Mental Illness in Music Swims Back to Me and The Yellow Wallpaper

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Mental Illness in Music Swims Back to Me and The Yellow Wallpaper
In the past, mental illnesses were not treated as a medical problem, instead, it can be explained as a form of possession ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1c515036-4831-43af-b635-00388444b091} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "http://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=mental-illness", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Perring", "given" : "Christian" } ], "container-title" : "The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Mental Illness", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1c515036-4831-43af-b635-00388444b091" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Perring)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Perring). At times, individuals suffering from this condition are kept locked in cells, if not tied down with chains to prevent them from hurting other people. There may also be instances (typically in poor families) when mental patients are deprived of adequate food and other basic needs. This paper uses two works of literature to describe how individuals suffering from mental illnesses were treated in the past. It is my belief that people in the past had very little knowledge about mental illnesses and many of the treatments used to cure this "disease" were not only ineffective, they also worsened the patient`s situation. Moreover, I believe that mental illness was not simply a psychological issue, but rather, it may be affected by the social and political repression happening in the past.
Written by Anne Sexton, Music Swims Back to Me is a stunning description of the author`s own experience. Suffering from a severe mental illness, Sexton used poetry as part of her therapy and received acclaim for her work. Now considered as one of the best American poets, Sexton is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Like most of Sexton`s poetry, Music Swims Back to Me is written in a confessional style. It is offers a hounding account of life in a mental institution and provides an insight to the thoughts of a mentally disturbed individual. Its first stanza describes a confused person ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/~ari/as2.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Sexton", "given" : "Anne" } ], "container-title" : "Internet Channel", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Music Swims Back to Me", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Sexton)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Sexton):
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out and the dark is moving in the corner.There are no sign posts in this room, four ladies,
over eighty,in diapers every one of them.La la la, Oh music swims back to me and
I can feel the tune they played the night they left mein this private institution on a hill.
The narrator knows that she is institutionalized, as mentioned in the last line above, yet she asks an unidentified man the way home. This is a common theme among mental cases, often, they fleet in and out of their own consciousness - sometimes they know where they are, at times, they don`t even remember who they are. The other lines goes on to describe the her surroundings. She is in a room with no signs, along with four old women. The light is turned out and something is moving in the darkness. Here, the author shows what kind of mental illness grips the narrator (perhaps schizophrenia or dementia because of the imagined movements in the dark). Sexton also provides a clue to the age of the narrator, who may also be in her eighties (like the other four ladies who were in the same room with her. Sexton`s words takes the reader back to her own experience, when she is unable to remember anything, except for that time when she was first institutionalized.
The next lines tells the reader that the narrator feels good about being institutionalized because "everyone here was crazy" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/~ari/as2.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Sexton", "given" : "Anne" } ], "container-title" : "Internet Channel", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Music Swims Back to Me", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Sexton)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Sexton). In fact, she liked it so much that she "danced in a circle" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/~ari/as2.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Sexton", "given" : "Anne" } ], "container-title" : "Internet Channel", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Music Swims Back to Me", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Sexton)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Sexton). This, for me, is one of the most important parts of the poem because it has several implications. For one, is it possible that this woman was not really crazy and that she is simply too tired of living according to the social norms? Is it possible that she chose to be crazy so she can be whoever she wants to be? The poem shows that the narrator had a non-dual experience with the music - the music was her, and she became the music. Her happiness at getting away from the "normal" world can be seen as a gauge of her sanity, or perhaps, her desire to preserve her sanity.
Music has allowed the narrator to remember of an old life, "Music pours over the sense and in a funny way music sees more than I, I mean it remembers better, remembers the first night" ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/~ari/as2.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Sexton", "given" : "Anne" } ], "container-title" : "Internet Channel", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Music Swims Back to Me", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Sexton)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-ci...