Madness In Literature

Two

Mel didn’t see the boy for the next few days and she tried not to let it bother her. After all, she was a twenty first century young woman; she could function perfectly without some random guy helping her with her school work. She went through her days as per normal; she woke up, jogged for an hour, ate her cereals, never missed her classes, checked out all the guys in said classes and then tried to ignore the sense of disappointment when she realised that he wasn’t there, completed her assignment for the MIL (Madness In Literature) class, did other assignments, meet friends. She even managed to convince herself that it wouldn’t matter two cents to her if she never saw the boy again, even though deep down she knew it was a lie. She wanted to, like, really, really wanted to, talk to him again.

On the day of the MIL lecture, exactly one week since she had last seen him, Mel woke up feeling jittery. She forgone her morning run, choosing instead to use the time to dab on what little make up she had and trying on different clothes. She finally settled on a light yellow dress, a personal favourite because she loved the way it swished around her knees gracefully whenever she walked. She packed her bag carefully, making extra sure that she had the boy’s notes, before leaving the house and heading for her class. All through the morning lessons, she had trouble concentrating. What would she say to him? What would he say in return? Would he even noticed? How had he been working on the assignment without his notes? Why wasn’t he in any of her other classes? Maybe she should ask him what major he was from. Perhaps she will even buy him dinner, just to thank him for the notes. She had never asked a boy out before, especially not a stranger, but it wasn’t technically date, was it? On impulse, she bought two cups of teas from a little cafe on campus, praying he wasn’t caffeine intolerant, and headed for the MIL lecture.

The nearer Mel got to the building in which the lecture was held, the more nervous she became. Her hands were too cold and clammy, her dress too thin, and did her hair smell like the cafeteria? She clutched her bag and the cups and thought about how she should have just bought him a latte (everyone loves lattes, don’t they?) instead of this earl grey with milk, which was always what she drank. She thought about how throwing the drinks away and even skipping class just to avoid seeing him again, because suddenly she realised she had no idea what she should say or do, or why she had even accepted his notes in the first place. She almost chickened out once, but something made her keep walking forward, one step at a time until she was in front the lecture theatre. She took a deep breath and stepped in.

She looked around the sea of bored faces and let out a breath. He wasn’t there, she realised with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Not in the last few rows of seats, where he usually sat, not in the middle, and definitely not in the front. All that worrying had been for nothing. Sighing at her own silliness, she climbed up the steps to the last row of the lecture theatre and sat down, keeping her eyes fastened on the door in case, just in a case, a boy in green parka happened to came in late. But he didn’t. No one did. The lecturer begun on a new topic, a discussion on Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and she soon find herself completely absorbed in the story. 

Published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper was a short fiction written in journal style, recorded by a woman who was locked away in an upper storey bedroom by her husband for the entire summer. With the windows barred and her door locked up, she began to lose her mind, slowly becoming obsessed with the colour of the room’s wallpaper, which she considered a strange yellow colour. It was told in a disturbingly realistic manner, following the impact of confinement on the mental health of the woman, and her silent, heartbreaking descent into psychosis, which she tried to keep from her husband. It was grotesquely fascinating to Mel, who had never, for all her life, had to deal with madness of any kind. She was a practical girl, brought up by a set of practical, civil engineer parents who had never indulged themselves in any form of indecisive sentimentality. Even when she was younger, they adhered strictly to the rules of logic and practicality. Santa never existed, neither did Narnia. Hogwarts was a forbidden place, of which Mel secretly visited under her covers with a torchlight when her parents were sleeping. It wasn’t that she believed in magic; she just liked the probabilities that a person’s imagination could provide, whether or not it was real. However, no fantasy, no fiction, no magical story she had ever read could prepare her for the level of disillusionment a person could have as portrayed in The Yellow Wallpaper. It was as if she had been missing out on a whole world altogether.