Madness S&M Flashcards
(19 cards)
AO1: key facts
Malfi was written in 1612. There was a very different perception of madness back then. Madness was seen as being caused by an imbalance of humours – choler in the case of Ferdinand causing anger. Otherwise, madness was caused by the supernatural or a perverse sexuality – which is why F thought D ‘must be mad’
Madness then, is not presented as a issue of mental health but something caused by the person themselves. Therefore, F’s external madness is caused by his internal corruption.
We understand that F wanted to make D mad but instead made himself mad.
However, in streetcar, madness is more so presented as an issue of mental health. Williams had personal experience with madness in women – his sister being given a lobotomy.
The oppression of madness is current to both plays
AO4 - COMPARISON: Similarities (and differences-within-similarities)
- Both F and B end the tragedy in madness, however, F’s is seen as karma for the tragic punishment he attempted to inflict on the Duchess
- The oppression of the mad is seen in both plays
- Male power and madness are linked – male power and aggression can cause madness – though it fails in D’s case
- The descent into madness is fated
- Role of desire and love in madness
AO4 - COMPARISON: Differences
- The Duchess is not driven mad by F, whilst B is driven into madness by S. This is because the lack of power of B whereas D is driven stronger by the mad people in her palace. D’s sanity is protected by her dignity
- Far less sympathy towards the mad in Malfi. There is more sympathy from the doctor in streetcar. Due to the time period and William’s personal experiences with madness
‘the right noble Duchess’
you left! I stayed and struggled’
- B comes in without sanity
- She comes in lying and deceiving
- Short sentence structure = fragmentation - - loss of her complex language – shows loss of sanity
D is dignified at the start unlike B
’There is not between heaven and earth one wish / I stay for after this’
‘she enters the flat with a peculiar smile, her eyes wide and brilliant’
‘(lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd, sinous shapes)’
‘for your able strength must pull down heaven upon me’
‘she allows him to lead her as if she were blind’
‘to bring her despair’ ‘cause she’ll need to be mad’
‘but people like you abused her and forced her to change’
- Implication male interference is what changed B for the worst
- The influence of men onto women is what ruins their sanity
‘need to be mad’ – women’s sexual hysteria makes them mad
‘dead man’s hand’
‘We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning’
- Stanley trying and succeeding to overcome and therefore destroy B
- Stanley was more so the final push than the cause of the madness – unlike F
analysis
- Did F fail or succeed in making D mad by the end
- Tried to drive D mad through figures of A and son – but she retains her dignity
‘That their cursed smoke might not ascend to heaven’
“I can’t be alone! Because — as you must have noticed — I’m not very well…”
madness in his anger and in denying them peace in the afterlife, divine punishment therefore at this denial?
mostly though, F speaks a lot whereas C rplies in one-line phrases - stichomythia
‘when fortune’s wheel is over-charg’d with princes, the weight makes it move swift’
Scenes get closer and closer together from ‘(it is late afternoon in mid-September)’ to ‘(It is a few hours later that night)’
- Henri Bergsson: temps vs duree
- As seens get closer together reflecting Blanche’s demise getting closer and closer
analysis
- The wheel of fortune as mythical wheel that the goddess fortune raised people and their prospects before plunging them down again; tragic imagery – idea of fate/divine reasoning to the madness
- Also, gap of two years at the start of the play but then time speeds up as time moves on
- Reflecting the element of time in tragedy and divine punishment
“cause she’ll needs be mad”
“I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley”
“CARDINAL: why do you make yourself / so wild a tempest? FERDINAND: Would I could be one, / that I might toss here palace ‘bout her ears”
B “I think it’s wonderfully fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big, capable, hands!”
- conflict of old america vs new america
“[her appearance is incongruous to this setting]”
- context of the time - ‘non-conformist individual’
analysis
- The body politic: the prince was the head and the body was the country they ruled over, so image of F wanting to violate her palace therefore nation and duchy implies destruction of her body too
F talking about his shadow “I will throttle it”
“[a distant revolver shot is heard, Blanche seems relieved’] BLANCHE: there now, the shot! It always stops after that.”
“I want to kiss you – just once – softly and sweetly on your mouth”
- B’s search for protection through seduction reflects the role of sexuality into her descent into madess
‘if they would bind me to that lifeless trunk and let me freeze to death’
- Upon seeing what she thinks to be A and her son – D’s grief therefore madness due to her love
analysis
- B’s search for protection through seduction reflects the role of sexuality into her descent into madess
AO3 - CONTEXT: Malfi
Madness caused by:
- of corruption, of perverted sexuality
- of weakness, a supernatural visitation
- Excess of humours: excess of choler makes him angry
- female hysteria
Satire about James I court
Foucault’s notion of assujetisssement (giving someone an identity, thus to repress)
Protestants dislike of Catholicism and the family being catholic
Witchcraft – James I fear of it
The Body politic
AO3 - CONTEXT: Streetcar
William’s sister having a lobotomy, therefore sympathetic towards madness – still patriarchal and repressive
Madness as a recurrent theme in his plays, such as the glass menagerie, shows his curisosity on the subject and his desire to capture what its like
- desire was to depict mental illness unlike webster
more understanding of mental illness – what can drive it
more sympathy towards the mad
oppressive treatment of ill mental health is domninant
ante-bellum south vs new america
AO5 – CRITICS: Malfi
Frank Whigham: F is frightened by ‘the contamination of his ascriptive social rank’
‘his madness comes from his desire to retain his family’s power’
Lee Bliss: ‘C’s cool, unemotional detatchment is more terrifying than F’s impassioned raving’
Rupert Brooke: “the end is a maze of death and madness”,
Arthur Little Jr: ‘Duchess’ desire for love and happiness is threatened by the corrupt and violent world in which she lives’
AO5 – CRITICS: Streetcar
Jacqueline O’Connor: William’s characters die in different ways – they escape into madness’
Williams: ‘the destructive power of society on a non-conformist individual;
Williams: ‘I am Blanche DuBois’
Benedict nightingale: he believed the old south had been ‘ruined by the crude and brutal’
Karen Foster“unflinching exploration of the destructive power of desire”
George Hovis: ‘the persona of Southern belle is ‘both a mask and a prison’
Alvin Kernan: the ‘central conflict’ is ‘Blanche’s unrealistic view of the world and Stanley’s realistic one’
