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Allen Charlotte The Abnormal Mind: Representations of Deviance and Madness in Contemporary Fiction Charlotte Allen A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF PhD UNIVERSITY OF ABERYSTWYTH 2015 CONTENTS Declarations p.4 Summary p.5 Acknowledgements p.6 Introduction p.7 Diagnosing And Defining Difficulties...p.7 Shifts in Perspective…p.13 Why Contemporary Fiction...p.21 Why ‘Representations?’…p.26 Dis-order of the Mind…p.30 Engleby…p.32 We Need to Talk About Kevin…p.37 Notes on a Scandal…p.43 Remainder…p.47 Anders Breivik and Joanna Dennehy…p.50 Chapter One: Case Study - Anders Breivik p.53 How Breivik Was Deemed Mad…p.56 Public Outrage…p.59 Solitary Madness…p.62 The Media’s Role in the Breivik Case…p.68 The Public’s Interest…p.77 Chapter Two: The Paradox of Personality p.88 “Ordered” Personality…p.90 Personality Disorder…p.100 Being Diagnosed…p.109 Social perceptions…p.118 Punishment or Treatment?...p.125 2 Chapter Three: Blurred Boundaries p.133 Diminished Responsibility and Abnormality of Mind…p.135 Constructive Consequences…p.140 Manipulation …p.147 The Potential for Rehabilitation…p.157 Parental Negligence…p.166 Chapter Four: School for Scapegoating p.176 The Scapegoat Mechanism…p.178 Challenging Representations of Victimhood …p.184 A Note on Scandal…p.196 Gendered imbalance in media representation…p.202 Paradigms of normal sexuality…p.206 Jeremy Forrest…p.212 Chapter Five: Metafictions of Madness p219 Undermining the Average…p.220 Human Resources…p.233 ‘I’m Laughing With You’…p.236 Rejecting Connection...p.239 Holding Up the Reality Principle…p.246 Chapter Six: Deviance and Madness in Contemporary Fiction p258 Representational borderlines…p.266 “Murder is a Man’s Business”…p.270 Reading Outside…p.284 Concluding Remarks p289 The Socio-Political Role of Literature…p.290 Informing Approaches and Attitudes towards Mental Health…p.296 Bibliography p299 3 SUMMARY This thesis examines the role of the deviant individual in four twenty-first century novels - Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby (2007), Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003), Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal (2003) and Tom McCarthy’s Remainder (2005) - and uses a number of recent media figures – Anders Breivik, Jeremy Forrest and Joanna Dennehy – as cultural reference points. The thesis explores the narrative ways in which the deviant individual and their anti-social or transgressive acts are reconfigured in terms of madness and abnormality. Through this process of defining the individual as mad, the thesis examines how these four novels in particular draw attention to profound structures that underpin the way notions of normality and sanity are also defined in contrast. Through an examination of the socio-cultural representation of diagnostic categories such as personality disorder, and legal clauses such as the diminished responsibility clause of the Homicide Act, the thesis looks at the way contemporary society categorises the human subject in the aftermath of a violent or deviant act, as a means of restoring social order. The thesis goes on to explore the notion of the mad individual being positioned in the role of scapegoat, by being expelled from society through these discursive structures, resulting through this process, in the re-establishment of the contemporary social status quo. The novels examined in this thesis are integral in facilitating this critical analysis of contemporary culture. The thesis examines the metafictional tropes used by the authors to draw attention to these profound social inequalities, which has the effect of galvanising the reader into reconsidering their own role in the interpretation of and reflection on these events, and crucially, these human subjects. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the Fergus Johnston Scholarship, without which this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the Department of English and Creative Writing, particularly Dr Louise Holmwood Marshall and Julie Roberts who were particularly helpful during a very difficult period. Many thanks are due to my examiners Tim Woods and Paul Crawford for a rigorous and challenging viva voce examination that helped me to reflect on the context of and the future for this research. I am indebted to my supervisor Dr Luke Thurston, whose support, guidance and advice has been invaluable. Luke, thank you for keeping me calm and for your infinite patience and positivity. It has been a pleasure working with you. To Keri Thomas, thank you for providing me with a place to stay, wine and wisdom, and for being a kindred spirit. Gratitude will always be due to Hannah Clancy, Hannah Cooper, Gemma Dakin, Sophie Hickinbotham, Laura Kennedy and Katherine Webb for their inexhaustible and ongoing support. Thank you to Peter Allen for calmly providing emergency remote IT assistance when I was in the throes of panic! Christopher Allen, thank you for the conference preparation advice, for all of your encouragement and for making me laugh every single day. Special thanks to Tess Allen who has talked me through every step of the journey - ‘home at last’! Finally to my wonderful partner Daniel Hoskins – I couldn’t have done this without your love, support, comfort and cooking. Now, where are those passports? 5 The Abnormal Mind: Representations of Deviance and Madness in Contemporary Fiction Introduction [S]anity or psychosis is tested by the degree of conjunction or disjunction between two persons where the one is sane by common consent. – R.D. Laing1 Diagnosing And Defining Difficulties How do we recognise a mad person? Similarly, how do we recognise the novelistic representation of a mad person? The four novels examined in this thesis - Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby (2007), Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003), Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal (2003) and Tom McCarthy’s Remainder (2005)2 - all feature protagonists who are represented in terms of their psychological abnormality. When beginning to analyse this, complications are encountered immediately because of difficulties with the very terminologies we use to define and describe these individuals and their experiences. The profound lucidity and insightfulness of each of the novels’ four protagonists refutes traditional notions of the mad individual – the novels are not depictions of the frenzied, nonsensical ravings of a “crazy” person – which problematises easy definition and categorisation of the characters and their accounts. This initial stumbling block provides an insight into some of the key themes that the novels share, and forms the foundation from which the arguments put forward in this thesis will develop. One of the fundamental concerns shared by these novels is the complexity of the categorising and labelling of human subjects, and therefore designating the protagonists 1 R.D. Laing, The Divided Self, (London: Penguin Books, 1990) p. 36. 2 Remainder was first published in 2005 but a revised edition followed in 2006. I use the revised edition throughout. 6 “mad” is fraught with ideological challenges. Nevertheless, this is the term that is being deliberately and carefully employed in the thesis title, as it seems the most appropriate choice of descriptor that encompasses the nuances of the individual and social context of what is being depicted. Baker et al (2010), in their comprehensive exploration of madness in post-1945 fiction, also employ the term deliberately, arguing that it signifies multiple meanings. They justify their use of the word by locating it within the trend of other critical commentators that also choose “madness” when wishing to emphasise cultural - rather than medical - connotations. Baker et al quote Geekie and Read who say that by ‘using the term “madness” the experience is wrested from the grip of a select few experts on “schizophrenia” or “psychosis”, and portrayed not as a medical condition with an obscure Greek or Latin derived title, but rather as an aspect of the human condition, about which we can all have our say’.3 “Madness” thus appears to be the most suitable term available that allows us to discuss the psychological complexities of the human subject while avoiding overtly clinical overtones. However, the widespread scholarly agreement that madness is the most suited term in current use does not negate the complex associations that are made when using it. “Madness” conjures images of a disturbed and chaotic individual, and its associations with cultural, rather than medical, depictions of psychosis as well as its casual use in the media, mean it is often perceived as a shocking and heavily loaded term. Removing the term from the clinical context also strips it - albeit deliberately in many cases - of the gentler nuances of care and compassion that would be applied when discussing a person who is perceived as mentally ill. This thesis will go on to examine some of the powerful conclusions that can be reached through an interpretation of the discourse of 3 Baker, Charley, Paul Crawford, Brian J. Brown, Maurice Lipsedge, and Ronald Carter. Madness in post-1945 British and American Fiction. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) p3. 7 and about the mad person, when stripped of these victim-laden clinical inferences. It is, however, important to note from the outset of the discussion, that there is, in fact, no pure and ideology-free terminology available for use when exploring the problem of the conceptualisation of madness. There is a need for caution with any terminology used. Three of the four novels being examined represent an individual who commits an extremely violent and seemingly mindless crime that is difficult to contextualise and understand. Similar complications arise in the application of the term “psychopath”, which is the descriptor often applied to the perpetrator of this type of crime in an ostensible attempt to denote its severity and to capture the extent of the depravity that must necessarily be present in the subject.
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