annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Sugar and Snails
    • Acknowledgements
    • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
      • Birthday blog tour
      • S&S on tour 2022
    • Early endorsements
    • Events >
      • Launch photos
      • Launch party videos
    • in pictures
    • Media
    • If you've read the book
    • Polari
    • Reading group questions
    • Reviews
    • In the media
  • Underneath
    • Endorsements and reviews
    • Launch party and events
    • Pictures
    • Questions for book groups
    • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor series
    • Matilda Windsor >
      • What readers say
      • For book groups
      • Interviews, articles and features
      • Matty on the move
      • Who were you in 1990?
      • Asylum lit
      • Matilda Windsor media
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Inside disturbed minds: Wide Sargasso Sea & The Octopus Man

21/5/2021

12 Comments

 
These two recent reads about a subject close to my heart: finding the meaning within supposed madness and unOthering those deemed severely mentally ill. The first is a classic, an antidote to the mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre; the second, which deserves to become a classic, published this year. I have no hesitation in recommending them both.

Picture
Picture


Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

With the passing of the Emancipation Act, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway grows up as wild as the vegetation re-colonising Coulibri Estate. Her father dead, her mother preoccupied with her disabled brother, the family despised by both white and black as former slavers, they would have starved had not her mother married Mr Mason. But even he can’t prevent an angry mob from burning down the mansion. Her mother never recovers.
 
After a convent education in Spanish Town, her stepfather’s son brokers a marriage between Antoinette and Edward Rochester, newly arrived from England. Reluctant initially, Antoinette hopes to find love during an extended honeymoon in an isolated house in the Windward Islands. Unfortunately, hearing rumours about madness in the family and believing he’s been duped, Edward shuns her. With her fortune having passed on to her husband, Antoinette is stuck, and a consultation with an obeah woman (a traditional herbalist) backfires.
 
Exiled from her homeland, stripped of her possessions and even her name (Edward calls her Bertha), she’s shipped to England. Locked up, with only Grace Poole for company, she seems to tick the psychiatric boxes yet, having followed her from childhood, the reader knows she is not totally mad, but angry. And bewildered, with nothing to reflect her true self back at her (p117):
 
There is no looking-glass here and I don't know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us - hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?
 
I reread this novel for an online talk on writing about mental health issues, where I contrast Charlotte Brontë’s depiction of the mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre with Jean Rhys’s humanising the same character over a century later. First published in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea presents a richer narrative of the woman who, for 19th-century readers, is less a character than a piece of gothic scenery or an obstacle on Jane’s journey to true love.


The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson

Tom knows life isn’t meant to be easy; what matters more is following the true path. Single, jobless and on the benefits breadline, his priorities are abstinence, spreading kindness, and devotion to his god. When not praying, visiting his sister or sitting with a cup of hot water in a cafe with the town’s other strays, he roams the Sussex countryside in rain, frost and scorching sun. Although perpetually anxious – on the one hand, of offending those he cares for, of being punished by the octopus god on the other – he hangs onto his humour, and his hope.
 
For twenty years he’s trod the tightrope between sanity and madness, with those who police the boundary not always on his side. As the novel opens, Tom is under pressure from both his sister and his care coordinator to participate in a drug trial, but why should the risk potential side-effects of a medicine designed to treat athlete’s foot? A hug from his care coordinator cannot compensate for her role in a system in which a patient’s opinion on his own mental well-being carries little weight.
 
Tom shrugs off yet another disappointing appointment and takes the train to London to meet up with his oldest friend. But too much has changed for both of them since they fought together, took drugs together, and shared a threesome with another friend’s mum. Tom was once a promising law student. Now he can barely hold a conversation.
 
Fleeing the pub, Tom is physically and verbally abused by the octopus god until, confused, lost and hungry, he collapses and is picked up by the police and compulsorily detained on a psychiatric ward. No-one could describe the regime as therapeutic, although he does make a friend. I hoped the abuse Tom witnessed, and was blamed for, was an exaggeration, as the twenty-first century London hospital seemed as scary as the one in 1950s Americana depicted in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
 
Tom gets his discharge by agreeing to take part in the clinical trial. Such an egregious betrayal of his god feels suicidal, yet it’s the octopus god who is silenced. For a while, everyone is pleased, including Tom. He can drink alcohol, eat meat and maybe have sex if he can tolerate the stresses of dating. But soon it doesn’t feel like freedom, more a different kind of failure, because something is missing and he struggles with staying awake.
 
From my work as a clinical psychologist with people who have psychotic experiences, I immediately recognised Tom. The love-hate relationship with voices that both protect and persecute. The constant battle against insanity within a society and service system that defines your treasured beliefs as insane. The pain of knowing you’re underperforming, while powerless to put it right.  I was reminded how it can be especially traumatic for highly-intelligent people like Tom to have to rely upon, and be deemed irrational by, staff who are much less bright.
 
Tom’s backstory is consistent with a vulnerability-stress model of mental illness. While he carries a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which is no doubt recorded as drug-induced, the author feeds the reader episodes of his earlier life consistent with a more psychological formulation. Parental neglect, followed by the death of his girlfriend’s mother, might have contributed as much as the drugs to push him over the edge.
 
However, The Octopus Man is more than an authentic depiction of someone who hears voices. It’s an absorbing story narrated by an unusual character who is as endearing when communing with nature as he is in conversation with his personal god. Five shiny stars from me and thanks to publishers Weidenfeld & Nicolson for my review copy. I strongly recommend you to read it. For the voice.
 
It’s strange, but I never thought of my character, Matty, in my own forthcoming novel, as a voice-hearer, perhaps because she’s lived for so long inside my head. She’s launching next week: click on either image to learn more.
Picture
Picture
I thought of the Victorian reformer Edward Carpenter when I read the prompt for this week’s flash fiction challenge. But I wanted to link my 99-word story about naked gardening to this post’s mental health theme. See what you think of how I’ve done that. Full disclosure: I’ve stolen the phrase “tyranny of shoe leather” from a review of his biography. I keep meaning to get myself a copy to learn more about this fascinating man.
Picture
The other Edward Carpenter
 
In another life, he’d freed his feet from the tyranny of shoe leather. Liberated his limbs from linen’s law. He’d felt a lightning flash of revelation, commanding him to shed convention’s carapace with his clothes.

In that life, Edward was a naturist, a socialist, a feminist, an environmentalist and vegetarian. Rambler, recycler, smallholder, author, philosopher and openly gay man. Alas, his current life shrinks him to a single label, distorts his passions with its disapproving prism. His psychiatrist, arriving unannounced to find him gardening naked, observes a symptom of his schizophrenia diagnosis and feels compelled to up his meds.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
12 Comments
D. Avery link
21/5/2021 03:25:45 pm

Um, if Matty as voice-hearer is inside your head....

Yes to the reviewed books and yes to your flash. I'm likely to read the Octopus Man, someday. I sure hope Edward's psychiatrist steers clear of Carrot Ranch, who knows what he would assume about the gardening going on there just now. Your review and flash cultivate consideration of the role of drugs in mental health- cause and cure.
And regarding the first book, any wonder a synonym for insanity is madness?

Reply
Anne Goodwin
24/5/2021 01:54:49 pm

Thanks, D. Yes, not everyone is allowed their eccentricites. That's easily something to get mad about if you're put on the wrong side of the line.

Reply
Marsha Ingrao link
21/5/2021 10:42:15 pm

Hi Anne, The ending came as a surprise to me. No wonder with his many personalities. It makes a lot of sense in hindsight. :)

Reply
Anne Goodwin
24/5/2021 01:58:37 pm

Thanks, Marsha. I was actually trying to write two different Edwards. The first is a historical figure who did indeed have all those identities. The second was fictional, and permitted only one.

Reply
Charli Mills
27/5/2021 12:39:05 am

Do you ever wonder who is truly mad? Those following their own instincts or the instinct to follow norms set by society? If Edward is mad, the world makes no sense. Well done. Both books will be interesting to read. I think The Wide Sargasso Sea has crossed my path before but I can't recall when.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
1/6/2021 04:43:08 pm

Ah, but the world doesn't have to make sense! Only novels must.

Reply
Norah Colvin
28/5/2021 01:08:14 pm

Hi Anne,
I listened to Jane Eyre ealier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think someone else also recommended The Wide Sargasso Sea as a follow-up read. I'll think about it. The Octopus Man sounds quite interesting too, and I think your flash tackles a similar thought - who/what is insanity and who is the judge? I felt quite sad at the end of your flash. While I may never garden naked (if I did, they could probably rightfully lock me up) I am aware of the thin line that is easily broken between what is considered acceptable and what is not. Great storytelling, as expected and delivered.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
1/6/2021 04:45:46 pm

Was that your first time with Jane Eyre? it'a a classic here but Sargasso Sea is better.

Reply
Norah Colvin
4/6/2021 12:46:04 pm

It was my first visit with Jane Eyre. I'll keep the Sargasso Sea in mind.

Anne Goodwin
6/6/2021 11:10:04 am

It's a very different take on a neglected character.

Roberta Eaton Cheadle
4/6/2021 07:24:56 pm

Hi Anne, I enjoyed your piece, especially after reading your thoughts on both of these books. The first one is particularly intriguing to me as Jane Eyre is my favourite classic and Bertha scared me to death when I first read this book as a girl.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
6/6/2021 11:14:23 am

She is scary in Jane Eyre, but probably equally scared herself. And angry at her treatment. I'm leading a walk through Jane Eyre territory next Sunday, but we gloss over the first Mrs Rochester.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My latest novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Perfect Match
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom