Mad Woman in the Attic

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Women and the Macabre!

Celebrating ‘International Women’s Day’ last week, I deliberated on the portrayal of women in art and literature since Victorian Era to contemporary times.  What has remained constant is that women are portrayed as decorative, hysterical, neurotic beings, often adept at representing the macabre and the uncanny.  They continue to be shrews, sirens and femme fatales, too.

Gyorgy Ligeti’s ‘Mysteries of the Macabre’ (2015), is a crowd pleaser.  Barbara Hannigan, the Canadian soprano, pulls off a spectacular, hysterical, absurdist performance representing the macabre, along with conducting the orchestra. Admittedly, it’s a high point for Barbara, who turns a conductor and makes her mark in an all-male bastion. But the contestation here is why only women are chosen to depict the macabre and uncanny?

As legend has it, Tarantella dance form from south Italy has been performed in ritualistic practices by possessed neurotic women. Sociologist Ernesto de Martino explains tarantismo as a “social disease”.   They found that the phenomenon largely affected women. Women who had been abused, forced to marry men they didn’t love, or who found themselves at the margins of society in other ways. De Martino, and later researchers like Luigi Chiriatti, argued that tarantism was an expression of this marginality: “a way for these women to manifest their social suffering, have that suffering recognized, and relocate themselves within a community, rather than outside of it.”

Historical records show witchcraft and sorcery linked to women, many of whom were tried and burnt at the stake.  Sidonia von Bork, die Klosterhexe, was written in 1847–1848 by Wilhelm Meinhold, which recounted the trial of a Pomerian woman accused of witchcraft.  ‘Sidonia the Sorceress’, an English translation of this novel, was published in 1849 by Oscar Wilde's mother, Jane Wilde. Scholars and feminists pursued the original question of whether or not the witch hunt was a deliberate woman hunt (1980). Most historians began to rethink the question

while still acknowledging the importance of including gender in the analysis of witch hunts. Their studies reports the following – “For three centuries in Europe, where the witch persecutions began, vast numbers of women were destroyed by the ruthless campaigns of the witch hunters; of the few hundred thousand people executed for witchcraft, 85% were women. Women were accused of practicing witchcraft due primarily to religious, medical, economic, and sexual reasons. Examined closely, the witch persecutions of both Europe and New England show a hidden agenda dedicated to the total suppression of female power, revealed by the overwhelming percentages of women who became the victims of a phenomenon that could only be called a holocaust.”

‘Mad woman in the attic’ (also a scholarly book by Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar) is a trope often used in literature. A book discussion series yields names of five novels from the 18^th century to recent times, mirroring portrayal of women as unstable, hysterical and mad, therefore best locked-up in the attic. ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, ‘Yellow Wallpaper’, ‘Sula’ and ‘Surfacing’ – are writings by authors which illustrate the pernicious effects of control, repression, confinement and fear on the human psyche. Since a woman is physically delicate and a victim of cultural prejudices, she is more susceptible to such hells. The resulting psychological repercussions then get perpetuated to her progeny (daughters).

Last but not the least is woman as a fancy decorative piece in a house, stage, film or an advertisement. That she is nothing beyond a pretty face and a sexual body bring her the labels of enchantress, seductress, sorcerer and a siren. Women themselves have internalized this paradigm, and carry beauty as a cross all their lives. They forget that they are human beings first with every faculty of the supreme human species.

The journey of a woman can begin when she fights with the internal gender prejudices she harbours within, which she has inherited from collective consciousness of millennia. She has to object, scorn and reject every move of the patriarchal world to subdue, ridicule or dismiss her. Along with aggression and non-cooperation movement, she has to invest in women power.

Sisterhood is the scapegoat of patriarchy and misogyny. Women have spited and been enemies of each other for far too long. They need to reinvest this energy and retrieve their powers by safeguarding bonds with sisters - mothers, mother-in-laws, daughters, daughter-in- laws, girlfriends, aunts, nieces, sister-in-laws. Weave a quilt of strength, love and harmony!