“In a strange way we were free. We’d reached the end of the line”
This raises the question, what would make madness comforting to a young girl? The future is uncertain for Susanna, there is no longer the comfort and security experienced by her parents generation. The culture is changing and she may feel as if she is being pulled in two separate directions. On the one hand there is the ideology of peace, free love and equal rights and the opposite idea of being encouraged to get married and raise children. She is a teenager and very confused, madness offers a sanctuary, she doesn’t have to contemplate life making decisions and expectations,
“The hospital shielded us”
Susanna hints that some of the patients do not belong there – that they would not be dangerous if released and treated as outpatients. On the other hand, Daisy is obviously released too early and commits suicide.
We can ask whether some forms of mental disturbance are not really illness, but rather new names our society has given to unhappiness and confusion.
The cool, intellectual, rational and controlled narrative suggests qualities usually associated with sanity. Susanna’s development later in the book suggests that there might be slight justification in her hospitalisation. She experiences problems with her perception of patterns, the checkerboard patterns in supermarkets for example,
“When I looked at these things, I saw other things within them.”
She explains that she is aware of her misconceptions, she knows that was she is looking at is a floor. Her problem could stem from her inability to cope with the pressure of everyday life; she over analyses everything and doesn’t like what she sees,
“all the indecision’s and opposites were bad enough in life”
“Scar tissue has no character, it’s like a slipover. It shields and disguises what’s beneath. That’s why we grow it”
This could be an explanation for why Susanna has developed depression, to disguise her true self because she is scared of who she really is.
Her attempted suicide was a cry for help, she sees it as a solution to her depression – rather than being about wanting to kill herself she wants to kill her depression and sees the aspirin as a metaphorical way of achieving this,
“it was only one part of myself that I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself”.
Like Elizabeth in ‘Prozac nation’, Susanna experiences a euphoria from having survived. Her suicide attempt has freed her of the burden that she has been carrying with her, like the drugs being pumped out of her body,
“all that was inside was pulled out”
“It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there.”
Care and love are basic needs that have to be fulfilled. Susanna is not receiving this in the outside world, which is why she becomes so dependent on the artificial care in the hospital. She is given the chance of escape but doesn’t take it as she feels safe in the hospital but reality is frightening and unstable,
“The world you come from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly”
“The hospital is the womb” she feels safe and protected.
After a patient is discharged from the hospital, Susanna has a manic episode and mutilates her hands to see if she has any bones,
“She felt that she wasn’t a real person, nothing but skin”
This shows how unstable she feels about her own personality; the bones symbolise how she feels that she has no structure in her life. She feels that she is worthless and not a ‘real’ person. It is a reaction to another girl’s discharge, Susanna does not want to leave, she has become too dependent on the protection the hospital provides,
“now I was really crazy, an nobody could take me out of there.”
The Vermeer painting “Girl Interrupted at Her Music” where the book takes its name is very significant is showing the development of Susanna’s condition. Before her hospitalisation the gaze of the music student haunted her, she felt as if the painting was warning her of something and looked at its message in a negative way,
“she had looked up from her work to warn me”
This signifies how Susanna was feeling about her life at this time, unsure and scared that she had something to be warned against.
After her recovery, Susanna ponders the painting and her perception has changed. She no longer sees it in a bad light, she actually looks at the title and realises that the message is not urgent but sad, it describes her condition at the time of her illness,
“she was young and distracted”
Susanna comes to a realisation about herself; she too was distracted,
“interrupted in the music of being seventeen”
Her disclosure to the painting “I see you” is Susanna finally coming to terms with who she is and what she was.
In ‘Girl, Interrupted’ Susanna Kaysen challenges the reader to question the conventional ideas of the mentally ill. It looks at how society views what is considered normal and what is thought of as irrational and how far it projects its fears and anxieties onto those who do not adhere to convention. It is true that Susanna did have a problem and suffer some sort of breakdown, but is this because she was actually mad? Or could it be that she was just a confused teenager, a victim of the times, whose condition was intensified by her hospitalisation?
Where Susanna’s account her depression is very controlled, Elizabeth’s is erratic and self obsessed suggesting that her justification of her illness may be on a more personal level rather than because of sociological factors.
Elizabeth thrusts the reader into her inner turmoil in the first chapter entitled “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die”. In the very first paragraph she states,
“I feel like a defective model, like I came of the assembly line flat out fucked”
The fact that she thinks this problem is in her genetic makeup shows that she has given up hope of any rescue from her illness. We are forced to question, what causes a young girl to think and feel,
“Imagine only knowing that the sun is shining because you feel the ache of its awful heat and not because you know the joy of its light.”
An explanation for her illness could lie in the fact that she had her unhappy childhood, her parents divorce and her fathers subsequent disappearance left Elizabeth feeling unstable. But she refuses to believe that is part of her problem, she thinks that because divorce is not an uncommon occurrence that she should “grow up and get on with it”.
Her depression results in a lot of self-destructive behaviour, which causes her condition to deteriorate.
Part of this damaging behaviour is her obsessive personality. She becomes deeply attached to her boyfriend to the point where she becomes neurotic if they are not in the same room,
“nothing is real unless it’s right in front of me”
Although she is self-obsessed it doesn’t stop her from being self-aware. She realises that she indulges in these obsessions as a temporary ‘cure’ for her real problem, but her solutions then turn into problems themselves, until she gets to point where she is in a vicious circle. His kindness and understanding towards her problem actually made her worse as she allows herself to become comfortable in her miserable state, rather than to seek help,
“kindness creates stasis”
She knows how self indulgent and obsessed she can be, her depression makes her centre of the universe,
“If you loved me you would stop doing everything”
The people who love her cannot live up to these expectations and this results in her feeling let down and unloved.
Her harmful behaviour continues with her trip to London. She knows in herself that this will be what seals her fate, that it will push her deeper into depression, but subconsciously she wanted to take this path.
“I wanted to know how bad it could get”
Before there was always something holding her back from sinking into ‘real’ depression. She felt obligated to her mother not to become “ a non-functional mental case” because she knows that she can only take so much before she will break too. If she goes to London she will be free to “fall”.
She was making progress prior to her trip; she wanted to get better. Now she no longer has the will to live,
“I refuse to get better”
She isolates herself in London and this results in her becoming almost tactophobic, she is now at the point where she cannot stand human interaction.
Her earlier idea that if you can still go through the motions of life, then you are not completely insane emphasises what a complete breakdown she has had. She does not see the point in bathing anymore; she is only cleaning herself to gather more filth, the inevitable pattern of progress and regress. Her theory on bathing also applies to how she feels about life; she sees no point in making an effort as she is just setting herself up for more let down.
Although she loves her mother and knows that this is receipted, she resents her for ignoring her depression and not accepting her for who she is. When her mother finally acknowledges that she understands Elizabeth’s problem,
“That’s a real problem. That’s not imaginary,”
it becomes a reality for Elizabeth. She has never been able to convince herself that she has a “legitimate problem” and she feels guilty for feeling so bad. Now that her mother has confirmed her depression she feels that she can recover. But insight alone will not motivate her to get better. She still clings to her depression because she is attached to it; she does not know how she will survive as a normal person because she has been stuck in this depressive persona for so long. She attempted suicide, as a way of hanging on to this character, scared that without depression she’d has “no personality at all”.
The misguided notion that this part of her personality is what kept her friends is in fact what drives them away. The real reasons why they liked her is something that she cannot see because of her self-hatred and negative outlook,
“I was actually good to talk to, even a good friend.”
Before she committed acts of self-destruction as a way to make life more bearable, now she has attempted suicide with the purpose of dying,
“the purest an most deliberate act of self-hatred I have ever committed”
As she lies in the hospital bed she makes the comparison between her wait for happiness as like “Waiting for Godot”. She feels that she will never achieve contentment and happiness. Her ambition of being truly depressed has now been achieved, but she does not attain the contentment that she hoped for, instead she finds it all “mundane”.
The suicide attempt gives her the will to live, she has been to “the edge and back” and has survived, and she feels liberated,
“hah hah I’m still alive”.
Elizabeth determines that depression is a “huge waste of time and money”. Does she just mean this in terms of economics or is she suggesting that she is wasting her own time, therefor admitting that there is something better for her in life? She is moving away from her philosophy that “everything is plastic, we’re all gonna die.”, and seeing that she is missing out.
Her road to recovery aided by medication and determination, gives her a new perspective on life. She no longer thinks of emotions in the two extremes – highs and lows, she recognises that there is a middle ground,
“What a great day it was to have discovered that there are in-betweens”.
Her narrative is self-absorbed and rife with hyperbole, depicting her own personal breakdown, which makes it hard to presume that her condition is result of the society she lives in, but she does attempt to equate her difficulties with the culture and the sweeping generation trend of the “nation”.
Elizabeth openly shares her problems with whoever is in earshot – crying out for help.
The isolation she felt having begged for help and being ignored, was indeed a factor in the deterioration of her condition. In many instances this form of isolation is more painful than that which is self-inflicted,
“it never occurs to me until the last possible moment that what I really want is to be saved”
People are left to suffer in silence with their depression, it is only when they exhibit signs of madness that they are taken seriously. Is this an indication that there is something wrong with society? That they cannot notice others problems until they feel that they are in immediate danger from them?
Attention is drawn to what effect divorce and the breakdown of “the core social unit – the family” has had on her generation. She feels that she was “forced to withdraw into depression” because societies morals had become so distorted.
“all happy families are the same, but unhappy families are all unhappy in different ways”.
Elizabeth does not agree with this statement. She feels that if you took any unhappy family, no matter what their problem is, when you get to the core it all comes down to the same thing,
“it’s always about not being loved enough as a child, or being neglected at some point”
The lack of stability in Elizabeth’s childhood is seen as the main reason why she is so unhappy.
In today’s society people are forced to repress their natural feelings for appearance. During divorce cases it was seen to be better for the child if the parents acted civil to one another.
“How can we possibly be so pragmatic and realistic and eerily, creepily sane as to ask a couple going through a divorce to try and check their feelings for the sake of the child”.
Elizabeth feels grateful to her parents for not putting on a show for her, but her mental state does not promote this as the right way to act.
Elizabeth’s Jewish religion could be considered as part of her problem, her need for unconditional love is not supported by her faith, absolute love and forgiveness are Christian concepts. The Jewish faith dictates that everyone is created in Gods image and all have the ability to achieve perfection, these are standards that Elizabeth cannot live up to because she despises herself.
“The idea that a girl in a private school in Manhattan could have problems worth this kind of trouble seemed impossible to me”
Elizabeth wants a valid reason to be depressed because society dictates that she should. People can understand drug abuse and alcoholism because it is something concrete, it has an explanation and they can understand it. You cannot show somebody depression because it is an abstract being, they can’t comprehend it.
“The only good thing about this miscarriage is that it’s given me a reason to be crazy”
Depression is an uncomfortable subject and in the past it was ignored because it wasn’t common. Now that it is so widespread society has to find a way to deal with it, they glamorise it so that it becomes acceptable. The term ‘madness’ has come to be associated with the rich and famous, the word allows people to focus on the seductiveness of the condition so they can forget about the pain and agony,
“You associate madness with Zelda Fitzgerald in all her rich, gorgeous, cerebral disturbedness”
Popular culture promotes madness as something good, something to aspire to,
“Kurt Cobain wears his desperation like a badge for cool”
And even Elizabeth admits, in the beginning it was less about her depression and more about “trying out a new persona”. She was at a vulnerable age, trying to find herself and needing something to identify with.
Society wants to mainstream depression so that it is more acceptable, as a way of dealing with something they do not understand. So many people are diagnosed with the illness that it has gone from being seen as tragic to a joke,
“That Prozac moment”
The media coverage of depression has trivialized the problem, so much so that in all the hype and debate people have forgotten how horrible the disease can be, or even that it is a disease at all,
“silly drug for crybabies.”
Society functioned before Prozac was invented and now it seems that nobody can manage without it. The fact that depression is no longer a taboo subject could be a factor in the growing number of people being diagnosed with the condition or it could be that society has deteriorated so much that there are more reasons to be depressed,
“You’d think they were a generation that were starved, beaten, raped, arrested, addicted and war torn.”
People are now frightened to exhibit normal feelings, always on their guard because “Randomness rules”. There is no longer the stability that was available in previous generations, they do not have the “basic guarantees that our parents expected.” Divorce, AIDS and unemployment are all factors that did not have to be considered.
Depression is no longer a private problem, it has now become a social issue. Popular culture has developed around depression. Music acts “once considered too depressing for the mainstream – were now selling out shows.”
As depression has become acceptable and even considered “cool” people are developing it into an art form.
Is it the influence of society that has damaged Elizabeth or is her condition purely psychological? The title “Prozac Nation” is misleading, the book focuses less on the sociological analysis and Elizabeth remains too self-involved to justify that her condition is epidemic to her generation.
Susanna’s prose is clear, concise and to the point. She gives a rational analysis of social behaviour and a lucid account of her own personal breakdown. Her dark humour, realism and sardonic tone gives weight to her argument that part of her ‘illness’ was societies problem with her inability to adjust to the mainstream. Her perceptions are not judgmental and she is able to distinguish between her own problems and the problems of society in equal measures. The facts are laid out for the reader to draw their own conclusions rather than for her to speculate or give a verdict.
Elizabeth on the other hand fails to compose a distinct argument to justify that her depression is somehow symptomatic to her generation and a fall out from the growing lack of morals in society.
She becomes increasingly involved in describing her own personal battle and gets side-tracked from her goal, though she does occasionally focus back on course to provide some established arguments, such as the breakdown of the family and the growing culture surrounding depression. But her descriptions are random; it is not until the last chapter that she proceeds to list all of the reasons why society contributed to her depression. This inconsistency makes the reader question her reliability. Where Susanna’s account seems rational, as if she was looking back in hindsight, Elizabeth’s description appears to be told through the eyes of her depression which makes her explanations seem unreliable.
Her lyrical and metaphorical narrative can be extremely poignant, but can also give the effect of over exaggeration, which makes it difficult for the reader to identify with her.
4,039
