I’m curious to know everyone’s thoughts on Chief Bromden as an unreliable narrator and whether we as readers are inclined to believe his version of reality. By pretending to be deaf and dumb he alerts the reader to the fact that he is capable of lying, but we also get the sense that in his personal account of his time in the ward he is being as honest as possible. Things get complicated as his accounts of the fog in Part I get more and more preposterous, culminating in the scene of the floating chairs starting on page 115; when Nurse Ratchet turns the dial and slows down time on page 68; and when Bromden has the dream about the furnaces on page 77. He believes he is seeing and experiencing all of these things, but the behavior of the other characters—the night watchman telling him he’s having a bad dream, or the other patients making fun of him for drifting off during a meeting—suggests that these are all incidents that occur solely in Bromden’s mind. I think the narrative is more effective this way though; it is the reality of his hallucinations that most vividly convey his suffering in the ward, more so than if the story were told from a purely objective point of view from a narrator we can depend on. Which leads me to the question of: what constitutes reality? Obviously that’s too broad a question to answer in a blog post but it’s curious, isn’t it, that the more time we spend in Bromden’s head the less sure we are of what reality is and how it correlates to perceived insanity, severe mental illness… or even more common diagnoses like depression and anxiety.

One of the things we discussed in our podcast, but were unable to touch on in the edited version of our file was what we thought Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House would have been rated in its time? Would this expose have been seen as PG or R rated?

Personally, I think that this piece would have been quite shocking to its readers—who I pictured to be upper-middle class women. I think that these women would have been horrified by not only obviously the physical torture, but the day to day horrors the inmates of the asylum experienced as well. For example, the lack of hygiene among women, the freezing temperatures, dearth of edible food…These are privileges the audience of this expose would have been used to. To read a piece where the perfectly sane women that Nellie focuses on are forced to endure life without these privileges would have been especially alarming. However, reading this piece now, it feels as though this piece is largely censored compared to any sort of expose we would read now—even in Nellie’s description of the actual physical abuse.

According to David Rothman, what are one or two of the most important forces bringing the insane asylum into existence in nineteenth-century America?

How do the first few paragraphs of The Day of the Locust point to seemingly pathological desires developed throughout the novel?

In Chesnutt’s plantation tales, Julius tells the stories while John and Annie listen.  What do you find significant about their reactions to the stories about Sandy and/or Dave?

I found Vandover’s discussion of each event that “destroyed” his purity to be very interesting the beginning portion of the second half of the novel. Essentially Vandover lists each of the external influences (many of which are people) that have somehow contributed to the growing beastly influence inside of him. He blames his loss of innocence from losing his mother, he blames his father’s death for the loss of an influence in his life that “cultivated and fostered his better self, would have made it strong against the attacks of the brute.” Vandover blames the fact that Turner Ravis fell out of love with him as well as the fact that the public ceased to take interest in him anymore and his lack of religion for the further deterioration of his so-called “higher self”. I find it interesting that Vandover is quick to blame every external influence in his life, but never himself or his own actions for the growing force of the brute inside. He also seems to come to the conclusion that he is unable to save himself without any help. The external influences Vandover describes only served to contain the evil within Vandover all of his life. Is Vandover inherently evil? Does this evil only surface when all that was containing the brute ceases to exist? Or is Vandover unwilling to accept his wrongdoings and blames others for the consequences he now suffers because he is selfish and entitled? Perhaps this begs the larger question of how one must decide to cope with their loss of innocence. Vancouver never quite embraces his good sense of self and his independence until he succumbs to his vices later in the novel. Even then, he is a slave to both his addictions and the actions of the brute (which he becomes increasingly unable to control—to the point where he becomes this brute and crawls on all fours in public).

This discussion of Vandover’s loss of innocence and inherent goodness versus evil and the presence of outside influences may be interesting in light of Vandover’s interaction with the young boy in the last few pages of the novel. The young boy gets attention for his rude comment about Vandover and therefore repeats his action. However, he is scorned by his father and goes back to eating his bread and butter very innocently while watching Vandover work. By this point, Vandover is humbled and working for the first time in his life, trying to make purpose of something and this innocent child is just embarking on his own journey of life. The fact that the child gets attention for his cruelty towards Vandover and is scorned by his father may be some sort of a parallel to Vandover’s own story and how he wrestled with the attention he got from outside influences as well as the scorn and what happened when both of these things were lost from him.

Madness in the context of Vandover seems to be rooted in his carelessness and lack of self-accountability, and it’s interesting how that ‘madness’ is conflated with misogyny and toxic masculinity. It his, as well as his friends’, harmful beliefs that the lack of patriarchal policing of women (along with their vices such as excessive self-indulgence via drinking and eating) is what contributes to their “wildness” or “bruteness.”

One of the themes that really stuck out to me in this first half of the book was this idea of an inherent classism in Vandover’s world. It is clear that his role as an upper class citizen, or social elite, has afforded him certain privileges, such as being able to essentially automatically attend Harvard, and then being able to become a “painter”. (Although he doesn’t have to rely on his painting abilities to make any money, unlike Ida’s mother.)

Coincidentally, his social status somehow absolves him from any wrong doing. When he essentially lusts after women of a lower social standing, his sexual attraction to them somehow becomes their problem. At the same time, their mere existence actually disgusts him. Specifically for Ida, the possibility that Vandover impregnated her becomes her family’s disgrace rather than his shame (even though he later admits to pressuring her into sex).

In terms of accountability, his social status saves him from any kind of persecution related to Ida’s suicide or the murder of the Jew boy (even though others were persecuted for letting him drown).

Do you have ideas about what makes up a conventional ghost story? Is The Turn of the Screw consistent with those conventions or not?

How would you describe Edna Pontelier’s connection to reality, to the tangible world and social interactions around her? How would you characterize her emotional reactions? Is there a particular passage that speaks to your understanding of Edna’s way of seeing the world as it exists outside herself?