14th October: It’s not the wallpaper

I’m pleased to see that environment-induced insanity (or, in some cases, quasi-insanity) is concerned in many of this semester’s stories; apart from me being interested in the concept of sanity, it’s also an essential motif in my thesis. The most curious thing about ‘The Voice from the Wall’ is the wife’s impossible situation – she’s under extreme pressure of several serious problems. Had anyone payed attention to her situation, it would have been obvious that she’ll inevitably go insane. Her situation is hopeless: her new life in the United States is making an obsession out of her past from the very beginning. At the immigration office, she loses her identity, which could help her beginning a new life, but, in fact, it rather causes a shock than relief. Then, this confused woman with a reasonably blank page inside is living with a husband whom she cannot talk to, in a city where she can’t speak to others, either, including fellow Chinese. What is being written on those blank pages is alienation and fragments of her memories – and none of them contributes to good emotional balance .The husband is another amazing element. I’d never realised his similarity to Cathedral’s narrator until I began to write this post, though he may be even worse – he doesn’t even realise his wife’s grave need to find some company (and learn some English). By the time her daughter grows up a little, she picks up some definite insanity (provided she hasn’t arrived like that already), and when he gets frightened by a chinese man – probably seemed to recognize her old seducer – her fragile balance gets slowly overthrown. It’s not really implied, but her condition probably contributed to (or caused) her second miscarriage, finally throwing her into madness. Ironically, her husband can’t easily recognise even that. It’s interesting to note the contradicting title: it implies that insanity will be concerned, but in the story, it’s the real voice of healthy people coming from the wall.