Some interesting things about this week's story by Antonia White, "The House of Clouds". Her story comes after a story by Djuna Barnes. Although I've read the first two of the quartet of books about Clara Batchelor (the name of the character is different in the first book than the latter three) that White wrote, I didn't know much about her so I did a bit of digging around this weekend. She was friends with Djuna Barnes and was "with Barnes" (not sure exactly what that means as the biographical information I read didn't elaborate) when she wrote her famous novel, Nightwood.
White's story has a very dreamlike quality to it, maybe even better to say somewhat nightmarish. White wrote Frost in May in 1933 but didn't complete the second book of the quartet until fifteen years later. In the interim she began a second novel but a failed marriage and a bout with mental illness hindered its completion. White's books are very autobiographical in nature and "The House of Clouds" from Infinite Riches takes as its theme a young woman's experiences in a mental hospital. Nothing is explicitly stated in the story but after an opening line of: "the night before, Helen tried to drown herself" you know you are not going to be treated to a story of domestic bliss! And by story's end, that last line, you know just where Helen ended up and just what happened to her--enough to fill in a few blanks, that is.
White's story is one where careful attention needs to be paid, as if your mind wanders even a little you are going to be afloat in a sea of confusion, which to be honest is what happened to me (and hence a bit of extra looking around online for help in deciphering the story). Just as a frame of reference the story was published in 1954 in a collection of stories called Strangers. "The House of Clouds" was actually written in 1928 and "anticipates the Bethlem section of Beyond the Glass (the fourth book of the quartet), which makes some additions, transpositions and changes (the 'house of clouds becomes a 'house of mirrors') but which is extraordinarily close to the pre-analysis version of almost thirty years before)" according to the introduction in Strangers.
Hmm, not sure how helpful or interesting any of that is to you, but if you've read her you might find it illuminating and for me it makes me all the more eager to continue on with her Clara Batchelor books. So the story is filled with dreamlike sequences one after another--it begins with two couples in the midst of a religious argument about the difference between the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception. "She wasn't very clear what happened next." What is real and what is imagined, or even hallucinated? She remembers a prick in the arm--morphia? And then she was sick, and then a parade of individuals floats past--priests and nuns, doctors and nurses, her family . . . and all the memories . . .
"She was alone in a crypt watching by the coffin of a dead girl, an idiot who died at school and who lay in a glass-topped coffin in her First Communion dress, with a gilt paper crown on her head. Helen woke up and screamed."
* * *
"Months, perhaps years, later she woke up in a small, bare cell. The walls were whitewashed and dirty and she was lying on a mattress on the floor, without sheets, with only rough, red striped blankets over her. She was wearing a linen gown, like an old-fashioned night shirt, and she was bitterly cold."
* * *
"She had forgotten her name. She did not know whether she were very young or very old; a man or a woman."
And it gets even stranger. What do these visions mean? A procession of women, not nurses though they seemed to be dressed like them, women whose sons had been killed in the war come in and sit beside her.
"And each time a woman came in, Helen went through a new agony. She became the dead boy. She spoke with his voice. She felt the pain of amputated limbs, or blinded eyes. She coughed up blood from lungs torn to rags by shrapnel. Over and over again, in trenches, in field hospitals, in German camps, she died a lingering death. Between bouts of torture, the mothers, in their nurses' veils, would kiss her hands and sob out their gratitude."
These dreams, these fantasies, go on and on one after the other. They aren't all horrible, but Helen seems to have so few moments of lucidity, you wonder just what happened. What experience, what happened in her life, or was she fated medically for this to happen, causes her to break down? That's never answered (or I didn't read closely enough). If you are looking for a little verisimilitude when it comes to what a person goes through in a mental hospital, "The House of Clouds" is quite effective.
There are a fair few references to the story online--lots of books make use of the story when talking about war and women and hysteria, but it was all a bit over my head for a Sunday afternoon. It is enough just to experience the story and I think I might get more out of it just reading it a second time than reading the sort of critical analysis I found online (all good, but more than I need at the moment). I know a work should always stand on its own, but I do think knowing something more about Antonia White's life and maybe even read a biography or a book of her letters would be very interesting. Maybe it is finally time to pick up which is where I left off, The Sugar House.
When last I left her, Nanda became Clara Batchelor and had left the convent school and was on her way to be married. Unfortunately I never properly wrote about the book but a little skimming might help in reorienting myself. Antonia White makes for very rich reading, though in a story like "The House of Clouds" a little harrowing, too!
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I've gone on so long about Antonia White that I've not left much space for this week's (March 9 issue) New Yorker story by Stephen King, "A Death". It is a story that is equally as harrowing but in an entirely different way. A man is put on trial for a crime he denies he committed. It seems a departure from King's usual horror stories, but I've not read enough of his work to know how accurate that feeling is. The story is from a forthcoming collection called The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. You can read it here and King's Q&A here.