December | The Turning Circle
The Paradigm Shift from female wildness to insanity, and back again
The Way Forward
It’s a good thing to be wild, right? Turning back to the earth, becoming one with nature is something many of us aspire to and are in the process of relearning. Rewilding ourselves. It’s something we’ve talked a lot about on H A G in this year with the Cailleach. It’s a positive mind-shift, a lifestyle switch, especially important in the challenging times we live in, where the price of a barrel of oil dragged from the earth is worth more than the planet that produced it, when ownership of patches of land is valued over the lives, human and more-than-human, that it supports.
Wildness, getting back to nature, caring for and tending the planet is clearly the way forward into the future, despite what wealthy elite oil barons might say. Personally, I’d rather live in a cave than a skyscraper in a burning, drowning storm- and war-ravaged world.
Returning to a life that is respectful of the health of our planet and its eco-systems is our only option, and thus we see wildness and interconnection with our furred and feathered and scaled and plant neighbours as an assential part of that pact.
Wild is good.
But it wasn’t always seen that way. Wildness has been (and still is) associated with rage; “wild with anger” is still a commonly used phrase today for somone who shows visible signs of their fury. Rage is like a forest fire; it can be cleansing, but it is horrifically destructive in the process. “Mad” is another word commonly substituted for anger ('[s]he’s mad at me, [s]he’s going mad in there). Rage and wildness, then, are often conflated with madness/ insanity, particularly (but not solely) when it comes to women, especially the older woman. The H A G.
WISDOMS
1.
There is no shared science out there… that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5*
— Sultan al-Jaber, president of COP28 and head of UAE state oil company, Adnoc
I had to include this… I mean, where has this guy been living to have missed all the scientific evidence — in a cave, maybe? If anything is likely to drive me into a wild rage, it’s blatant lies like this. According to Nature Journal, “the science is clear _ fossil fuels must go”.
We all know it. Scientists have been studying and talking and writing about it for years now. It’s not news, or an unexpected revelation. I refuse to take my information from rich businessmen with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and their bank balances.
I struggled to write this newsletter (hence it is so late this month), because I was so jittery over COP28 and didn’t realise why I was feeling that way (I was blaming perimenopause and lack of sleep). Throughout the process of the conference, though, I remained hopeful.
I was gutted but not surprised at the outcome. Politics is in the hands of global corporations, politicians are merely puppets and mouthpieces who don’t have the interests of their voters at heart, and whom we can no longer trust. Governments have not prepared adequately, and the goals for 2030 now look unlikely.
But I’m not giving up yet.
2.
The climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win.”
— António Guterres, UN Secretary-General
It’s not over till the fat lady sings. 1 I’m not sure if the cailleach is fat, and I’m not about to fat-shame anyone, mythical or real. But she is waking and crooning and calling at the moment, calling us to wake up and pay heed to her, and the land. While her voice is gentle, there is hope. She reminds me how very important it is to keep hoping and working towards a better world.
This week, I walked through the little ‘forest’ I planted at the bottom of my garden many years ago, when we first moved to this place, and spent some time with the trees there. I was astonished and delighted at how wild it has become, at how truly forest-like, and at what was growing there that I suspect has planted itself, because I have no memory of putting it there (although that could also be down to perimenopausal brain fog). There are fung growing that I can’t identify but only stare at in wonder, and tufty lichens sprouting from bare branches that I can’t wait for my friend and budding lichenologist, Jenni, to have a look at.
It is a little microcosm that I have played some small part in inviting into sharing space with me and my family. Would you be surprised if I told you how at peace and how comfortable I felt walking there? As if I was a part of it and belonged there. I am a stranger to the feeling of belonging, so this really struck me. But also, I feel it needs some help. One tree has been snapped in half by strong winds and is being held up by its neighbours, to their detriment. Others neede some branches need trimming. I felt so uplifted just being there. Just being. There are little patches of hope everywhere, if we know where to look, spreading across the land like constellations.
3.
We need to have a whole cultural shift, where it becomes our culture to take care of the Earth, and in order to make this shift, we need storytelling about how the Earth takes care of us and how we can take care of her.”
— Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist, policy expert, writer
I feel this so strongly. Robin Wall Kimmerer brought this home to me in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass. The earth takes care of us, she holds us like a mother holds her child. There is no feeling of security and love more powerful than that. But the child is unable to prevent anyone from hurting her mother, because she is just a child, a vulnerable infant.
But we are not children. And there is so much we can do to show the mother our love. That will differ for all of us, and diversity is good. Next year, my goal is to learn about permaculture, not something I ever thought a year ago would become an interest, and to continue to write and share my story as it develops. I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions, they are more often than not doomed to failure, but what goal are you setting yourself for the future?
4.
Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, author
Every foray into the wild brings me joy, be it a simple hour’s walk for some fresh air, or a hike of discovery into the wi[l]der landscape. The world is wounded and so are we. By our destructive behaviours and lack of care for the world we are self-harming. So I need those simple joys. They show me that all is not lost. And so I will work to heal the land for the future, for the innocents, for my children. I do sometimes sink into despair, I am prone to it, but I am also incredibly stubborn about the things that matter. Healing in all its many forms. Including love and hope and joy.
5.
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
David Attenborough, broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author
Correct. But our societies are made up of individuals. What effect can individuals going off-grid or joining up in small groups to live a more sustainable lifstyle in isolation from the rest of mainstream society have? Does it create a ‘them and us’ kind of thing? Surely there is enough division in our societies already, fuelled by pointless culture wars and political agendas. Interconnection, education and visibility is surely a stronger way of informing people and proving that sustainable living is possible and healthier and kinder for all.
The Angry Young Man v. the Hysterical Harridan
In her book, Hagitude - Reimagining the Second Half of Life, Sharon Blackie devotes much of her first chapter to a discussion of menopausal rage. Apparently, it’s not an unusual symptom. “All rage emerges from pain”, she claims, and for her, the source was “a strong sense of exile and unbelonging”, something I too have felt for much of my life. Blackie describes how women hold anger in their bodies, how we are taught from girlhood to repress it, and how this leads to mental health problems such as anxiety, nervousness, tension, panic attacks, and depression. She also cites clinical studies which link repressed anger to physical symptoms such as high blood pressure, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and even some cancers.
Men who express their anger, claims Blackie, are seen as strong, decisive and powerful, whereas women who express their anger are percieved as difficult, overemotional, irrational, shrill and unfeminine. The ‘angry young man’ is an accepted archetype often seen as a positive and creative force that generates change and/ or action, whilst an angry woman is seen dismissively as a hysterical harridan.
Enlightenment, but not for Women
I am reminded of the character, Bertha Mason, Rochester’s first wife in Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, who was denounced as a mad woman after her marriage and locked away in a room for the remainder of her life. Jane Eyre herself endured incarceration and then institutionalisation in an orphanage due to her independent thought and challenging of authority. There were many such stories in the nineteenth century concerning women who were claimed as mad for the slightest misdemeanor and consequently locked away from society.
Women, as the weaker sex, were thought to suffer from hysteria, an illness which arose from the womb and so could not affect men. In America, women were incarcerated in lunatic asylums simply for reading novels or for “insane” behavior during the “change of life.” 2 Kate Moore tells the true story of Elizabeth Packard, wife and mother of six children (and probably perimenopausal) who was locked in an asylum by her husband for defying “all domestic control”. 3
With the age of Enlightenment had come the idea that men were rational and women were not. As Fredrika Thelandersson describes it:
Reason became synonymous with men and masculinity and unreason with women and femininity. In the move toward less violent and more reparative care of the mentally ill, the subject in need of caring confinement became primarily female, and the treatment of her was in the hands of men and male doctors. 4
The Mad Women of Ireland
As we already know from the brutal mother and baby homes, industrial schools, and proliferation of the workhouse, nineteenth-century Ireland was fond of institutionalisation, especially when it came to women. The incarceration of ‘mad’ women in Ireland was as prevalent as it was in England and America. Joanne Parry claims that:
mental disorder among nineteenth-century Irish women was most probably a product of their social situation, that is the difficulties of living under the constraints of a very narrow definition of femininity. 5
The role of women in Irish society confined her to the domestic sphere, to the nurture of her family, to be subservient to her husband, to be kind and gentle and passive. Being forced to live under such oppression is enough to drive any woman mad, both in terms of anger and insanity.
According to Parry, unmarried women, who were unable to fulfill the role society had dictated for them, were viewed as a nuisance and a financial burden, so they were often labelled as mad just to have them locked up.
During my study of history at Maynooth, I learned of two sisters in Dublin during the nineteenth century who were committed to an asylum by their brother, so that he could take control of their inheritance. They remained there until death. They were not the only ones. According to Parry, in the late nineteenth century, the typical patient admitted into Irish asylums were unemployed single women over the age of fifty who were financially dependent on their families, and they were usually committed by a relative, not because they were insane, but because they were considered a burden.
Parry describes the story of a woman she names Cherry B, a sixty year old single Protestant from Booterstown.
Cherry B was committed in December 1875 by her brother. She was admitted as a first class boarder at £65 per annum, a sum which equalled her annual income derived from property owned in County Tipperary. Her illness was ascribed to the death of her mother, and her chief symptom was hallucinations. She died in St Patrick's in 1885 from old age and the effects of diarrhoea. 6
She goes on to tell us about another woman, Eliza C.
Eliza C was admitted in May 1880. She was forty years old, single, from Kingstown, with no occupation but deriving £70 per annum from land. She was committed by a relative by marriage, presumably a brother-in-law, and died in St Patrick's in 1887 from tuberculosis. 7
Such women, writes Parry, “could be multiplied tenfold from surviving [asylum] admission forms”. 8
These older women, cailleachs like you and me, weren’t percieved to be of any value by the very society which had disempowered them in the first place, by limiting women to the role of breeder and mother and housekeeper. Once, such women served their communities as wise-women, as lore-keepers, as midwives; they knew the land, how to tend to it, how to make use of it for the greater good. Divorced from this role, they were seen as a burden. Claiming madness was an easy way to be rid of them.
Mythical Madness of Ireland
Our early Irish scribes were Christian monks, but they had been reared on the stories of the seanachai, and the folkore which permeated everyday life, passed on by their mothers and grandmothers. They preserved these tales with quill and ink, trying to make sense of them through the lense of their faith and religious teachings, and of course, their cultural values.
Two of the most famous medieval tales of madness are those of Buile Shuibhne, or Suibne’s Frenzy, and Cuchullain’s madness when he is rejected by his fairy lover, Fand, in Emer’s Only Jealousy, or The Sickbed of Cuchullain.
But it is the stories of female madness that intrigue me.
Mór Muman, also known as Mór of Munster, was the daughter of a seventh-century historical king, Aed Bennan, of Ir Luachair. She never stepped out of her house, and claimed to hear voices speaking to her out of the air. Eventually, she makes her esacpe: “[g]reat derangement [presumably this was caused by the voices] was put upon her, so that she bounded over the mound of the liss, so that it was not known to what place she went.” 9 Such leaping, apparrently, is typically a sign of mourning, loss or madness in early Irish literature.
Mór wandered Ireland for two years, crazed and dishevelled, “blackened by sun and wind, in rags and marshes”. 10 In other words, she had gone back to nature. She had succesfully survived, alone, in the wild for two years. She had rewilded herself.
Somehow, she ended up in Cashel, where she obtained employment herding King Fingen mac Aeda’s sheep. Fingen’s wife mocked the new shepherdess for her rough, wild ways, and dared her husband to sleep with her. He obliged, although somewhat unwillingly, and something strange happens; having sex with the king restores her memory, and she remembers her name. Then he gives her her weight in silver. In the morning when she rises to tend to the sheep, he gives her a purple cloak and queenly brooch, and thus she becomes his wife, in due course producing a male heir, Sechnasach. When Fingen dies, Mór marries another king named Cathal, and after him, another king of the Eoganacht.
So we see here madness equated with wildness, or living in the wilderness, and sanity associated with civilised living, and the dutiful behaviour of a wife subordinate to a husband, pinned in place by jewels and fine clothes and motherhood. It’s almost as if she sold herself for silver. Clearly, the story is advocating for a woman’s role to be firmly fixed within the domestic sphere and subordinate to men, that no good can come from notions of female independence and freedom. And look how much better life is when a man provides for his wife!
Mór, it seems, had a sister named Suithchern, who played a minor role in Mór’s story. She turned up at Cashel, after her sister married Fingen, in a similarly deranged state. As Mór did before her, she tended the king’s sheep, until Mór arranged a marriage for her with Lonán mac Bindig, King of Éile. However, Suithchern is captured by Cuanu mac Cailchine, provoking Lonán into battle in which both men are killed.
But Suithchern also has her own tale in which she was married to a different king: Rónán mac Dícholla of Uí Liatháin. For some reason, her father had cursed her, so she fled to take refuge with her sister in Cashel, but Mór did not recognise her, because she had disguised herself in dirty, grey peasant clothes, rubbed her face with rye dough (to give the appearance of leprosy) and had blackened her skin.
So Suithchern went to seek her lover, Cuanu mac Cailchine; note in this story he is her lover, not her abductor. However, the manuscript is damaged and incomplete; the next legible piece of writing has her at Rónán’s court, where he has already married to another woman. This wife teased her husband into sleeping with the ugly newcomer. Suithchern then washed herself and donned a purple cloak in readiness for her night with the king.
After his night of passion with Suithchern, Rónán abandoned his wife, just as Fingen had done after his night with Mór, and married Suithchern. Unfortunately, she cannot conceive, and after twelve childless years she leaves her husband to resume her search for her lover, Cuanu. She is never heard of again.
In this scenario, it seems that Suithchern is allowed her freedom as she has not fulfilled her obligations to her husband by producing him heirs.
The Romance of Mis and Dubh Rois is another medieval story of female madness in which the protagonist is rescued and restored to her senses by the civilising behaviours of a man.
Mis’s father was killed at the Battle of Ventry, which places this story in the third century. When she found his body, she was so distraught with grief that she lost her mind and started drinking his blood. She then went on a 300-year rampage around the area of the Sliabh Mis mountains, which are named after her.
According to Muirreann Ní Bhrolcháin, “her hair grows to the ground, and the nails on both her hands and feet are so long that she can tear apart the flesh of any human or animal that comes too close. She can run like the wind and eats raw meat”. 11 Appearance is important here, because it is not just behaviour and demeanor that signify madness; women who fall outside the norms of female beauty, like Mis, Mor and her sister, all become physically ugly, and undesirable, like the hag. Even then, women were being told they had to conform to certain standards of beauty.
Mis caused so much havoc and death that eventually, when the warriors and hunters failed, the king sent his harper, Dubh Rois, to trap her.
Dubh Rois decided the best way to win Mis round was with gold and silver coins, music and sex. These were the things, he reasoned, that would remind her of her past life at her father’s court, of her humanity and civility. He scattered the coins around his camp, laid himself down on the mountainside, undid his trousers to expose his privates, hoisted up his harp, and began to play.
Mis was drawn to his harp playing at first, but quickly became more interested in him, and a humerous, bawdy little romp ensues:
“A glance she gave, and she saw his nakedness and his playthings, and she said:
“What are these?” she asked of his bag and his little eggs, and he told her.
“What is this?” she asked of the other thing that she saw.
“That is a branch of the trick,”he said.
“I don’t remember that,” she said. “My father did not have such a thing.”
“Branch of the trick,”she said again. ” What is the trick?”
“Sit beside me,” he said,” and I will perform the trick of that branch for you.”
“I will,” she said, “and stay beside me.”
“I will,” he said. He lay and slept with her and she said:
“Ho ho, a good trick. Do it again!”
“I will,” he said. “But I will play the harp for you first.”
“Never mind the harp,” she said. “Do the trick again.” 12
Dubh Rois then builds a fullachta fiadh in which he boils deer meat to feed her, and gives her bread he has brought with him. Then he melts deer fat in the warm water of the fullachta and bathes her in it.
Slowly over a period of months, as they live together in the mountains, the gentle harper gradually returns Mis to civility and restores her sanity. They go on to marry and have children together, although when Dubh Rois is later killed, Mis resorts to wildness again in her grief.
In this story, then, madness is a symptom of the trauma of grief, and it is interesting that her madness is tolerated; the King orders Mis to be captured, not killed, despite all she has done. Perhaps it is only to be expected that a person of the weaker sex is moved to madness by the loss of her male guardians, father then husband. I wonder if she would have been treated so kindly had she been driven mad by the loss of a child, or her mother. Regardless, the message remains the same: female madness can be cured by dragging her out of nature and returning her to her domestic prison, where she belongs.
In fairness though, none of these women were forcibly rescued, but perhaps that’s only because they became strangely docile when confronted, and willing to accept their transformation.
A Paradigm Shift
According to Ní Bhrolcháin, these women were living temporarily liminal lives out in the wilderness, and by their sexual union with men were drawn back into the safety of the civilised world.
Perhaps so, but in the intervening centuries it has become clear that male dominated civilisation hides an ugliness which is not safe should one step outside its norms and demands. We are poised on the edge of a precipice which signifies irreversible change for our future descendents and all life on this earth.
Many of us are returning to the wild, to tread more softly, to leave as little trace as possible. Are we returning to madness, or has the circle turned, pushing accepted notions of civilised living to the brink of madness instead?
You have probably heard the saying often, that to repeat something endlessly and expect different results is a sign of madness. Is that not exactly what our elites and leaders are doing at every COP meeting?
Thank you for being with me during this astonishing year with the Cailleach. I want to thank you for your support, your comments, your emails, which have sustained me as I progress into my H A G years. I want to wish you a very happy holiday season in whatever way you celebrate it. The solstice is literally only a few days away now, and I welcome the lengthening days and strengthening light, even though we won’t at first notice the change, but still, just knowing it fills me such optimism and positivity and gratitude. I am looking forward to spending some quiet happy days with my husband and children around me, warm cosy fires and flickering candles, good food and wine. I wish you everything that makes you happy, and pray for peace and a fossil-fuel free world.
Ali xxx
H A G is a safe space for you to connect with me and other like-minded people. I really value your time spent reading my work, and if you have got this far, why not let me know and click the like button, or even better, leave a comment, perhaps even start a discussion. We can learn so much from each other. Our thoughts and opinions are all valid and equal here.
The “fat lady” is the Valkyrie, Brünnhilde, in Wagner’s 1876 opera, Götterdämmerung, and who was traditionally represented as a woman large in stature. Götterdämmerung is about the end of the world that comes at the end of the last scene in which Brünnhilde makes her farewell speech. It feels very fitting to me to use this proverb in the context of this text and scenario.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ní Bhrolcháin, Muirreann. “Kings, Goddesses and Sovereignty”, An Introduction to Early Irish Literature, pp.93-111.
Ibid.
A lot to go through and I am bound to say more. But a permaculture approach to life generally I think is excellent. Goes very well with all things HAG here too. See if you can check out Astrid Adler somewhere in Clare. I just love her entire lifestyle and explaining things, and I think you would too, Ali:-)
Wow! What a story of women's madness! I think many of us go a bit mad during menopause. But as to the young women going mad, I believe it is related to being expected to be "normal" (that is, whatever society's idea is at the time). Think of how difficult it must be to be a king's daughter and have to conform to court society. For any woman who's a bit adventurous or not inclined to play by society's rules, it's difficult. I was raised as a minister's daughter, and expected to be perfect in the eyes of the congregation. Ha! It didn't work for me, nor for my brothers. Three out of the four of us were wild. It was very hard growing up with a constantly scolding mother and stepfather.