MADNESS

IS NOT JUST A
DISEASE

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN’S

“EDGAR HUNTLY”

SE: Madness in American Literature

Winter term 2009-10

Prof. Mag. Dr. Mario Klarer

Franz Burgmann

Matriculation number: 9617155

Study code: C190 406 344

Table of Contents

Introduction....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Madness in Edgar Huntly ............................................................................................................................ 6
Edgar Huntly meets Plato’s Allegory of the Cave ............................................................................7
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 17
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................... 21
Introduction

At first sight, the concept of “madness” – what it means and what it

is all about – seems to be obvious, as madness is a term and notion every person

encounters quite naturally in everyday life. But when starting to dig deeper, one

might experience that the term “madness” steps out of its pre-determined

pigeonhole. This process involves examining questions such as how cultural and

social differences affect our perception of madness, how subjective the concept of

madness is, and how the term madness can be defined more profoundly.

Dictionaries are an obvious source when searching for definitions.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines madness as “rage; insanity; extreme folly;

ecstasy, enthusiasm.” The Oxford Dictionary has a very similar concept of madness:

“the state of having a serious mental illness . . . extremely foolish behaviour . . . a

state of wild or chaotic activity”. Also the Cambridge Dictionary explains madness

along these lines: “stupid or dangerous behavior”. The last definition provided

here comes from the Macmillan Dictionary, which defines madness as “ideas or

actions that show a lack of good judgment and careful thought”.

However, these definitions do not sufficiently answer questions such

as where madness comes from and what or who is responsible for distinguishing

between people who are mad and those to be regarded as sane. Trying to answer

the latter question quickly leads to the realization that there simply is no clear-cut

3
answer: what one person might consider mad, by another person might be

regarded as ingenious. In the end, it is us humans who define what this notion of

“functioning within normal parameters” means.

At the same time, it has to be kept in mind that the definition of

madness is by no means a classic one, on the contrary: it is very much dependent

on the time and age. Behaviors that in the past were accepted as normal – such as

slavery, subordination of women, duels, and which hunts – would fall under the

definition of madness today. However, we do not even need to compare views of

different periods of time to find discrepancies in the definition of madness. Even in

our present age, it is not difficult to find examples of behavior in certain parts of

the world and amongst certain religious or cultural groups that would be

considered mad by people of a different background. Examples of this behavior

might include stoning women to death for adultery (Smith), people living in

polygamous marriages (Mears), American and Japanese parents increasingly

equipping their infants with tracking devices (Johnson).

In Terry Gilliam’s well-known movie Twelve Monkeys, the

protagonist Dr. Kathryn Railly gets to the heart of how subjective, or even

arbitrary, the definition of madness can be. When discussing her patient James

Cole with her colleague, Dr. Kathryn Railly, looking at her patient from the

perspective of a psychiatrist, comes to the conclusion that “what we [psychiatrists]

4
say is the truth, is what everybody accepts . . . I mean, psychiatry: it's the latest

religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not” (Twelve

Monkeys).

In her book They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful

Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal the psychiatrist Paula J. Caplan points out that

this quote from Twelve Monkeys is more than just some remote idea taken from a

movie. Caplan describes the methods, but also the arbitrary nature of psychiatrists’

diagnoses (para. Caplan), which put them perfectly in line with the quote from the

film.

This paper will deal with exactly this notion of the arbitrariness of our

perception of madness. It is going to point out how the concept of what in the

novel Edgar Huntly can be regarded as “madness” changes according to the

reader’s point of view, and that therefore the concept of “madness” is entirely

dependent on the perspective from which a person looks at it. To make this point,

a comparison between Brown’s Edgar Huntly and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave will

be made. In doing so, the paper will also show how Charles Brockden Brown’s

Edgar Huntly can be seen as a modern version of the cave analogy from Plato’s

The Republic – with madness not necessarily being an unfortunate illness, but that

it can function as a stepping stone in human evolution.

5
Madness in Edgar Huntly

As the already mentioned definition of madness in the Macmillan

Dictionary points out, madness can signify a “lack of good judgment and careful

thought”. It is safe to say that this can be regarded as a state that almost every

person has been suffering from at one time or another. In Edgar Huntly, the reader

encounters such absence of “good judgment” in manifold ways. Subtle notions of

madness are depicted when for example Ms. Lorimer is thinking of her and her

twin-brother’s life as being connected: “[i]t was her obstinate persuasion that their

fates were blended” (Brown 32). Ms. Lorimer’s fixed idea clearly shows her lack of

good judgment, or – according to the Macmillan definition – her madness.

Also the novel’s main character, Edgar Huntly, in various situations

shows a similar lack of good judgment, or – again – madness. Edgar Huntly thinks

Clithero Edny to be the murderer of his friend Waldegrave – a claim that turns out

to be unsustainable. Also, Huntly puts the life of his friend Sarsefield’s wife, Ms.

Lorimer, at risk, when he misjudges Edny’s accountability and tells him that Ms.

Lorimer is still alive. Further, by giving Edny Ms. Lorimer’s address in New York,

Huntly causes Ms. Lorimer to miscarry her baby. Similarly, Huntly suffers from lack

of good judgment when he thinks that his and Waldegrave’s papers have been

stolen. Also the eponymous plot of the novel, Clithero’s and Huntly’s sleepwalking,

can be seen as a sign of madness in terms of unaccountable behavior.

6
Edgar Huntly meets Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

In “To the Public” (Brown 3), Brown’s introduction to the novel, the

author explains that he wrote Edgar Huntly in order "to exhibit a series of

adventures, growing out of the condition of our country, and connected with one

of the most common and most wonderful diseases or affections of the human

frame" (Brown 3). This introduction shows distinctly that Brown intended Huntly’s

condition and evolution not only to demonstrate the main character’s own state of

mind and progress, but that he at the same time was allegorically highlighting the

conditions and development of the human race.

The fact that Brown with Edgar Huntly had the intention to depict

the main character’s evolution becomes apparent already at the very beginning of

the novel when it starts with Huntly claiming: “[w]hat light has burst upon my

ignorance of myself and mankind! How sudden and enormous this transition from

uncertainty to knowledge!” (Brown 5). This exclamation is an obvious indicator of

the fact that Huntly, at least according to his own judgment, has surpassed his

state of madness and stepped beyond it. It is also testament that Huntly has found

the light at the end of the tunnel, or, as Plato explains it in his Allegory of the

Cave, that Huntly “would felicitate himself on the change” (Plato “The Republic”

329).

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 Plato reveals in Phaedrus that the phase of madness Huntly

experiences can function as a catalyst in human evolution. In the following

paragraph, the Greek philosopher displays the advantageous aspect of madness:

For if it were a simple fact that insanity is an evil, the saying

would be true; but in reality the greatest of blessings come to
us through madness . . . For the prophetess at Delphi and the
priestesses at Dodona when they have been mad have
conferred many splendid benefits upon Greece both in
private and in public affairs, but few or none when they have
been in their right minds; and if we should speak of the Sibyl
and all the others who by prophetic inspiration have foretold
many things to many persons and thereby made them
fortunate afterwards, anyone can see that we should speak a
long time (Plato “Phaedrus” 244).

Through these lines, Plato adds an entirely new level to the concept

of madness, describing it as an essential quality for transcending “reality” and

reaching deeper levels of understanding. Therefore, according to Plato, madness is

a means of going beyond the limits of human consciousness. Reading deeper into

it, madness could be seen as a catalyst for developing knowledge – serving as

stepping stone for human evolution. In Phaedrus, Plato characterizes madness,

which is commonly simply regarded as an illness, as beneficial and much more

than just an unwanted human condition that needs to be cured.

Plato takes this notion a step further in his Allegory of the Cave,

pointing out that madness – in the sense of the Macmillan definition as being

“ideas or actions that show a lack of good judgment and careful thought” – can be

8
a helpful tool to make the transition from darkness toward enlightenment. In

other words, madness can be the means for leaving the darkness of the inner cave

of ignorance and, consequently, for moving towards realization of the truth, or

reality.

Seeing Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Brown’s Edgar Huntly from

that perspective, both will be found very much alike in their main protagonists’

inner development and in their ascending from their initial delusive state of mind

to their comprehension of reality. So striking is this affinity that the question arises

whether Brown intentionally made use of Plato’s allegory; it would go beyond the

constraints of this paper to follow this line of investigation, though. What this

paper is going to explore, however, are some of the notable parallels between

Edgar Huntly and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

Both Edgar Huntly and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave begin with the

main protagonists being transfixed in their state of “madness”; both are entirely

misjudging the situation in which they are held captive. This notion of being a

prisoner is literally true for the main protagonist in Plato’s allegory, while in Edgar

Huntly it allegorically represents the main character’s delusive state of mind. The

cave, in which the main protagonist of the Allegory of the Cave lives, represents

everything he has ever known and believes in. In a similar way, Edgar Huntly lives

in his inner cave, being entirely under the spell of his deluding thoughts.

9
 Along these lines, the darkness in Plato’s cave can be seen as a

metaphor for Huntly’s initial state of mind. Plato explicitly points out that his

Allegory of the Cave is meant as a metaphoric depiction of human nature: “And

now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or

unenlightened” (Plato “The Republic” 327). Plato calls this dialog between Socrates

and Plato’s older brother Glaucon a “figure”, i.e. an image, or allegory, which

figuratively symbolizes the unenlightened as well as the enlightened state of the

human consciousness. At the same time, Plato’s allegory reveals how the human

race is climbing up the ladder of evolution:

Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has

a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the
den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their
legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can
only see before them, being prevented by the chains from
turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is
blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners
there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall
built along the way, like the screen which marionette players
have in front of them, over which they show the puppets
(Plato “The Republic” 327)

Plato describes the setup of the cave with people being chained in a

way that prevents them from turning their heads and seeing what is happening

behind them. Continuing with his allegory, Plato points out that the prisoners can

“see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws

on the opposite wall of the cave” (Plato “The Republic” 327). With these lines,

Plato makes it very clear that these people have an unrealistic and limited

10
perspective of their surroundings, since they only know the shadows of the “real”

objects and of the people standing and walking behind them casting these

shadows. Plato goes on explaining that, since these prisoners have never seen

anything besides these shadows, they relate the sounds and voices to the

shadows, and consider the latter for the real thing, rather than the objects and

people, which they are unable to see (para. Plato “The Republic” 348).

The great physicist Albert Einstein has been quoted saying that “[n]o

problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”

(Einstein qtd. in Jensen 391). Regarding Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Einstein’s

quote can be understood in the way that while the prisoners are being held

captive and chained in the cave, their understanding of their surroundings cannot

change; consequently, hardly any improvement of their knowledge can take place.

A change on their “interior” level of consciousness has to be initiated by changing

the “exterior” circumstances in which the prisoners live. In Plato’s Allegory of the

Cave this change is brought about by the release of the prisoner:

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the
prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first,
when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to
stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards
the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him,
and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his
former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive
some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an
illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being
and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a
clearer vision (Plato “The Republic” 327).

11
 Plato points out that this new understanding is not handed to the

prisoners on a plate. On the contrary, the process of achieving this new step of

enlightenment is inextricably connected with the suffering of the prisoner. The

released prisoner also does not embrace this new development, but it has to be

forced on him.

We often do not embrace change, because we are creatures of habit.

A Spanish proverb says: “más vale un malo conocido que un bueno por conocer”

(Montalvo 45). The literal translation is: “better known evil than good yet to know”,

which is similar to the English saying “better the devil you know” (Ritti 162). This

proverb distinctly describes the general human attitude towards change, which

makes it necessary for the prisoners in the cave as well as Huntly to be pushed

towards having to reach for the next rundle on the ladder of evolution.

Edgar Huntly’s personal circumstances are very similar to the ones of

the prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. While the prisoners are surrounded

by the darkness in the cave, Edgar Huntly is encompassed by the darkness of his

own ignorance. As the prisoners in the cave are misjudging the circumstances they

are living in and taking the shadows they are looking at for the real thing, so is

Edgar Huntly taking the “shadows” of his “madness” – i.e., his lack of knowledge

12
and his lack of good judgment – in his inner “cave” of desperate bewilderment for

real.

To the reader, Huntly’s confusion becomes obvious already at the

very beginning of Brown’s novel when Huntly wrongly thinks Clithero to be the

murderer of his friend Waldegrave. Huntly observes Clithero who, in a state of

apparent desperation, is digging a hole under the same elm tree that Huntly’s

friend Waldegrave was murdered. Therefore, lacking knowledge and good

judgment, Huntly comes to the conclusion that Clithero must be Waldegrave’s

murderer.

Like the prisoner in Plato’s allegory, all Huntly is able to understand

is what he can experience with his senses, which is epitomized by Plato’s shadows.

They are in opposition to the “real” objects and people casting them. Seeing

Clithero suffering from his guilty consciousness while digging a hole where his

friend Waldegrave was killed, Huntly wrongly assumes that there has to be a

connection between Clithero’s behavior and Waldegrave’s murder – just as the

prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave associate the sounds they hear to the

shadows.

The analogy between Edgar Huntly and the Allegory of the Cave

reaches its climax when Huntly, under the spell of somnambulism, one night walks

13
out of his house and into the wilderness. Some time later, he wakes up in

bewilderment, finding himself lying in a dark cave:

My return to sensation and to consciousness took place in no

such tranquil scene. I emerged from oblivion by degrees so
slow and so faint, that their succession cannot be marked.
When enabled at length to attend to the information which
my senses afforded, I was conscious for a time of nothing but
existence. It was unaccompanied with lassitude or pain, but I
felt disinclined to stretch my limbs or raise my eyelids. My
thoughts were wildering and mazy, and, though
consciousness was present, it was disconnected with the
locomotive or voluntary power (Brown 305).

With his awakening in the cave, Huntly’s life has come to a turning

point. His sleepwalking, being an unconscious act, can symbolically be interpreted

as not just his state of subconscious activity throughout the previous hours, but

his state of ignorance which has accompanied him so far throughout his whole

life. Huntly’s state of consciousness up to his awakening in the cave is very much

like the condition of the chained prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Huntly

now finds himself in a similar state than Plato’s released prisoner, whose condition

Plato describes as follows: “you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing

to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -- will he not be

perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer

than the objects which are now shown to him?” (Plato “The Republic” 327).

Plato’s characterization of the released prisoner is very similar again

to Brown’s account of Huntly’s conditions:

14
 Sometimes I imagined myself buried alive. Methought I had
fallen into seeming death, and my friends had consigned me
to the tomb, from which a resurrection was impossible. That,
in such a case, my limbs would have been confined to a
coffin, and my coffin to a grave, and that I should instantly
have been suffocated, did not occur to destroy my
supposition. Neither did this supposition overwhelm me with
terror or prompt my efforts at deliverance. My state was full
of tumult and confusion, and my attention was incessantly
divided between my painful sensations and my feverish
dreams (Brown 309-10)

Both the released prisoner and Huntly have in common that a

change of the outer circumstances has forced them into action; both have no

choice but to react to the altered conditions around them. In both cases, the

changes that have been forced on them have unpleasant consequences for them

and make them suffer.

After having left the cave in which the prisoner has spent all his life

so far, he is blinded by the sun, which he has never seen before. Plato describes

the released prisoner’s painful experiences as follows: “And if he is compelled to

look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him

turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he

will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to

him?” (Plato “The Republic” 328). Huntly, in a similarly painful fashion, also

struggles on his way out of the darkness, represented by the cave:

I will not enumerate my laborious efforts, my alternations of

despondency and confidence, the eager and unwearied

15
 scrutiny with which I examined the surface, the attempts
which I made, and the failures which, for a time, succeeded
each other. A hundred times, when I had ascended some feet
from the bottom, I was compelled to relinquish my
undertaking by the untenable smoothness of the spaces
which remained to be gone over. A hundred times I threw
myself, exhausted by fatigue and my pains, on the ground.
The consciousness was gradually restored that, till I had
attempted every part of the wall, it was absurd to despair, and
I again drew my tottering limbs and aching joints to that part
of the wall which had not been surveyed. (Brown 316)

For both the former prisoner and Edgar Huntly releasing their minds

and consciousness from the bondage of illusion turns out to be a slow and

gradual process. Plato describes this transition as follows:

He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper

world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the
reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then
the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the
moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see
the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light
of the sun by day?” (Plato “The Republic” 328).

Eventually, both Plato’s released prisoner and Edgar Huntly succeed

in their endeavor of rising above their former disillusionment. Plato points out that

the prisoner eventually “will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of

him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another;

and he will contemplate him as he is” (Plato “The Republic” 328). Again, Huntly’s

experience is very similar: “Thus was I delivered from my prison, and restored to

the enjoyment of the air and the light” (Brown 329). Huntly is not at the end of his

16
journey yet, but after successfully having fought and killed Americans Indians he is

able to rise above his former state of ignorance and delusion.

Huntly eventually rejoices with the words we already came across at

the beginning of this paper, demonstrating his altered state of consciousness. This

represents a step towards enlightenment just like the one achieved by the

released prisoner: “[w]hat light has burst upon my ignorance of myself and

mankind! How sudden and enormous this transition from uncertainty to

knowledge!” (Brown 5). So in the end, both the released prisoner and Huntly have

not only overcome their states of madness, but in order to get there they have

both embraced the enlightening aspects of their madness.

Conclusion

At first, this paper has discussed the different perceptions of

madness, and it has been shown that madness is a concept that has more to it

than meets the eye. It has been pointed out that madness is a term people

generally are familiar with; when starting to look more closely, though, the

understanding of madness starts to branch out and acquires a variety of different

facets. At the beginning, there is the obvious perception of madness as how it

manifests in people who are considered lunatics. When digging deeper, it has

become apparent that there is no clear-cut answer to what this concept of being

17
either mad or of unimpaired mental faculties means. In fact, it has been shown

that to a certain degree madness lies in the eye of the beholder.

As a consequence, this paper has pointed out that what in Brown’s

Edgar Huntly will be considered madness primarily depends on the reader’s

perspective. On the one hand, Ms. Lorimer’s, Clithero’s, and Huntly’s mindset and

conduct at times crosses the line of what most people would consider normal. On

the other hand, in Phaedrus Plato insists that there is more to madness than just

the obvious irrational or irresponsible behavior that can be observed on the

external level. Instead, madness can serve as an important stepping stone in

human ascension from an unenlightened to an enlightened state, making it a

decisive interim state on the natural way of evolution.

When dealing with Brown’s novel Edgar Huntly, Plato’s Allegory of

the Cave might spring to the reader’s mind. This paper has demonstrated the

remarkable resemblance in the inner development of the main characters in

Plato’s allegory and Brown’s Edgar Huntly. Both the prisoner and Huntly are

suffering from an ignorant, delusive state; they both are confusing the “shadows”

of their range of vision with reality. In the case of the prisoner, this connection is

literal; in the case of Huntly, the allegorical “shadows” refer to his misjudgments

and his lack of discrimination.

18
 This paper has also demonstrated that eventually the released

prisoner as well as Huntly have not been suffering in vain, but that they have

advanced in their personal development. To accomplish this, both of them have to

undergo considerable suffering, and in both cases, these changes have to be

forced on them. Eventually, the hardships that come along with these changes

turn out to be similarly beneficial for both of them; the released prisoner for the

first time sees the shadows for what they really are: that they are transitory in

nature, that they are nothing but an accompanying side effect of reality, and that

therefore these shadows have no existence of their own. In a very similar way,

Huntly realizes that he has been in a state of ignorance all along, and that he in

the end has reached a new level of understanding (para. Brown 5).

As this paper has pointed out, Plato and Charles Brockden Brown

implicitly reveal that madness can be much more and something very different

from just an unwanted or even embarrassing malfunction of the human mind and

brain. On the contrary, madness can serve as a stepping stone for reaching higher

levels of evolution and for overcoming ignorance and disillusionment. As an

observation of Huntly’s actions and development further shows, determination

and will power are essential qualities for the progression to a higher level of

existence and for bringing about the necessary changes in the difficult and

complex circumstances of life.

19
 Life’s circumstances are such that they often appear to be

unfathomable – leaving us baffled and confused. Sometimes, life’s complexities

are seemingly too difficult to deal with, let alone to be solved. Therefore, besides

the before-mentioned personal commitment and effort – probably even driven by

a “healthy portion of madness” – something is still missing for being successful on

the battlefield of everyday life. Albert Einstein might have provided this missing

link. His advice is not to take life too seriously and to avoid getting absorbed in its

intricacies. He does so reminding us that “[l]ife is a mystery to be lived, not a

problem to be solved” (Einstein qtd. in Calaprice 482).

20
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