrosity, which the narrative often emphasizes in the scenes where she 
interacts with the Magic Mirror, manifests through the “madness” with which she 
expresses her desire to eliminate Snow White altogether. By placing the Queen’s mad 
desires at odds with Snow White’s patriarchal perfection, then, the hegemonic discourse
stigmatizes female madness and defines it as monstrous.
Of course, it is impossible to review Gilbert and Gubar’s criticism without 
acknowledging the character who gave the book its title: Bertha Mason, from Charlotte 
Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre. Brontë’s work demonstrates the ways in which women 
writers reproduce the literary expectations that male authors have created for them. 
Gilbert and Gubar view Bertha, the secret, attic-residing first wife of Jane’s eventual 
husband, as Jane’s “dark double” due to her role as a “madwoman” within the narrative.
Bertha embodies the opposite of what makes Jane a favorable character, and thus she 
must perish in order for Jane to achieve love and upward mobility through her marriage 
with Rochester. Even further, Gilbert and Gubar state that “Rochester’s description of 
Bertha as a ‘monster’ ironically echoes Jane’s own fear of being a monster… the literal 
6
and symbolic death of Bertha frees her from the furies that torment her and makes 
possible a marriage of equality—makes possible, that is, wholeness within herself” 
(807). Similar to the construction of characters in Snow White, by creating this 
relationship between Jane and Bertha, Brontë’s narrative embeds the quality of madness
within the category of “monster.” Gilbert and Gubar’s text was groundbreaking, 
influential, and sought to give women a voice in a field where they had lacked it for so 
long. Regardless of the progression they enacted through their work, they received 
backlash from other feminist critics for the ways in which their criticism tended to 
internalize and reproduce the very patriarchal structures of which they were so critical, 
in that Gilbert and Gubar’s theory fails to apply feminist considerations to female 
characters besides the heroine and constructs a strict binary between men and women. 
As a result, they overlook the variation of identity that exists within the category of 
“woman,” specifically in relation to the complex spectrum of representation and 
experience that accompanies female racial identity.
One example of a countercriticism towards Gilbert and Gubar is Nina Baym’s 
frequently cited 1984 work, “The Madwoman and her Languages: Why I Don’t do 
Feminist Literary Theory” (Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Oklahoma).  Baym 
argues that Gilbert and Gubar’s understanding of Bertha stems from the violence Jane’s 
first-person narrative imposes upon her; rather than demonstrating any form of 
consciousness towards the similarities between Bertha and herself, Jane merely 
misplaces her anger at Rochester onto Bertha. From the perspective of the narrative, 
Baym says, “The woman, rather than the man, becomes her adversary; that woman’s 
death is as necessary as Rochester’s blinding for Jane’s liberation” (48). However, 
7
rather than understanding the inherent misogyny that accompanies Brontë’s narrative 
decisions in this regard, Gilbert and Gubar direct their feminist sympathies exclusively 
to Jane, failing to understand the misogyny that accompanies both Jane’s own violent 
descriptions of Bertha as well as the problematic mechanism of removing a female 
character from the narrative as a condition for the success of the heroine.2
Baym additionally challenges Gilbert and Gubar’s rhetoric in discussing 
Bertha’s inability to speak. Critics often understand Bertha’s voicelessness as defiance 
through her own rejection of the dominant, masculine language, because as Baym notes,
theory typically asserts that the principal mode of speaking in Western society is the 
“masculine language,” due to male dominance in the social and academic sphere.  The 
female mode of speaking, as often argued by feminist theorists: “is open, nonlinear, 
unfinished, fluid, exploded, fragmented, polysemic, attempting to speak the body, i.e., 
the unconscious, involving science, incorporating the simultaneity of life as opposed to 
or clearly different from pre-conceived, oriented masterly or ‘didactic’ languages” 
(Baym 49). Baym rejects this assertion, saying that “rational discourse” is available to 
everyone, not just males. Women, she argues, do not decide to become men by merely 
using reason in their communication. Thus, in Baym’s argument, the traditional feminist
2 Contemporary literary criticism affirms the internalized misogyny that Baym identifies in her theory, 
however critics have further complicated this understanding of Bertha’s role within Jane Eyre by also 
considering her racially ambiguous, Creole descent and its impact upon her space within the discourse 
and plot of the novel. In Patricia McKee’s 2009 criticism, “Racial Strategies in Jane Eyre” from Victorian
Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, United States), she seeks to “clarify the use of 
ambiguity to the narrative’s racialism” (67). McKee takes the position that despite Bertha’s phenotypical 
whiteness, Jane treats her as a “dark primitive,” using Victorian discursive practices, such as her 
descriptions of Bertha’s perceived “madness,” that connote “biological darkness,” thus racializing Bertha 
by way of her Colonial descent. Jane does this rhetorical violence on Bertha as a means of subverting her 
own past disadvantages and raising herself to a higher position within the Victorian social hierarchy of 
whiteness (70). With this argument, McKee asserts that the constituents of social identity extend beyond 
the scope of the male/female gender binary, particularly in terms of how race, class and ethnicity intersect
with gender to produce a nuanced discursive practice that assigns socially constructed, arbitrary labels to 
those in the category of “other” as a means of reinforcing and justifying the dominance of the hegemony.
8
theoretical notion of “female speech” actually reinforces and contributes to traditional 
patriarchal definitions of women as the “hopelessly irrational, disorganized, ‘weaker 
sex’ desired by the masculine other. The theory leads to a language that is intensely 
private, politically ineffectual, designed to fail” (50). Overall, Baym’s analysis tends to 
highlight the disagreement and uncertainty that accompanies feminist literary theory 
and criticism, particularly when it comes to analyzing the figure of the “madwoman.” 
Her work sends a message of caution to those who contribute to this field of study by 
showing that critics engaging with themes of female madness should be mindful not to 
inadvertently reinforce patriarchal ideology through their analysis.
In Elaine Showalter’s 1985 book, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and 
English Culture, 1830-1980 (Virago Press, London), she presents “both a feminist 
history of psychiatry and a cultural history of madness as a female malady” (5). She 
supports this claim of a “female malady” with multiple examples of “the pervasive 
cultural association of woman and madness” (4). When Showalter published her work, 
Gilbert, Gubar and Baym had already contributed their above criticisms to the academic
conversation, however The Female Malady widens the existing breadth of exploration, 
examining madness not only within literary practice, but also in other forms of popular 
culture, in social structure, and in psychiatric rhetoric and procedure. She traces the 
interaction of woman and malaise across three phases of English psychiatric history: 
“psychiatric Victorianism (1830-1870), psychiatric Darwinism (1870-1920), and 
psychiatric modernism (1920-1980)” (17). During each of these periods, Showalter 
argues, the cultural and psychiatric spheres consistently used a variety of ideological 
justifications to reinforce the link between women and madness. Dominant 
9
understanding has historically connected malaise to female sexuality, feminine nature, 
female delicacy and emotion, and violence against men (7-8). Overall, then, rather than 
attempting to identify the “cause” of female madness in individuals, Showalter’s 
research traces patterns within her cultural framework in regard to the ideologies that 
have defined and constructed social and clinical considerations of the female malady. 
Importantly, this approach continues the first-wave trend of viewing gender as a binary 
and neglecting to consider other elements of identity that also contribute to the 
representations and experiences of the subjects. As a result, Showalter’s work 
constructs an implicit category of “female” which, despite the nonspecific nature of the 
word itself, refers almost exclusively to white, English females and exemplifies the lack
of representation and nuance in this first body of criticism.
Second Phase: The Femininity/Patriarchy Binary
Following the fundamental debate initiated by Gilbert & Gubar, Baym and 
Showalter, a main area of analysis on which literary criticisms in the field tended to 
focus was the idea that female madness within literature serves as a response to, or 
rejection of, patriarchal structures and the male gaze. In Allen Thiher’s 2004 book, 
“Revels in Madness: Insanity in Medicine and Literature,” (University of Michigan 
Press) he notes the then-recent development of narratives which support this view. He 
says:
Only in contemporary texts have women asserted that madness is a 
product of woman's condition—and have made this assertion in order to 
express a revolt that refuses sanity, or at least the sanity that requires 
integration into the patriarchal cybernetic system called culture. For this 
reason contemporary culture demands that one contrast male and female 
understandings of madness in literary texts (Thiher 294). 
10
Thiher’s observation demonstrates the importance of analyzing first-person, nonfiction 
narratives in this area of study; by understanding women’s own interpretations of their 
mental state and their position in society, critics can be better informed on this 
relationship between female madness and the patriarchy. In terms of applying this 
observation to his own analysis of literary texts, Thiher points to French feminist writer,
Marguerite Duras’ 20th-century texts. Within Duras’ work, Thiher recognizes that 
madness does not exist in relation to biological womanhood, but rather in conjunction 
with the role of the female in society. Similar to Thiher’s argument here, Baym also 
points out in her counterargument towards Gilbert and Gubar that, because femininity is
socially considered the opposite of masculinity, patriarchal hegemony dictates that 
madness is the contradiction of “masculine reason” and “male language” (Thiher 305). 
Thiher’s analysis therefore highlights just how critical this relationship is between 
societal structure and understandings of madness, both within those who experience it 
and from the hegemonic outward perspective.
Third Phase: 21st Century Understanding of Nuance
In the third and current phase of criticism in the field, critics have moved 
beyond examining female literary madness as a mere intersection between gender and 
mental state into a more comprehensive discussion that incorporates other aspects of 
cultural identity such as race, class, sexuality and psychiatric patient history. In Yu 
Yan’s 2016 paper, “Madness and Woman: A Feminist Interpretation of Madwomen in 
Woman on the Edge of Time,” (Higher Education of Social Science, Canada) she points 
to Michael Foucault’s 1964 philosophical and sociological text, Madness and 
Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Not only is Foucault’s text 
11
influential in many disciplines, it is particularly important within the specific context of 
the topic at hand and is cited by many relevant papers. Yan describes Foucault’s 
definition of madness as “the outcomes of supreme reason discourse, that is, the 
arbitrary judgement made by the rationalists who have the power of discourse against 
those inferior people” (Yan 32). In other words, to Foucault, madness represents the 
relationship between those in power and those who are powerless. In Yan’s study, she 
goes on to evaluate how Foucault’s theory interacts with the madness of Marge Piercy’s
protagonist, Connie Ramos, using this dualism between the powerful and the powerless 
to understand how her madness exists in relation to the society she occupies. Despite 
the fact that Foucault’s work exists outside the realm of literary analysis, it becomes 
foundational for Yan’s analysis of Connie’s character, though she also complexifies 
Foucault’s interpretation of madness by examining gender as an intersecting factor 
more closely than he does in his work.
Before moving into her more progressive analysis of Piercy’s work, Yan 
engages with the already-established practice of examining the relationship between 
madness and hegemonic masculinity in the work at hand. The story begins when, after 
losing custody over her daughter, Angelina, Connie is committed to a mental hospital 
for the second time. The doctors at the hospital only view her in terms of the medical 
notes from her first incarceration and, despite her excessive efforts to subvert the 
narrative that professionals have established around her and tell her own story to justify 
her actions, Connie is unable to escape notions that she is mad. In relation to this part of
the plot, Yan says “Her madness is an indictment of the patriarchal notion on what is a 
woman. It is an indictment of a system that insists so blindly on defining Ramos as 
12
violent and dangerous that it eventually makes her that way.” (Yan 39). Yan implies 
here that Connie is not “mad” in the beginning of her story. In fact, it is not until her 
doctors have repeatedly denied her of her own voice that she actually begins to adopt 
the qualities they impose upon her in the first place. Yan’s analysis, that Connie’s 
madness is first a construction by, then a response to, patriarchal expectations of 
women, parallels much of the rhetoric that exists within literary criticisms in this field 
of study. 
Yan later moves away from understanding Connie only in terms of her madness 
and her womanhood when she states that:
Marge Piercy’s participating in some social movements and the progress 
of feminism have already made her realize that the issue of women is far 
more [than] a gender issue, but also a complicated social and cultural 
problem. In order to make this point clear, Connie is represented as a 
woman, an ethnic and a once-claimed mad person at the same time in the
novel, which helps to make the contradictions more acute, the conflict 
more fierce and the problem clearer… The three kinds of disadvantaged 
role[s] of Connie interact with each other, co-contributing to her 
madness” (39).
By pointing out that the poignance of Piercy’s narrative stems not only from Connie’s 
womanhood, but also from her status as an ethnic woman, a woman of color, and a 
woman with a documented psychiatric history, Yan acknowledges that the construction 
of madness is founded and developed not only through gender, but also through other 
elements of social identity which strengthen the societal view of the madwoman as 
“other.” Though Connie attempts to avoid being labeled as “Mexican-American” 
through her white-sounding nickname (short for her Mexican-sounding given name, 
Consuelo) and her deliberate use of the English language to set herself apart from other 
Mexican Americans (Yan 37). Regardless of these attempts to conceal her ethnicity, 
however, Connie is still an “other” due to the color of her skin, noting that she feels the 
13
“‘shame of being second-class goods’” (37).  The resulting racial exclusion she faces 
within the social system in the text contributes both to the non-normative behavior she 
later exhibits as well as the labels that other characters and mental professionals apply 
to her. In addition, Yan notes that Piercy uses her understanding of the multifaceted 
framework of identity to challenge existing psychiatric practices by creating the utopian
communal society, Mattapoisett. She says:
Under Piercy’s pen, all people in Mattapoisett are respected and loved, 
and they are all equally treated, regardless of their gender, race, or other 
differences. In a word, as an egalitarian society which especially comes 
to women’s rescue, Mattapoisett accepts and even welcomes precisely 
the ‘madness’ that have marginalized Connie in the actual world, which 
powerfully questions and even deconstructs the dominant knowledge of 
madness in a certain society (Yan 40).
Albeit a fictional utopia that Piercy creates in order to contrast the repressive society in 
which Connie begins her story, Mattapoisett, through Yan’s interpretation, can serve as 
an allegorical suggestion for the “treatment” of psychological difference. Rather than 
otherizing those who live with mental “disorder,” the practices in Mattapoisett 
demonstrate the functionality that accompanies the acceptance of human beings’ 
various aspects of identity.
Yan’s work effectively concludes the review of relevant literature through its 
recognition of the social complexities that underlie both Connie’s psychological 
discomfort and the various ways in which others apply labels to her. A particular 
contemporary theoretical framework that can assist critics in understanding and 
addressing these complexities as they appear in primary texts is that of phenomenology.
The concept of phenomenology is rooted in philosophy and grapples specifically with 
the relationship between the “self” and the “world,” stressing the value of “lived 
experience” as a crucial source of information in regard to individual and societal 
14
consciousness. As far as evaluations of madness in contemporary literature, the practice 
of phenomenology is a productive means of analyzing psychological difference as it 
appears in various texts so that criticisms can base themselves on the actual experience 
of psychological non-normativity rather than traditional, hegemonic understandings of 
madness.
15
Chapter 2: Phenomenology
Hornstein’s Theory of Phenomenology
American psychologist Gail Hornstein’s 2013 essay in the journal Feminism 
and Psychology, entitled “Whose account matters? A challenge to feminist 
psychologists,” (Massachusetts) incorporates the phenomenological approach with 
feminist, psychological and literary theory in order to evaluate first-person 
consciousness and how it applies specifically to nonfiction narratives by those who 
experience, or have experienced, psychosis. Hornstein’s overarching conviction centers 
around the dissonance between medical and first-person descriptions of psychological 
“disorder,” highlighting the violence that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of 
Mental Disorders (DSM) and its derived practices inflict upon subjects of psychiatric 
evaluation. Hornstein says: 
Consider hearing voices, which the DSM calls ‘auditory hallucinations.’ 
People who have this experience often find the content of their voices – 
i.e. what the voices are actually saying – to be crucial to understanding 
and coping with them. But the DSM focuses solely on whether the 
voices are audible to others, and denies entirely the existence of positive,
non-pathological voices (Corstens et al., 2008; Romme and Escher, 
1989; Romme et al., 2009) (Hornstein 31).
Hornstein’s assertion through this quotation demonstrates the function of juxtaposing 
memoir-style narratives featuring psychosis against traditional, clinical expectations of 
the same. Just as Yan challenges the “dominant knowledge of madness in a certain 
society,” Hornstein’s theory implores its readers to find cultural significance in peoples’
lived experiences (Yan 40).
16
Phenomenology in The Center Cannot Hold
As Hornstein points out, phenomenology in the context of madness in literature 
is most effective within first-person narratives, such as Elyn Saks’ 2007 memoir, The 
Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Harper & Row, New York). In 
her work, the Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and 
Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould 
Law School describes her simultaneous experiences of living with paranoid 
schizophrenia and working her way through elite academic institutions such as 
Vanderbilt for undergraduate study, Oxford University for her master program as a 
Marshall Scholar, Yale Law School for her JD, and the New Center for Psychoanalysis 
for her Ph.D.. Saks’ dual description of her academic achievement and her psychosis is 
significant in that this combination of qualities negates the dominant clinical and social 
narrative which asserts that those who experience psychosis are incapable of “rational” 
comprehension and speech. By demonstrating the invalidity of such widespread beliefs 
in her case, Saks develops a foundation for using a phenomenological approach 
alongside her narrative as a means of forming a progressive interpretation of her 
psychosis.
One aspect of Saks’ work that emphasizes the tension between clinical and first-
person understandings of psychosis is her battle with weight fluctuation throughout her 
life. In her narrations of her adolescence, Saks notes that she starves herself with the 
specific intention of losing weight as a result of her parents’ fixation on weight loss and 
maintaining slim figures, then, after close monitoring from her parents in response to 
her evidently poor health, returns to a normal weight until her later experiences with 
17
psychosis. After her first institutionalization during her master program at Oxford, when
she goes to visit her parents in Paris, they again notice her frailty and encourage her to 
eat, after which she tells herself “I am bad. Only good people get food. I deserve to be 
starved. I deserve to be tortured. Starvation is a fitting torture for me” (Saks 75). By 
exposing the internal dialogue that drives her weight loss, Saks demonstrates the value 
of her psychological thoughts. As Hornstein asserts in her article, the “content of the 
voices” is “crucial to understanding and coping with them.” Saks’ narration of her own 
thoughts demonstrates a potential path towards treatment of her weight loss. 
Rather than engaging with these inner workings of her psychosis to combat her 
malnutrition, the professionals Saks encounters in medical settings base their advice off 
of the limited psychological knowledge of eating disorders that exists at the time. At 
MU10, the teaching hospital in New Haven where she receives inpatient treatment 
during her time at Yale Law, she speaks with fellow patient, Susan, who is being treated
for bulimia and recounts that her doctor told her she should “just stop” binging and 
purging. In response to this revelation, Saks states that “I remembered when my parents,
and Dr. Hamilton, said the same thing about my anorexia. ‘You know, it’s my opinion 
that ‘just don’t do it’ is usually said by somebody who just doesn’t get it’” (164). This 
quotation, which references the instruction she receives earlier from Dr. Hamilton, one 
of her doctors at the Warneford in Oxford, to “for now, just eat more,” both illuminates 
the problematic and seemingly routine practice of advising mere willpower to victims of
eating disorders as well as providing an example of the rift between institutional 
understandings and personal experiences with psychological difference (Saks 164). 
Other advice from Saks’ medical professionals includes taking antidepressant 
18
medication and focusing on how to make her “negative thoughts and feelings… go 
away” rather than “delving into [her] past or [her] unconscious” (Saks 70). Though Saks
ultimately works through her internal unrest through a combination of psychoanalysis 
and medication, this moment in her narrative exposes the importance of listening to 
patients’ thoughts in order to form a foundational understanding of their condition.
When Dr. Anthony Storr, psychoanalytic and psychiatric consultant for the 
Warneford, refers Saks to a psychoanalyst as an alternative to spending more time in 
inpatient treatment, her narrative shows the utility of using phenomenology to confront 
the underlying anxieties that form the foundation of her psychosis. In regard to her first 
psychoanalyst, she states that:
Elizabeth Jones… was a ‘Kleinian’—she practiced an offshoot of 
Freudian analysis developed by Melanie Klein, an Austrian 
psychoanalyst who immigrated to London in the late 1920s. Unlike 
Freud (and later, his daughter Anna), Klein believed that people with 
psychosis could benefit from analysis and that the necessary transference
would develop. It was her theory that psychotic individuals are filled 
with (even driven by) great anxiety, and that the way to provide relief is 
to focus directly on the deepest sources of that anxiety” (Saks 90).
Hornstein’s psychological theory aligns strikingly with Mrs. Jones’ Kleinian approach. 
In her article, she references the Hearing Voices Network, an organization whose 
purpose is to assist those who suffer from psychosis in its many forms to “[use] the 
content of the voices to understand and modify the [peoples’] response to the 
experience… By focusing on the function that the voices serve—rather than on trying to
stop them from occurring— HVN’s approach is starting to reshape standard 
assumptions about hallucinations” (Hornstein 34). Essentially, both Hornstein and 
Jones/Klein operate by the phenomenological principle that the various elements of 
psychosis serve a specific and healing purpose if and when professionals actually listen 
19
to their patients rather than writing their experiences off as “insanity.” Where the DSM 
cites delusions and hallucinations as two primary characteristic symptoms of 
schizophrenia, implying a separation from “reality” and “reason,” Mrs. Jones’ approach 
disregards these outside, third-person labels and analyses of psychotic behavior in favor
of listening to the inner dialogue which actually contributes to Saks’ psychological 
discomfort. 
In addition to the misjudgment Saks experiences in clinical settings, she also 
notes that these narrow outside understandings of psychosis permeate the various 
spheres she occupies during her lifetime and even infiltrate her own consciousness, 
causing her to feel alienated from her peers. She says during her time in New Haven 
that: 
One of the worst aspects of schizophrenia is the profound isolation-the 
constant awareness that you're different, some sort of alien, not really 
human. Other people have flesh and bones, and insides made of organs 
and healthy living tissue. You are only a machine, with insides made of 
metal (Saks 193-194). 
By comparing herself to a machine and an alien, Saks not only emphasizes her 
otherness in contrast to behavioral norms, she also expresses a feeling of dissociation 
from her own body. Her work with Mrs. Jones addresses this very discomfort: “As my 
sessions with Mrs. Jones increased, and I became accustomed to spooling out the 
strange products of my mind, my paranoia began to shift… the actual human people in 
my daily comings and goings seemed less scary and more approachable,” heavily 
implying a causal effect in the transparency between herself and Mrs. Jones and her 
increased ability to feel comfortable in human interaction (Saks 93). The success Saks 
finds in the Kleinian approach reveals the validity of phenomenology in her case. As 
Hornstein points out in her article, “First-person narratives of madness contradict many 
20
of the key claims about psychosis held by psychiatrists and psychologists, and these 
differences cannot just be ignored” (34). The reader’s intimate exposure, both to Saks’ 
positive experience with psychoanalysis and to the misunderstanding she feels from 
traditional medical professionals, support Hornstein’s claim. Works like Saks’, though 
often inadvertently and implicitly, call into question the dominant practice of reading 
and understanding psychosis from a third-person perspective.
Phenomenology and Feminism
Saks’ work does not mention feminism nor feminists, nor is it outwardly 
conscious of the interaction between her status as a woman and the way she and others 
understand her psychosis. As Hornstein points out, the approach of the HVN is not 
“explicitly feminist” either—but it “has had special appeal to the thousands of women 
who have finally had the reality of their own experiences… taken seriously and used as 
a source of insight into what might actually help them” (35). One major example of the 
specific potential that phenomenology holds in terms of helping women specifically 
occurs during Saks’ adolescence, when she discovers Sylvia Plath’s poetry, finding that 
she relates to it entirely. She says: 
That’s me, I thought. She’s Me! I guess Plath affects a lot of teenage girls
this way, depicting as she does the sense of isolation and disengagement 
(and not a little fear) that typifies this time of life, especially for those 
who are sensitive and often lost in the world of their books. For days 
afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl in the novel, and what 
she went through—for some reason it made me restless, distracted. One 
morning in class, with Plath on my mind, I suddenly decided that I 
needed to get up, leave school, and walk home. Home was three miles 
away (Saks 29).
This moment in Saks’ life demonstrates the clear causal link between her psychosis and 
her anxieties about moving through the world as a young woman. Though she 
21
normalizes the way the poetry resonates with her by saying that “a lot of teenage girls” 
have the same experience due to the challenges of adolescence, she certainly diverges 
from the norm in her subsequent fixation on Plath’s work and the stress she feels as a 
result—and, of course, her encounter with Plath is unique in that her first real 
experience with psychosis occurs on this walk home from school, where the 
neighborhood houses tell her she is “especially bad” (Saks 29). Saks does not attribute 
her initial bouts of psychosis to her status as a teenage girl, but this moment in the text 
exposes the reader to the ways in which one’s status or position within society might 
aggravate or interact with their unique experience of the world. Overall, the interaction 
between Hornstein’s theory and Saks’ narrative demonstrates the severe misguidedness 
of traditional clinical language when juxtaposed with first-person descriptions of 
psychosis. In a broader context, this argument lays the groundwork for an exploration of
discourse, its role in social structure, and how this interaction can inform analyses of 
primary texts.
 
22
Chapter 3: Speech, Noise, and Psychosis
Ranciere’s Disagreement
French philosopher Jacques Ranciere’s book, Disagreement (1999, Regents of 
the University of Minnesota), provides a theoretical model which allows for an effective
exploration of the relationship between speech and institution. Ranciere creates radical 
definitions for two terms, police/policing and politics. He says the words police and 
policing represent an accounting-based understanding of society. The police, Ranciere 
states, “is, essentially, the law, generally implicit, that defines a party’s share or lack of 
it” (Ranciere 29). Essentially, then, Ranciere understands the police to represent the 
overarching mold of society in its current state, cemented not only by governmental 
systems, but also by the ways in which members of society uphold and enforce this 
system of counting. Ranciere also notes that the police establishes the social norms, 
defining “ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying,” further justifying the 
unequal allocation of resources by creating a system of implicit laws that define which 
parties are consistent with dominant norms, and thus “[have] a part” (Ranciere 29). 
However, not only does having a part mean being familiar with dominant practices, it 
also means having one’s own practices recognized and legitimized. On the other hand, 
then, those whom the police excludes become the “part of no part,” meaning their 
practices are not visible to, nor validated by, the police.
According to Ranciere, the antithesis of the police is politics. While the term 
“politics” traditionally represents the governmental operations of society, by Ranciere’s 
definition, the government is actually the police. The police exists as an illusion which 
constructs a society that caters to certain groups. The example Ranciere uses to illustrate
23
this phenomenon is that “one kind of police may be infinitely preferable to another. 
This does not change the nature of the police” (31). In other words, although some 
systems of policing or elements of policing might be more inclusive than others, 
arguing about them only distracts from the true problem: that a system of policing exists
at all. Conversely, politics in Ranciere’s philosophy represents the interruption of 
policing, where there is no part of no part—nor any parts at all. Strictly speaking, 
politics and equality are inseparable; politics does not enforce nor create equality, it is 
equality to its very core.
Speech, Noise and Schizophrenia
As outlined above, Ranciere’s distinction between policing and politics relies 
heavily upon the semiosis of speech and the way the police uses it to determine one’s 
role within a society. In terms of the way this concept actually operates, he says that 
“bodies are assigned by name to a particular place and task; it is an order of the visible 
and sayable that sees that a particular activity is visible and another is not, that this 
speech is understood as discourse and another as noise” (Ranciere 29). From Ranciere’s
perspective, then, those who conform to the dominant, albeit constructed, practices of 
speech and behavior, secure for themselves a “part”—and, conversely, those who do not
conform do not have access to a “part.” The DSM-V describes schizophrenic speech as 
“disorganized,” “derailed” and “incoherent” (U.S. National Library of Medicine). Per 
Ranciere’s framework, this verbiage is consistent with the objectives of the police. Its 
third-person description of what psychosis entails lacks any acknowledgement of the 
internal experience of a person deemed schizophrenic. If a person’s speech does not 
match the constructed expectations of traditional discourse, then by the standards of the 
24
DSM, it is merely a “symptom” of their madness and thus a foundation for denying 
them of their “part.”
Speech and Noise in Saks
In Saks’ work, her use of language clearly demonstrates her subject position, 
moving the reader’s understanding of her condition beyond the police-based binary of 
madness and sanity. She writes during her time at Oxford that “I knew… not to share 
my ongoing delusions of evil, in particular the part about my being evil and my total 
certainty that I was capable of horrible acts of violence… I believed everyone thought 
this way, but just knew better than to talk about it” (Saks 95). Here, Saks’ experience 
challenges the DSM’s definition of madness. By using the word “delusions” in her 
recollection of her life events, she acknowledges that her belief that she is evil is 
misconceived. However, by noting that she holds his belief with “total certainty,” Saks 
gives her reader the opportunity to form a new conceptualization of reality. Her 
convictions about herself and those around her may diverge from typical modes of 
thinking, but she does not doubt them; they are her reality, her truth. She is the subject 
of the discourse that takes place inside of her psyche. By divulging her honest reading 
of herself and the world during this time, she provides the reader with a blueprint for 
developing a socially just interpretation of her dialogue during episodes.
Much of Saks’ dialogue which startles and alarms her classmates, professors and
friends connects directly to her belief that she is evil. Just after the above quotation 
where she discusses her “delusions of evil,” she describes an interaction with her 
friends:
25
As hard as I tried, I’d sometimes find the wrong words coming unbidden 
to my lips—for example, the memorable night we all sat on the roof and 
I casually mentioned having killed many children.
“It’s a joke!” I quipped as fast as I could, noting with alarm the expressions on 
their faces—uncertainty at first, and then, slowly, a hint of horror. “A stupid joke! Oh, 
come on, everybody wants to kill kids once in a while, don’t they? Except of course 
they don’t—hey, it’s not like I actually did that! Or would do that, you know that, 
right?” (Saks 95).
This quotation reinforces Hornstein’s argument that first-person accounts of madness 
demonstrate the nuance of non-normative psychological experiences, nuance which 
medical terminology and interpretations often fail to encapsulate. Saks’ friends are, of 
course, justified in their uneasy response to her violent suggestions here. However, by 
pairing her narrative recounting of this event with the beliefs that underlie the language 
she uses, she proves that her dialogue is not just “noise.” Rather, her beliefs that she has
“killed many children” and that “everybody wants to kill kids,” when placed within the 
context of her subject position, demonstrate that her dialogue is not “incoherent,” nor 
“disorganized,” nor “derailed,” as the DSM would describe it, nor is it “noise,” as the 
police would describe it according to Ranciere. Instead, it highlights how very real 
Saks’ experiences are, even if they are not visible to others. Both Hornstein’s 
phenomenological theory and Mrs. Jones’ Kleinian approach align with this 
perspective. Rather than policing Saks’ existence and defining her dialogue as “noise,” 
they fall under the category of politics by assigning validity to her reality and 
understanding its relation to her discourse. Furthermore, through the act of writing 
itself, Saks makes a case for Ranciere’s critique of the “speech/noise” binary by 
demonstrating that the internal narrative of her psychosis is entirely intelligible to others
as she recounts it.
26
In contrast to Mrs. Jones’ psychoanalytic work, the text also includes strong 
examples of police-like practices in response to Saks’ mental state, moments in which 
the medical system denies her of her “part.” When she is involuntarily committed to 
Yale-New Haven Hospital during her law school days, “The Doctor,” whom she never 
names, discovers she has stowed a nail in her pocket for protection from the “people” 
who “are trying to kill [her]” and after confiscating it, he places her into restraints:
“Please,” I begged. “Please, this is like something from the Middle Ages.
Please, no!” Somewhere in the midst of the chaos, a single thought 
occurred to me: If Mrs. Jones were here, this would not be happening. 
She would never have allowed such a thing. With Mrs. Jones, the tools 
we worked with were words, not straps. She never would have stood by 
while someone hurt me, terrified me, or made me feel helpless and 
alone” (Saks 145).
This quotation is particularly powerful in that it mentions Mrs. Jones, producing a direct
juxtaposition between her approach and that of The Doctor. Mrs. Jones, of course, 
enacts political justice for Saks by using “words” as a “tool.” The Doctor, however, 
represents the police. Despite the sharp object in her pocket, Saks does not physically 
threaten anyone with it and even specifies that it is only for her own protection. Based 
only upon her possession of the nail and her “non-rational” discourse, The Doctor 
denies her of her “part”—in this case, that means not only her freedom of location, but 
also her bodily autonomy and even her own consciousness, as The Doctor’s next step is 
to force antipsychotic medication down her throat, despite her resistance and her 
response of “choking” and “gagging” (Saks 145). Where Mrs. Jones’ interest is in 
understanding Saks’ experience from the first-person perspective and helping her to 
work through her psychological discomfort, The Doctor’s approach serves to subdue 
Saks, regardless of the psychological and physical discomfort he might cause in the 
27
process. For this reason, his work serves the outside perspective of merely putting a halt
to Saks’ non-normative behavior, thus reinforcing a police regime.
Language in Novel Form
Where Saks’ narrative is especially pertinent to the exploration of female 
literary psychosis due mainly to its autobiographical nature, the narrative freedom of the
novel form in areas like perspective and narrator omniscience can provide a more 
powerful insight into the nuances of language as it pertains to psychosis. Mira T. Lee’s 
2019 novel, Everything Here is Beautiful (Penguin Books, New York), tells the story of 
two sisters, Miranda and Lucia Bok. The work, whose perspective changes from 
character to character throughout the story, interweaves various themes, such as 
immigration, race, gender, and motherhood. Most importantly, the plot engages with 
themes of madness, centering around the younger sister, Lucia, whose psychosis 
impacts each character in a different way—and, as a result, each character understands 
Lucia’s condition differently. The dedication page of the work reads:
For the Families
Empathy: because the commonality among human beings is emotion, 
and the only way we can bridge our vast discrepancies in experience is 
through what we feel. Let us be humbled in the knowledge that one may 
never fully understand the interior lives of others—but let us continue to 
care (Lee).
By highlighting the idiosyncratic nature of each individual’s experience in the world as 
well as the importance of caring for others regardless of the inherent human inability to 
fully identify with one another, the language in this dedication prefaces the novel in a 
way which suggests its relevance to Ranciere’s philosophy. In the body of the work, 
Lee’s formal decision to use multiple perspectives allows for the effective exploration 
28
of various theoretical concepts, such as the “speech/noise” police binary which Ranciere
deprecates in Disagreement and Judith Butler’s modern work with Foucault’s “politics 
of truth.” 
The changing perspective throughout the novel allows different voices to 
describe the same events, offering the opportunity to juxtapose Lucia’s firsthand bouts 
of psychosis with the way others describe them. For example, when Manny, the father 
of Lucia’s daughter, Essy, calls Miranda to convey his concern with Lucia’s behavior, 
he says: “Crazy… she was crazy. Loca. I was scared… She was sitting all day in her 
room like a zombie, wearing socks on her hands. When she talked, she didn’t make any 
sense. She wouldn’t let anyone watch the TV, kept turning it off, but then sometimes, 
she turned it on full blast” (Lee 131). By using the word “crazy” and saying “she didn’t 
make any sense,” Manny outlines Lucia’s departure from discursive norms, or in 
Ranciere’s terms, his interpretation of her dialogue as “noise.” Furthermore, by saying 
he was “scared,” he articulates his own confusion and discomfort with Lucia’s non-
normative behavior. “Doing Justice to Someone,” (GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay
Studies, North Carolina) a 2001 essay by American gender theorist, Judith Butler, 
evaluates the “allegories of transsexuality” using Foucault’s philosophical-theoretical 
concept of the politics of truth. Butler summarizes her interpretation of the politics of 
truth by stating that:
When we ask what the conditions of intelligibility are by which the 
human emerges, by which the human is recognized, by which some 
subject becomes the subject of human love, we are asking about 
conditions of intelligibility composed of norms, of practices, that have 
become presuppositional, without which we cannot think the human at 
all (621).
29
This understanding strongly suggests that Manny’s anxiety towards Lucia’s speech lies 
in its divergence from socially constructed “conditions of intelligibility.” Lucia is the 
subject in the scene he describes, and her departure from normative discursive 
intelligibility confuses his view of Lucia as human and fosters this anxiety within him.   
Lee repeats the scene that Manny describes later in the novel, this time from 
Lucia’s own perspective, allowing for a rewriting of subject position that is unique to 
the author’s multi-perspectival form. Lucia explains her own behavior by stating that, 
when Essy is born, two serpents emerge in her mind and tell her things like “If you 
touch your baby, she will die” (Lee 149). In response to this psychological experience, 
Lucia says:
I didn’t tell anyone. First, it was a secret. Second, I was ashamed. Third, 
I couldn’t stand to hear the human population’s efforts to convince me it 
wasn’t true—you’re sick! you’re sick!—that was all part of the plot. So I 
wore thin cotton socks over my hands, dressed my baby in layers, 
cocooned her in blankets, avoided her skin coming into contact with 
mine. If I did as I was told, I hoped they might spare her (Lee 149).
Here, Lucia uncovers the internal narrative which has contributed to the “crazy” 
behaviors Manny describes. Her subject position develops out of the discourse from the 
serpents, which she believes to be real, rather than the discourse she predicts other 
humans will use if she shares her delusions with them. Similar to the moment in Saks’ 
work where she disturbs her friends with her violent speech, by clarifying Lucia’s 
subject position for the reader, Lee shows that there is a clear impetus for her actions 
which, in terms of Manny’s description alone, are seemingly random and erratic. By 
contrasting third-person and first-person narrations of the same event, Lee “does 
justice” to Lucia by allowing the reader access to her subject position.
30
In Butler’s text, she shares the story of a person named Joan/John, born intersex 
and surgically altered to have only female biological characteristics. Eventually, she 
grows up to identify as male and has a phallus surgically constructed on his body. All 
throughout his life, doctors, psychologists and other professionals poke and prod at him,
demand to see him naked, and ask him invasive questions regarding his identity and 
anatomy, all to try and understand what gender and/or sex he “really” is. After his 
transition to masculinity, Joan/John points out that there is much more to him than 
“‘what I have between my legs’” (Butler 633).  According to Butler, in this statement 
from John:
 He positions himself, knowingly, in relation to the norm, but he does not
comply with its requirements… John’s discourse puts into play the 
operation of critique itself, critique that, defined by Foucault, is precisely
the desubjugation of the subject within the politics of truth. This does not
mean that John becomes unintelligible and, therefore, without value to 
politics; rather, he emerges at the limits of intelligibility, offering a 
perspective on the variable ways in which norms circumscribe the human
(635).
Just as John, despite his divergence from gender norms, uses dominant discourse to 
maintain his intelligibility while still challenging the structures that attempted to take 
this intelligibility away in the first place, Lee’s narrative decision to write from Lucia’s 
first-person perspective has a similar effect. Through her non-normative behavior, Lucia
is unintelligible in Manny’s eyes when she experiences psychosis, hence the anxiety he 
describes. However, by recounting in the first-person the similarly non-normative 
psychological processes that spur her “crazy” behavior, Lee does justice to Lucia by 
allowing her to “[emerge] at the limits of intelligibility,” helping the reader to 
understand her subject position and view her discourse as “speech” rather than “noise.” 
Overall, Ranciere’s understanding of social structure and Butler’s work with Foucault’s 
31
“conditions of intelligibility” illuminate the multifacetedness of human identity and the 
inherent intricacy of psychosocial factors like sex, gender and psychological condition, 
which, as Butler shows, act as a fluid spectrum rather than mere binaries between the 
categories of “man” and “woman,” “male” and “female,” or “crazy” and “sane.”
32
Chapter 4: The Complexities of Identity
Feminist-Disability Theory and Female Literary Madness
One academic area of inquiry that is relevant both to the specific study of female
psychosis in literature and the general theoretical notions of the intricacy of identity is 
feminist disability theory. In Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s 2002 work, “Integrating 
Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” (National Women’s Studies Association 
Journal, Illinois) she seeks to explore the relationship between feminist studies and 
disability studies, stating that:
Feminist theories all too often do not recognize disability in their litany 
of identities that inflect the category of woman… The most sophisticated
and nuanced understandings of disability… come from scholars 
conversant with feminist theory. And the most compelling and complex 
analyses of gender intersectionality take into consideration… the ability/
disability system—along with race, ethnicity, sexuality and class (1). 
Garland-Thomson points out here that feminist theory, despite its now-standard practice
of recognizing feminist issues as a field more complex than the binary opposition 
between femininity and the patriarchy, tends to overlook disability as one of the factors 
that intersect with gender to influence the feminine identity and experience. She argues 
that recognizing this conundrum creates a new opportunity for academic inquiry 
wherein disability studies can mobilize feminist theory into becoming a more 
progressive and deeper-nuanced discipline. “Female, disabled and dark bodies are 
supposed to be dependent, incomplete, vulnerable and incompetent bodies,” Garland-
Thomson says, highlighting not only the significant impact disability can have on one’s 
identity and experience, just like race and gender, but also that these various 
characteristics can incite similar kinds of social discourse and expectations for those 
33
who possess them (7). She argues that “Femininity and race are performances of 
disability. Women and the disabled are portrayed as helpless, dependent, weak, 
vulnerable, and incapable bodies,” demonstrating the utility of integrating feminist-
intersectional theory and disability studies as a means of informing one another in 
regard to the subjects’ experiences in the world (Garland-Thomson 7-8).
Garland-Thomson’s work serves as a compelling framework for understanding 
Lee’s novel due to the unique collection of identities that exist in Lucia’s character. She 
is a woman, she is Chinese-American, and she is of non-normative psychological 
condition. These elements of Lucia’s person become especially influential upon her 
experience in the world when she and Manny take Essy to live in Martez, a small 
village in Ecuador, with his family. Despite the possibility the couple discusses before 
their move of opening a business in town, Lucia finds herself increasingly frustrated 
with the expectations Manny and his family impose upon her. When she suggests 
moving to town and opening a laundromat as a means of making money and saving the 
time of the women in the area, he says:
‘But then what would the women do?’ he asks.
He is looking straight at her, but there’s no wink, no grin, no hint of 
humor on his face. She swerves her gaze to the floor.
Something in Manny has shifted, she can tell. He’s confident in a way 
she has never seen before—the way his shoulders sit back, how he walks
with a slight swagger… She wonders: Who is this man? (Lee 212).
This conversation with Manny parallels Garland-Thomson’s argument that femininity is
a performance of disability. Where, within the context of New York City, Lucia has 
access to a world of professional opportunity, in Martez, the social structure mandates 
specific roles for men and women—and anything outside of the predetermined female 
duties is simply not an option for women. In this case, that means Lucia cannot be a 
34
business-owner and that a laundromat cannot exist at all as it will strip the women of 
their designated roles.
In addition to the rigidly gendered duties that Manny emphasizes in this 
conversation, the “shift” Lucia notes in his behavior exhibits another manifestation of 
gender roles in Martez: machismo. Where, in New York, Manny is an “other” due to his
nondominant ethnicity and undocumented status, upon to his return to Martez, he 
reunites with his family and reintegrates into their culture, which causes him to move, 
through behaviors like “the way his shoulders sit back” and his “slight swagger,” into a 
performance of the hyper-masculine conduct that fits with the norms in their new locale.
Accompanying this shift in Manny is a change in his expectations for Lucia. For 
example, when Lucia runs into an old friend, Jonesy, in Cuenca and he offers her a job 
at the English newspaper there, Manny disapproves of her desire to accept the position: 
‘Writing is part of who I am,’ she says. In her voice, thin and sharp, a 
portent of danger, like a hairline crack in a glass.
He looks up, finally. Frowns, perplexed… 
‘It’s important,’ she says. ‘I need to work. Writing is good for me. It’s 
good for my health.’ She knows, with those dog eyes, he does not want a
fight.
‘Lucia,’ he says. He inhales, sighs. ‘You do what you have to do.’
You could say: This is the way people drift apart (Lee 228).
In New York, Lucia and Manny can make decisions somewhat independently of one 
another, both because they each need to support themselves in the capitalist economy, 
and because it is not unusual for women to operate in a professional sphere in the 
United States. In Martez, however, Manny’s family’s livelihood is mostly self-
subsistent and gender roles are much more rigid, leading them to view office jobs, 
especially for women, as unnecessary. That Lucia’s professional aspirations stimulate 
35
an emotional distance between herself and Manny further emphasizes Garland-
Thomson’s claim that femininity is a performance of disability—her professional goals 
are at odds with the constructed limits of female ability that exist in Ecuador, and by 
disregarding the norms in such a way, Lucia creates discomfort within Manny.
By placing Lucia into a society where feminine repression is especially forceful 
and where her Chinese-American appearance and values lead the Ecuadorian characters 
to define her as “other,” Lee’s narrative draws a salient connection between otherness 
and psychological unrest, supporting Baym’s argument against a limited understanding 
of female madness as a resistance to the patriarchy. After Lucia’s return from her first 
week staying in her own apartment in Cuenca rather than commuting from the 
countryside every day, the limited-omniscient narrator notes all the frustrations she has 
internalized: men cat-calling her in the streets, rubbing against her and calling her 
Chiquita Chinita, Manny’s family’s invasive urges for her to have another child, and 
their vocal disapproval of her interest in journalism and decision to work (Lee 235). The
narrator notes that, in response to these circumstances, “she starts to fray” and she 
begins to sense the return of the serpents (Lee 239-240). Here, Lee illuminates a direct 
correlation between Lucia’s otherness in Ecuador and the heightened internal malaise 
she begins to experience. As Garland-Thomson notes in her theory, as an “other” in 
more than one aspect of her identity, Lucia is “supposed to be dependent, incomplete, 
vulnerable and incompetent” (Garland-Thomson 7). By developing her subject position 
and resulting behavior out of her experiences in the United States rather than the 
behavioral expectations that Manny and his family attempt to impose upon her, which 
36
resemble the qualities Garland-Thomson outlines, she renders herself unintelligible in 
their eyes and as an “other” she becomes “Unhappy. Trapped inside” (Lee 244).
The Laugh of the Medusa
In Hélène Cixous’ 1976 French feminist theory work, “The Laugh of the 
Medusa,” (The University of Chicago Press Journals, Illinois) she discusses female 
writers and the function of their work as a weapon in their eternal struggle against the 
patriarchy. Second-wave French feminist theory is relevant in the exploration at hand 
due to its unique combination of literary, philosophical, semiological and 
psychoanalytic considerations. Furthermore, in this work, Cixous defines the practice of
écriture féminine, or “women’s writing” as an act of resistance to male literary 
domination. In her work, Cixous likens the historical suppression of female authorship 
to the repression that the patriarchy has imposed on their bodies. She states that “A 
woman's body, with its thousand and one thresholds of ardor—once, by smashing yokes
and censors, she lets it articulate the profusion of meanings that run through it in every 
direction—will make the old single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with more than 
one language” (Cixous 885). Cixous’ claim here is not only that women’s writing 
operates as an instrument of resistance, but also that by accessing bodily and discursive 
freedom, women will revolutionize writing by breaking the binds that subjugate them, 
the male language that has failed to allow them their true potential, with a force much 
greater and more colorful than history has allowed or expected of them. To elaborate on
this claim, Cixous says:
If woman has always functioned ‘within’ the discourse of man, a 
signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which 
annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different 
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sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this ‘within,’ to explode it, turn it 
around, and seize it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it in her own 
mouth, biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a 
language to get inside of. And you’ll see with what ease she will spring 
forth from that ‘within’—the ‘within’ where once she so drowsily 
crouched—to overflow at the lips she will cover the foam (887).
Cixous’ argument here involves semiology; she contends that male discourse is the 
signifier which exists to represent society and the world. Female attempts to use this 
discourse have been futile due to its very purpose of exclusively allocating power to 
men in the first place. By “dislocating” this system of signs, however, Cixous asserts 
that women can spring free from the system of domination in place.
Cixous vs. Baym
Baym’s argument discussed in the literature review, which postdates Cixous’ 
work by nine years, argues that to invent a female mode of discourse merely reinforces 
the patriarchal ideology that attempts to define women as the “hopelessly irrational, 
disorganized, ‘weaker sex’ desired by the masculine other. The theory leads to a 
language that is intensely private, politically ineffectual, designed to fail” (Baym 50). 
Cixous’ argument, however, is not that women simply stray from male discursive 
tradition to create their own language that is unintelligible to others. Rather, she says 
“Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible. 
When id is ambiguously uttered—the wonder of being several—she doesn't defend 
herself against these unknown women whom she's surprised at becoming, but derives 
pleasure from this gift of alterability” (Cixous 889). Thus, just as women will 
restructure the hegemonic patriarchy by reclaiming and redefining their bodies in a way 
that resists the male mandate, by articulating the truth of their unconscious, a truth 
which dominant discourse has denied and erased for so long, they will “fly” through 
38
and beyond these constructed limits to restructure this very discourse and make it their 
own (Cixous 887).
On the eve of Lucia’s planned escape to New Jersey with Essy, Miranda’s 
surprise appearance at her apartment in Cuenca brings the repression she feels to a head,
causing her experience to duplicate that which Cixous describes in her theory. When 
Miranda arrives, Lucia’s limited-omniscient narrator describes the situation:
“She recalls what happens next as a jumbled dream: the figure pushing at
the door, crowding into her room, all mouth: You. You. You. Commands 
and accusations. The crescendoing voice, buzzing of mosquitoes, 
everything too loud, too many words, and she covers her ears to stem the
drain of energy from her head, because this is what they want: to drain 
her, to muzzle her, to take away her power, her feelings, her desires, her 
will, to shut her up and stuff her into a shoe box and stick it on a high 
shelf, where she will sit and sit and gather dust quietly like the mental 
patients of yore” (Lee 260).
This quotation simultaneously parallels Cixous’ argument and complexifies it. When 
Cixous describes the patriarchal repression that plagues the female gender, she says that
“We the precocious, we the repressed of culture, our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, 
our wind knocked out of us, we the labyrinths, the ladders, the trampled spaces, the 
bevies—we are black and we are beautiful” (Cixous 878). Cixous’ words here relate 
markedly to the discomfort Lucia feels upon Miranda’s arrival. She has nearly escaped 
the ties that bind her in Ecuador and her sister, her lifelong keeper, has come to tighten 
them. The narrator does not define the “they” that wants to “drain” her, “muzzle” her, 
“take away her power,” but this verbiage is synonymous with Cixous’ assertions in 
regard to the experience of the repressed subject. However, while Cixous’ argument 
operates in specific relation to women and the patriarchy, the “otherness” that Lucia 
experiences extends beyond this scope to also encapsulate her psychological, racial and 
cultural identities.
39
Lucia’s response to the despotism she feels to be closing around her in this 
climactic moment aligns once more with “The Laugh of the Medusa” in its production 
of an “utter[ance]” of her “id,” as Cixous puts it. The narrator says:
Where are the pills? Pills, pills, pills. Always the pills. The pills like a 
leash around her neck and everyone with a hand to pull… Too loud, too 
electric, she lashes out, all arms and fists. You want pills, here are the 
pills, and she rushes forward, thrusting the pills in the monster’s face as 
it gags and spits… And then she hears her daughter’s name and she goes 
blind with rage, GET OUT, yes, goddammit, yes, I am taking the 
goddamn pills (Lee 260-261).
The formal quality of the text here, wherein Miranda’s dialogue manifests through 
italics and the narrator interweaves Lucia’s verbal responses with her thoughts and 
description of the event, indicates that this segment of text serves to represent the inner 
workings of her mind in this moment. That Lucia’s behavioral non-normativity is 
apparent enough for Miranda to question whether she has been taking her medication 
demonstrates that, from an outside perspective, she is “psychotic,” “crazy.” However, 
by writing this section of the plot in such a way, Lee allows Lucia to “spring forth from 
that within,” using language nontraditionally to effectively communicate the anger, the 
fervor and the internal unrest that has resulted from the unrelenting repression others 
have imposed on her for the duration of her life (Cixous 887). 
Cixous’ criticism also sheds light upon the function of the literary devices Lee 
uses in this passage. By analogizing Lucia’s pills to an animal’s leash, on which 
everyone around her pulls, the narrator highlights the dehumanization and constraint the
other characters have thrust upon her and the agency they have taken away. Then, in 
calling Miranda “the monster” and using the pronoun “it” to describe her, the text 
suggests that the Lucia directs the fury she exhibits in this scene not just towards 
Miranda, but towards this larger collective, towards all those around her who have a 
40
“hand to pull” on her leash. The narrator’s tone and diction here effectively convey 
Lucia’s feelings of entrapment, her lack of control and her utter despair. In Cixous’ 
words, she is “biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a 
language to get inside of” (Cixous 887). Contrary to Baym’s argument that a female 
discourse will be “politically ineffectual,” Lee’s structure and syntax, as shown, is 
entirely intelligible to the average reader despite its idiosyncrasy. The discourse here is 
uniquely feminine, uniquely Chinese-American, uniquely Lucia, not in its “privacy” nor
in its lack of clarity, but in its ability to effectively represent the emotional unease that 
this kind of repression manufactures within its subject. Lucia does invent her own 
language here, for she communicates an experience with language that those who 
occupy the hegemonic majority simply cannot access from a creative standpoint; it is 
birthed from the convergence of all her identities and the repression she has 
encountered as a result.
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Chapter 5: Conclusions
As evidenced by the sheer disciplinary variation in the theoretical framework of 
this paper, the issue of female psychological condition is widely relevant within 
academia and society as a whole. Though, in terms of topics like gender and madness, 
literary criticism may not hold the same cultural weight as “controlled” scientific 
disciplines such as neuropsychology and behavioral study, by considering literary 
works as cogent representations of human experience, scholars can develop socially 
sensitive practices of understanding female madness. The Center Cannot Hold, for 
example, describes interactions which embody Ranciere’s concept of the police as well 
as interactions which exhibit a political approach. This juxtaposition of moments where 
professionals deny Saks her “part” and moments where other characters enact politics 
through their phenomenological understanding of her psychological condition proves 
the invalidity of so-called “empirical” interpretations of difference. Similarly, in 
Everything Here is Beautiful, when Lee uses nontraditional language à la Cixous to 
narrate Lucia’s experiences with psychosis, she implements politics into her text 
through the heroine’s simultaneous discursive resistance and intelligibility. Despite 
lacking the advantage of entirely representing real events, the creative quality of the 
novel form allows Lee to carefully craft her narrative language and use multiple 
perspectives in a way that helps the reader comprehend Lucia’s seemingly inexplicable 
behavior. For this reason, Everything Here is Beautiful extends beyond the scope of the 
memoir genre by enacting politics through fictional form without needing to represent 
real-life events.
42
Lee’s novel is also particularly significant in its engagement with 
intersectionality. She crafts a central character with several non-normative sociocultural
identities and effectively represents the specific kinds of repression that accompany 
each. By doing so, she creates the opportunity to utilize various theoretical modes of 
recognizing social and discursive interactions between dominant and nondominant 
groups. Butler’s “Doing Justice to Someone” highlights the structured social practices 
that assert unintelligibility upon people who fall under the category of “other.” In 
conjunction with Lee’s work, this theoretical approach helps to explain the frustration 
and subjugation Lucia feels in relation to the constant invalidation that the other 
characters impose upon her. Garland-Thomson asserts that the qualities traditionally 
associated with disability also correlate with existing societal expectations for those 
who occupy any category of “other,” such as women and people of color. This 
argument bolsters an analysis of Lee’s work by underscoring the weight of the 
oppression Lucia faces as a person with non-normative gender, race, ethnicity and 
psychological condition.
In general, this literary exploration exposes the ways in which Western 
medicinal practices and cultural structures have enacted violence upon the female 
psychological condition. Not only does the hegemonic makeup of society repeatedly 
ignore the experiences and emotions of the “other,” the presiding discourse consistently 
discounts and denigrates the merit of nondominant speech. Through theoretical 
inspections of difference and close readings of relevant texts, however, it becomes clear
that psychosis and reason are not antithetical. Rather, using a socially just means of 
literary analysis urges an evolution in Western perceptions of, and engagements with, 
43
non-normative psychological condition. Saks and Lee both develop political approaches
to discussing madness by redefining intelligibility, illustrating the institutional 
oppression of the “other” in Western social structures, and displaying the merit of 
methods like phenomenology. In so doing, the authors of these primary texts move their
readers towards adopting compassion as an impetus for creating a community with 
equality at its core, dismissing the myth that the “part of no part” is inevitable and 
encouraging the advent of a world where everyone has a “part.”
44
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