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Suzanne Scanlon Quotes

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Famous Suzanne Scanlon Quotes

“If I could explain my madness, it would be the persistence of a certain feeling--I remember the feeling but I can no longer feel it--the memory of it is vivid, and enough. It came over me around twilight. The intensity of a great, irrevocable loss would wash over me and with it, the absolute certainty that I would not survive it. Strange you can remember the texture of a feeling without feeling it. With this as measure, I know I got better. But I also grew up, and no feeling is final, and I came to understand the waves of feeling, to know this too shall pass. Every once in a while I'll feel a sadness or a loneliness that will remind me of the mad feeling, but it is nowhere as strong, and more importantly, it is never concomitant with the belief that it will last forever.”

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Book:Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen
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“Telling these stories, I think now, was a way of not mourning. Remembering my mother in these moments of conflict or disappointment--this allowed me to keep our fights going. Fighting is a way to refuse to lose someone. If you keep the fight alive, you might never deal with the loss, the vulnerability of it, the deep sadness, the irrevocable and baffling fact of a total loss.”

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Book:Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen
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“The Yellow Wallpaper" seemed to me now to be the story of what can happen when you listen to a doctor-when you buy into your "case-history construction." When you don't listen to yourself, when you place your trust and authority elsewhere. The narrator loses her mind completely, becomes the madwoman, the identity they've given her. The "rationale" for their treatment of her is now confirmed; she is sick, indeed. This is what can happen: You are seen as mad, you begin acting mad.”

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Book:Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen
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