Elizabeth and Van Gogh: Case Studies in Madness

*All Van Gogh quotes taken from gallery.com, in “The Complete Letters”*

In the act of creating, there is a level of good versus evil; of positive versus negative, light versus dark. Whatever outlandish spectrum may appear in creative works, the polar extremes come from the same mind. Being confronted with one’s own obscure and uncommon imagery makes the writer/painter/illustrator realize what potentially lies inside them. This confrontation -- this inner self-exposure -- is the key. Once they realize this potential exists, they want to explore boundaries, pushing it to its limits, discover exactly what it takes to unleash this inner voice. Without understanding it, this potential can be dangerous; some get lost in its depths, never to return.

Elizabeth understands that the image of Sello, and that of Medusa, and Dan, and the seventy-one “nice-time” girls, is “just an intangible form” (23), but this realization does not keep her from cowering under her blankets and simply letting these images take over. Elizabeth is not an artist in that she focuses creative energy to a specific desired end, but she is a creator in that these manifestations stem from her imagination, or rather, her unconscious. While they come from her mind, she does not control them. She comes to realize very quickly that “The things of the soul had in reality been reduced to an Al Capone show of extreme cruelty” (40). In using this cinematic metaphor, Elizabeth is acknowledging that the unfolding events are taken to dramatic extremes, taken out of the safe, personal context she had created for herself.

Elizabeth’s unplanned “creativity” fuels the deterioration of the external factors of her life. As she notes, “People only function well when their inner lives are secure and peaceful” (49). With Sello-in-the-brown-suit and Medusa pulling the strings, Elizabeth’s “inner life” is far from stable. Consequentially, after a public meltdown, she surrenders her son to the care of his school’s principal (52). Her detachment from the only member of her family further emphasizes her feeling of alienation.

Elizabeth’s trip into hell is not dissimilar from that of Vincent Van Gogh. Like Elizabeth, Van Gogh claims, “I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate, and feeling nowhere so much myself a stranger as in my family and country” (“The Letters”). Although he feels like an outsider in his own family, it does not stop him from conveying his struggles to his brother, Theo, or even to fellow painter Horave Levens, to whom the above passage was written. While there were times Elizabeth tried to explain her battle to others (Eugene and Tom), she, on the whole, she suffered alone. Even in the reaching out, Tom and Eugene could only express the same sentiment that Theo did to Van Gogh: “how dearly I should like to know what to do to put a stop to this nightmare” (“The Letters”). Unfortunately, the nightmare can only be stopped by the host(ess), and, in the case of these two examples, the hosts no longer had control of the situation.

While both Elizabeth and Van Gogh understood that what they were experiencing was not real, any attempts to overshadow their nightmares with reality were thwarted. Van Gogh wrote to his brother: “It is queer that every time I try to reason with myself to get a clear idea of things…a terrible dismay and horror seizes me and prevents me from thinking… there is quite definitely something or other deranged in my brain, it is astounding to be afraid of nothing like this” (“The Letters”). The horrors that were stirred up caught both “artists” off guard because they had been shown unfamiliar aspects of themselves. The danger of the depth of this unknown can be estimated by the fact that Van Gogh’s madness resulted in suicide; Elizabeth’s nearly brought her to the same end. The only saving grace for our protagonist was the confirmation she received from her own creative manifestation: her own image told her that she had the strength to endure her mind’s creations. There was no such voice to save dear Vincent.