Siri Hustvedt’s “The Shaking Woman” is a memoir that recounts the author’s personal journey through self-diagnosis and enlightenment about a mysterious disease that manifests on and off during her public speaking appearances. It’s a wonderfully complicated issue in which Hustvedt attempts to narrate her journey but also to pinpoint scientifically what exactly is ailing her. She does so in a manner that exhibits a curious sense of duality; a colleague of hers described a shaking fit during a speech as the spectacle of “watching a doctor and a patient in the same body” (Hustvedt 30). Interestingly enough, this is the perfect description of Hustvedt’s narrative style as well. Because as she writes her novel with the intention of presenting a memoir, it simultaneously resembles something that Oliver Sacks may have written as a case study for his patients.
Hustvedt’s use of a genre melting pot is evident throughout the beginning of the novel. She begins her tale by introducing the death of her father, casting an elegiac overtone to something that is supposed to be her own story. A few pages later however, it grows obvious that the story of her father’s death serves to illuminate what she believes is a trigger for her shaking fits. And as if to reassure her readers that this text is in fact about her own journey, Hustvedt claims: “If I couldn’t cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself” (6). She then transitions into a more scientific approach, despite the fact that her neurologist and psychoanalyst are figments of her imagination. They both explore medical possibilities and the question of “Is my mind my brain?” while guiding Hustvedt on a path of medical self-diagnosis. She frequently cites the DSM and Freud in the following pages as if to emphasize the scientific aspect of her disease.
Hustvedt herself acknowledges the need for a narrative voice in case studies related to mental issues and psychoanalytic observations. She writes about a woman named Rita Charon, “a physician who also has a PhD in literature” (27). Charon believes that story-telling is a necessity in medical practice, and that “without it, … the reality of a single person’s suffering is lost and medicine suffers” (27). For example, had we read Hustvedt’s story of her shaking fits as a result of her public speaking with absolutely no other background information – how it began, what prompted it, how she felt before and after – we would likely conclude that they are panic attacks or a form of epilepsy. However, because we are given other information and told her story, we are able to better understand her condition and why it cannot be strictly physical or psychological, but rather a blending of many areas.
One of the examples that Hustvedt provides in her novel that really struck home for me was the story of her 15 year old patient, B. The girl’s narration of a truly depressing and terrifying tale turns out to be indicative of her own experiences with rape and violence. Hustvedt then poses an important question to her audience: “Wasn’t that narrative part of the sickness itself? Can the two be separated?” (37).
I believe that there is not a black and white delineation of areas, fields, or genres. There is a huge sense of intersectionality that pervades and challenges our human instinct of categorical thinking, and Hustvedt understands that in her novel. In fact, she utilizes the gray areas to her advantage by applying a narrative to a medical issue that cannot be fully comprehended by a single genre. This is what makes her novel so successful and interesting to not only those who have experienced her symptoms but also those of the NT community who have not.
While reading Hustvedt’s account of her own experience as well as the 15yr olds girls I found myself focused on the point of perspective in narration. Hustvedt primarily uses a first person narration, but positions herself in a third person position when discussing her ‘imaginary’ doctors. Similarly, the girl told her story from a third person perspective despite having experienced it herself.
It is confusing to think that there may be a difference between how we think of ourselves in our active lives and how we retell those stories as a memory.
Fascinating. Let me just point out that you’re both talking about Hustvedt’s book very much in the terms of the prompt for the research essay. A great research question might be:
“What effects does Hustvedt create when she moves between first- and third-person narration? How does this movement shape her portrayal of the relationship between symptoms and identity?”
You always write such insightful posts! I agree that there is no black or white definitions or ways of looking at any kind of illness or ways to explain it. I think the most interesting part for me was when she talks about the supernatural versus science. “Nature, God, and the devil could wrack your body, and medical experts struggled to distinguish among causes. How could you separate an act of nature from a divine intervention or a demonic possession?” (8). I believe Hustvedt uses this example to show that there is no black and white. At the time of Salem and integration of religion and science, this is what people believed. It may have been proved false scientifically and evidence for certain symptoms ruled out witchcraft, at the time that is what people believed to be true. Who’s to say that one case out of the many actually had something to do with the supernatural, why isn’t that a considered possibility? In this way she sort of explains why anything unexplained can have so many known and unknown possibilities. How could one explain her shaking with the amount of evidence they know, don’t know and assume? People would assume she has seizures, but it doesn’t fit in all categories. Just like we are learning that not all symptoms of autism actually means autism, her diagnoses proves to be more complicated, more gray than black and white. When it comes to mental illnesses there is only room to think in the gray because so much has changed from the discovery, through the processes until now. That is why the DSM changes so much every edition, that is why more and more people need answers because not everyone can fall under a category. Her narration seems black, white and gray also. When she talks scientifically and through experience that is the black and white and the deeper exploration and possibility lies the gray area.
It occurs to me that the idea of intersectionality might be really helpful for your research project. In a way, theories of intersectionality complicate DuBois’s argument about double consciousness. They add layers–or sections–of identity. You might think about how–or whether–Ellison represents his protagonist’s identity in intersectional terms. And, if he does, how might the novel be illuminated by considering cognitive or phenomenological experience as one of these “sections”?
Even though her shaking seems normal to her but others felt different about it and saw it from a different point of view. Not most of us have experienced the same situation like her and we can’t feel or understand her point of view. But she tries her best to explain to us about her shaking. As a reader, I think she want to tell us how we feel or react to certain situations in life when love ones die. They leave their mark behind in our lives which can’t never be removed from the life, similar thing happens to her. “ Their doubles take up residence in their own bodies, and their right and left sides do battle” ( 51). The state of the mind and body does not know how to act or to react to certain things, but the brain still fights and give the signal to act normal in the society.