Mental illnesses carry a large stigma in society revolving around the fact that one cannot see it, it is invisible to the average human eye. These invisible illnesses are overshadowed and overlooked by more noticeable, physical disabilities although both can be equally debilitating. Two of the novels in class that stood out to me were Frankenstein and The Sound and the Fury. During these novels’ time frames, mental illnesses were more misunderstood than they are now due to the lack of advanced medical equipment that we now have. These novels stood out because of the fictional characters, Victor Frankenstein and Quentin Compson, and their mental disabilities being overlooked due to characters with more apparent disabilities. Since these characters’ disabilities are not addressed nor taken as serious, they struggle just as much or more due to societal ignorance of mental illnesses like depression and severe anxiety. Consequently, this ignorance and lack of help negatively impacts both of their mental states and leads both to heart-breaking ends.
William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury, published in 1929, is narrated through four different perspectives. Two of the four narrations, Benjy and Quentin Compson, can be read through a disability lens. Benjy Compson communicates through moans and cries, unable to speak due to an undiagnosed disability, and relies mostly on his senses to understand and view the world. Referred to in demeaning ways by his own family members, his family is fully aware of his mental and physical disabilities; however, they are ignorant to what extent Benjy is competent and able to process and understand. Benjy is described physically as “a big man who appeared to have been shaped of some substance whose particles would not or did not cohere to one another or to the frame which supported it. His skin was dead looking and hairless; dropsical too, he moved with a shambling gait like a trained bear. His hair was pale and fine. It had been brushed smoothly down upon his brow like that of children in daguerreotypes. His eyes were clear, of the pale sweet blue of cornflowers, his thick mouth hung open, drooling a little” (Faulkner 274). It is made evident in the novel by his physical description, behaviors and the interactions between his family and others with him that Benjy is noticeably disabled. However, his brother, Quentin who suffers from disability as well, is not portrayed as noticeably. Quentin, the oldest Compson sibling, attends Harvard and centers his morals and life around traditional southern standards based on reputation and physical appearance. He carries the burden of his family because he is the Compson heir and believes fixing their reputation lays on him. Quentin’s narrative is not seen as reliable as Benjy’s because he lives in his ideas and made up events rather than Benjy whose timeline of events is more accurate even though he is not seen as capable of order. He bases his life on the ideas of virtue, family reputation and purity which leads him to obsess over his sister, Caddy, breaking his ideas of tradition. Because Quentin’s whole life revolves around theses morals he has created, he is intent on saving his sister’s reputation which drives him to lie about actions of incest to his father. Once he realizes his father nor his sister do not care about his family’s reputation, Quentin does not know what to live his life by. This is where his mental state starts to deteriorate, and no one seems to notice because there is not a physical change in appearance. Quentin’s obsessions with the past, Caddy and time all seem to have an unfixable outcome and he is lost in despair. “Haunted by a past to which he is inadequate, dogged by a present he cannot face, and doomed to no future, Quentin, through his diction and general point of view-both what he speaks and what he thinks-dramatizes a modern yet universal sensibility” (Brown 553). No one can see Quentin’s internal struggles about the foundation of his life being completely destroyed and sense of failure in saving his family’s reputation. His family is oblivious to the mental disability he is dealing with, it is invisible to them. In that time, there was limited study on mental illnesses and treatments were in their infancy. The ignorance in itself on disability is also fatal to Quentin’s mental state. He does not understand his own disability nor knows he has one. Quentin looks like an average white male, attends Harvard, and is able to function normally; therefore, who would ever look further into Quentin’s mental state and be able to notice something was not right? His family does not pay as much attention to Quentin as they do Benjy, so they would never notice a difference in his behaviors. Quentin considers himself a failure and all the ideas and morals he has built his life on mean nothing to his family, “So Quentin succumbs, a victim of his father’s despairing vision of language, sexuality and indeed all existence” (Desmond 96). Arguably, Quentin suffers more or just as much as Benjy because he does not receive the help he needs. This endless despair in his mind leads him to suicide.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818, Victor Frankenstein is born into a wealthy, well-known family with a fascination for science. Victor creates this creature, referred to as the Monster, while attending university at Ingolstadt. When looking at this novel through a disability lens, the most noticeable disabled character is the Monster. The Monster is described as “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips” ( Shelley 43). Frankenstein’s creation is seen as a monstrous or freakish to anyone it encounters. The Monster is isolated due to his looks although nothing is physically impaired nor is the creation mentally impaired. The creation is actually quicker, faster and stronger than the average human as well as being more intelligent and a faster learner too. “I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs” (Shelley 103).
However, the physical abnormalities of the Monster isolate it from civilization and society. Through a disability lens, the Monster is often seen as disabled due to its physical description in the novel, but a disabled character that is often overlooked from lack of physical disablement is Victor Frankenstein. After the death of his mother, Victor goes to the University and cuts himself off from the world. He throws himself into a world of science and becomes obsessive over creating his creature. From there Victor spirals into manic-like behavior, has spouts of severe anxiety and often faints when he is overwhelmed. He becomes the stereotypical “mad scientist”. “My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement … the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places… My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (Shelley 41). This passage from the novel shows the obsession and manic-like behaviors of Victor. He locks himself away in a room to create this creature while neglecting sleep and proper nutrition. Victor also becomes severely paranoid of his vengeful creature and “carries pistols and a dagger constantly about him” (Shelley 44). He is in a constant state of anxiety where he does not sleep or eat, and his family becomes extremely worrisome about his overall health. “I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness” (Shelley 44).
As the story progresses, Victor begins to lose his sanity due to paranoia, severe anxiety and grief and becomes delusional. “I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit” (Shelley 48). The only cure his family and friends could think of for this erratic behavior was rest. Mental illnesses such as the ones Victor Frankenstein most likely faced would not be easily handled during the 1800s. The cure for many facing severe mental disabilities in the 1800s was isolation or simply being thrown in an asylum. Because Victor was ignorant of his mental disabilities, he drove himself into insanity while chasing his creature around the world. When looking at Victor Frankenstein through a disability lens and not only his creation, one sees the novel in a whole new perspective. This perspective does not focus on physical appearances but instead examines the erratic behavioral patterns, paranoia and severe anxiety the main character, Victor, faces throughout the novel. Although Frankenstein’s disability is not made as evident as his creature’s, one can argue that he suffers just as much or more than his creation because of the invisibility of his own.
In conclusion, fictional characters in the novels previously mentioned have often been overshadowed due to a lack of a more noticeable disability. In Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, characters Quentin and Benjy Compson both face mental disabilities. However, because Benjy’s disabilities are more apparent due to his physical appearance and his inability to communicate with words, Quentin’s goes unnoticed by his family. Quentin struggles silently with his depression and despair until he commits suicide later in the novel. In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Creation’s physical abnormalities overshadow his creator’s severe depression, anxiety and paranoia. Victor Frankenstein slowly loses his sanity and follows the creature around the world to destroy what he has made. Both characters are not seen as disabled due to their disabilities being invisible and not noticeable on first glance. The lack of knowledge on their mental illnesses creates unnecessary suffering and fatal endings for these two characters. The stigma mental disability revolves around creates a negative environment for a person to heal and live healthily in.
Word Count: 1800
I pledge: Rachel Porchie
Works Cited:
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Print.
Brown, May Cameron. “The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury.”
American Literature 51.4 (1980): 544. JSTOR.
Desmond, John F. “From Suicide to Ex-Suicide: Notes on the Southern Writer as Hero in the Age of Despair.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 1992, pp. 89–105. . JSTOR
Shelley , Mary. Frankenstein . Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library .
