*Spoiler thread* The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin (February 2020)

[Laura]

I mean Medea has consistently been dismissed as a Monster - look at David Vann's book - Bright Air Black - although I think Eurípedes' play most clearly treats her as a woman justified - as in what other choice did she have? Fremlin uses the noir genre to suggest she is taking a similar stance but in actuality her Louise is also Medea or is it Vera who is Medea... Fremlin is so clever - all women could become Medea - we could all slip over the edge of sanity given the right pressures...
And the ending - only Louise considers the possibility - if she had lost Michael as Vera loses her baby, her man, her job, her identity - would she have not slipped over into the same madness...
Again Agirre's book raises all those questions but I don't think she does it quite as well as Fremlin does.

[Roman Clodia]

Hmm, I'd have to say that I read Medea differently: as you say, Euripides has a startlingly empathetic approach to her, as does Ovid in his Metamorphoses, at least in part. I don't see Medea as insane, according to the sources. She has lots of choices as she could have left with her children (she flies away in Euripides in the chariot of the Sun to whom she is related) but she chooses to kill the boys because she wants to put an end to Jason's blood-line, an ultimate punishment in classical Greek culture.

An interesting reading of Medea is Toni Morrison's Beloved where Sethe makes a sane decision to kill her daughter rather than have her brought up in slavery.

I don't think Fremlin has main characters who even fantasise about child-killing. They struggle under the labour of domesticity but they don't reject it - they want to be wives and mothers, they're not craving corporate careers, they just wish it wasn't so exhausting and constantly sapping.

You're right, there are contemporary books like Mothers Don't and maybe Still Born and others that interrogate the idea that all women are naturally maternalistic and are unfulfilled without a baby... but I think that's a separate issue from what Fremlin is doing.

[Laura]

I never saw Medea as insane or a monster - I liked Euripides play - as you say she kills her beloved children as revenge on Jason.
I mean there's a whole backstory to the marriage of Medea and Jason etc...

Yes - I remember Beloved - a close resemblance to Medea in my opinion.

But why would Fremlin mention Medea x3 ? if there is no connection.
I think there is no intentional infanticide in Fremlin's book but she plays with the idea that a screaming infant tempts all parties - but those thoughts are kept in the unconscious.

Mark actually blames Louise for Michael's presence - at one point.
And there is a particular scene where Louise dreams she has dropped the baby - she doesn't - as she sleeps.

Fremlin toys with the reader; encourages us to think that Louise is going to do something unbearable with her infant - we are nudged into that horror. It's part of how she builds tension.

The second tension of course is all the unknowns of Vera's character.

I think there is a direct line from Fremlin to Agirre - but Agirre is very direct - taking us through a 'real-life' court scene. If Fremlin alludes to or uses the connection between motherhood and madness then Agirre bonks us on the head with it...

[Laura]

Do you know "The Madwoman in the Attic" - Sandra Gilbert and Susan Guber - a seminal text I believe it is called for feminist theory - published 1979.
I mean - Fremlin's Vera is in the attic - in 1958 but the trope I think comes from Jane Eyre - the mad wife of Mr Rochester - Gilbert and Guber's text probes how women have always been dismissed as "mad" when they refuse the roles allocated to them within patriarchal society - Medea of course is the supreme star - she was, is and never had been mad... but most interpretations of her construct her as insane.
Fremlin's novel demonstrates that Louise like Medea never crosses the line - as I said above Louise is Medea - she never despite immense pressures crosses the line into madness -
Madness as we know is simply a label to describe all aberrant women ...
Angela Carter - Wayward Girls and Wicked Women -
or Sandra Cisneros - My Wicked Wicked Ways.
Both laughing at society's definition of 'wicked' - always applied to women.

[Laura]

So to conclude Fremlin uses the conventional connection motherhood and madness to build tension - even referencing Medea - she assumes of course - the reader had the conventional interpretation of Medea - she's mad - a Monster etc - And then Fremlin deconstructs the readers conventional associations - motherhood and madness - Louise never loses her mental capacity despite extreme provocation (Vera taking the pram) and unbearable pressure (sleep deprivation plus bullying neighbours and spineless husband etc)
Fremlin uses the readers conventional attitudes and proves them wrong - Louise survives. And Vera should be pitied not vilified - her losses are immense. Vera is represents true insanity? Driven to wrong an innocent party - in an attempt to restore what she believes has been taken from her. Fremlin presents two sides of the same coin - 2 women, both mothers - one mad, one sane: the sane mother says - 'how quickly I would be labelled if I had lost my child or if it was harmed in any way'.

[Roman Clodia]

Ha, yes, I do know Gilbert and Gubar but it focuses on women in Victorian literature so while there might be connections, we should be a little wary of making direct parallels across different historical and cultural ways of thinking. Though misogyny, of course, is depressingly constant :((

[Roman Clodia]

A book that you might like, Laura, on cultural connections between women and madness is Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present

[Roman Clodia]

The other connection that is made is between female creativity and madness (Woolf, Plath, the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, Anne Sexton etc.) a more subtle way of policing what women are socially and culturally sanctioned to do i.e. do too much arty work and it'll drive you mad - so it's for your own benefit to be forbidden to write etc. (said in the voice of an authoritarian male, of course!).

[Laura]

Yes exactly - curbs on women in all directions!
And yet there are very clearly non-Victorian books - on women and madness. Antonia White's - Beyond the Glass 1979 - or Janet Frame's 3 part autobiography - An Angel at My Table. Hannah Green - I Never Promised You A Rose Garden - Sylvia Plath - of course, Virginia Woolf - one could say Women's literature is rife with Madness!

Across cultural boundaries - a focus on female insanity in some modern Japanese shorts I read fairly recently - and insanity is a huge taboo in Japan. I'm not a madness expert - but it also connects historically with witches and the occult and supernatural powers etc.

[Roman Clodia]

Oh yes, I just mean that Gilbert and Gubar's analysis is of Victorian novels within that specific historical and cultural context (though later feminist scholars have debated, utilised and extended as well as disputed their arguments).

They also, if I recall correctly, focus on 'mad' female characters in nineteenth century fiction, rather than looking at the idea of authorship and 'madness'.

In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing what you make of your next Fremlin - do you have any ideas of what you'll read next?

[Laura]

Elaine Showlter - The Female Malady - I think is the extension to Gilbert and Gubar's book - it uses fiction and the depiction of madness in women's writing.
Read - probably should re-read.
I was thinking WndyJW's suggestion - Prisoner's Base.

I'm curious to see in what other directions her talents lie? Recommendations please :⁠-⁠)

[Roman Clodia]

Honestly, you can't go wrong with Fremlin! My favourites to date are Possession and The Trouble-Makers. The Jealous One has a particularly Highsmith feel about it, I think.