Women artists’ madness
It seems that old nineteenth Century social conventions are still valid for the late 1980s. Artists are still expected to act like maniacs and in this guise they mingle with the beau monde. It seems that both society and literature can’t do without the character of the maniac, the one who always tends to undermine the social foundations by its excessive excitement and enthusiasm. The questionable, dubious and suspicious nature of those maniacs of artists could be tracked in the attitude of Andre:
‘Round up the usual suspects’, he tells his secretary. ‘See if the tsatskeleh will drive down from Connecticut and the biker will bike up from SoHo’. 171/X
However in both of the ‘flattering’ words maniacs and suspects there is a borderline with the madman, the insane person, the lunatic. We can even argue that if the artists are the fools of our modern society [Darendorf 1969], the women artists are sort of crazy, mad women. There are number of references in the text that could support the view that Leila Sand is considered a mad woman. Yet her madness is her virtue; it is definitely perceived as something positive and valuable.
It is Theda, Leila’s mother, that is credited for passing ‘this crazed bravado’, this positive notion that Leila can do anything. As a woman artist herself Theda’s madness fired Leila’s ambition in a creative way. It is Cordelia, Leila’s ex-mate from her MA years who greets her old friend at her studio in Venice like that: ‘I miss your madness, Zandberg’ - 298/XVIII. Here madness rhymes with long-lasting friendship, with Leila’s charm of an adventurous, self-empowering woman artist. Perhaps at this point Leila is able to confide to herself and to Cordelia that it is Danny Doland from Dallas who turned her into ‘Leila the wild card suddenly tamed’. Leila needs to play her wild card, as much as her twins need their mother’s wildness and love, too: ‘She’s cuckoo’, says Mike to Ed, ‘but lovable’ - 227/XIII.
Isn’t it also quite appropriate a choice of E. Jong that the maenads are the leading figures in Leila’s white still-lives. Those frenzied women are picked up as the symbols of Leila’s new serene period. Hence the identification of the woman artist with her personae both asserts and contributes to her respectable wildness. It is also of great significance that Leila’s sane mind is frequently metaphorically referred to as her maenads and crystals, although one can be upset by the oxymoronic replacement of sane with maenads. It is either because in Jong’s mind sane no longer denotes only the rational, normal, sound and sober or because maenads stand for something beyond insanity, vehemence, rage and raving passion. Perhaps Leila Sand enjoys being both sane and insane woman artist. In the perspective of Wayne Riboud Leila is ‘really nuts’ when she tells him she is working on something else - on herself, on her sane mind, rather than going to use the S & M material in her oeuvre - 284/XVIII.
Leila is absolutely sure she needs to keep on painting because otherwise she’d ‘go crazy’. This is the unwanted madness; the one that is not productive and inspiring but rather destructive to her identity of an artist. She doesn’t want it, as she doesn’t want to paint for money, nor does she want to be ‘serviced’ on the deserted islands of Fiji, Bali or Trobriands - the Isles of Love where Julian would like to take her - 323/XIX. Most of all Leila needs her risk-taking madness, her own ability to follow her talent ‘off the edge of the cliff’ and see if she can fly. It seems that the fear of flying could be defeated and mastered only through the madness of flying. This is also a test for her identity. It is only through such extraordinary mad passion for painting, writing and creating that Leila could figure out whether she is as exceptional as the ancient Greek heroes:
What’s rare is to follow your talent into the underworld and see if you can sing your way out. What’s rare is to follow your talent into the labyrinth and see if you can slay the Minotaur. Are you Icarus? Are you Orpheus? Are you Theseus? Or are just Bruce, condemned always to be Bruce.
This is how Wayne tries to encourage the young waiter Bruce - a would-be actor, to pass this mythological trial. Although Bruce fails the test it is Leila who eventually wins. The baffling passages of Leila’s creativity labyrinth ask her to be as fearless worrior as the chief hero of Attica, Theseus, to go through the countless exploits of being a woman artist. She needs to slay the Minotaur of her addictions in order to set free the scared Icarus and Orpheus in herself. The expressive reference to the Greek mythology suggests yet again an implicit reading of Leila’s character as a heroic one and her blues story as one of many courageous exploits and adventures. It may as well reassure us that women artists of the late 1980s are more like ancient heroes, rather than persons with established and respected role and place in the society. Women artists are certainly able to be more like 'wild women' than proper creative persons as male artists are. Even the ironic motto of Ida Cox, which closes the book is quite telling about the final outcome of Leila’s exploits: ‘Wild women don’t have the blues because wild women don’t worry’ p.327/XX. It proves that lovable wildness is the only way out of the labyrinth of any woman’s blues. Thus to be wild and artist in E. Jong’s is the utmost life-affirming force. This is what Leila Sand’s social myth stands for.
This issue could be related to the recently published study of Sybille Duda Mad Women [Duda 1995] - a collection of biographies of famous women who all ended up in mental institutions or isolation. In her preface S. Duda maintains that a hysterical woman is a prototype of a creative mad woman. Woman’s madness is, according to Duda, a statement of protest against the social role imposed on her. In the case of Leila Sand it is a double protest of any contemporary woman - once through her madness and secondly through her being an artist. Taking into account M. Foucalt’s study on madness in thoughts, these women’s destiny is a perfect implementation of a society outcasting the disturbing ones because they refuse ‘to go by the book’ or possess the authority and power desired by others.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998