There are many tropes that we think of in Gothic writing. Haunted houses and isolation and ghosts might immediately come to mind. But how many of us consider various forms of mental illness? It might surprise you to discover that this type of character is used very frequently – in many genres, not just Gothic writing. Here are just a few examples:
- Victor Frankenstein – in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
- Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Jack Torrance in The Shining by Stephen King
- Amy Dunne in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
- Merricat Blackwood and Uncle Julian in We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- The unnamed protagonist in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
And there are so many more. If these are the types of characters you enjoy, here’s a list of 257 books featuring mentally ill characters that I found at Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/19822.Best_Mentally_Ill_Characters
Note: It’s safe to proceed! There are NO plot spoilers ahead.
Types of Mental Impairment
If you’ve read a number of books with these types of characters, or you’re aware of the books (and movies) that I mentioned above, you probably already know that these characters show a broad range of different types of mental illness or impairment.
- Victor Frankenstein could be argued to have monomania, bipolar disorder, or paranoid schizophrenia
- Rachel Watson is an extreme alcoholic – extreme because she’s suffering from severe blackouts
- Heathcliff is tormented by his grief and seems to be both narcissistic and bipolar
- Jack Torrance has an ability to see and communicate with the dead (“the shining”), which drives him to a point of severe psychosis and schizophrenia
- Amy Dunne is a narcissist and psychopath (what’s currently referred to as “antisocial personality disorder”)
- Holden Caulfield has depression and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)
- Teddy Daniels has a delusional disorder
- Merricat Blackwood is a sociopath who may have paranoid schizophrenia (depending on how you read the novel), and Uncle Julian has dementia and a repression disorder
- The unnamed protagonist in Fight Club has a dissociative identity disorder
The point is that there are many different conditions that we could classify as a mental impairment, so your options are extensive.
Furthermore, many of these are best-selling novels and even blockbuster movies, which says a lot about the popularity and usefulness of this type of character. However, there are several different ways that these are used and each one serves a different purpose in the story.
Note #1: Each of these forms of impairment contributes to the plot, character and theme in their respective novel. However, each one swings more to one or the other of these. (And/or I’m using them as an example of only one for our purposes here.) So keep in mind as we’re looking at them that when I use one as an example of thematic support or a plot contrivance, I’m not saying that they aren’t contributing to the other aspects of the story as well.
Note #2: Please know that I’m not making light of any mental illness or other debilitating condition. However, these types of character ailments are often very useful in writing as we try to put forth various themes for our readers.
Plot
The plot is the most basic component of any story. It’s the surface story – what happens to the main character and how he either overcomes or fails when confronted with a conflict. But sometimes the plot we’re writing requires mental illness, meaning that the story hinges on the character’s impairment and would fall apart without it.
I can think of many examples of this. In fact, most of the stories we’ll talk about under character and theme are also in this category. However, they go a step further in their use of the mental illness, so we’ll save our discussion of them for those sections.
Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train – in this story, Rachel witnesses a murder. But she can’t remember anything about it because she suffered an alcoholic blackout during the event. The entire rest of the story is her investigation into both her neighbors (whom she watches from the train) and her own precarious mental state. Of course, there’s a lot more that happens here. Rachel has effectively quit her life and is living as an observer of others. At the start of the novel, she’s in a really bad place and needs to find her way back to functional adulthood. But without her blackout, the entire story wouldn’t exist. She would remember who murdered whom and why.
The Unnamed Protagonist in Fight Club – Ahh, Fight Club. I have fond memories of the first time I saw this and one scene in particular (you’ll know it if you’ve seen it). I’ll try not to give too much away here, but suffice it to say that the main character has a very extreme mental illness. There would be no story whatsoever without this illness. And I mean no story. Sorry, that’s all I can give you. Trust me. At least watch the movie.
Jack Torrance in The Shining – Jack seems like a nice guy at first. Sort of. But it isn’t long before readers see glimpses of another Jack. One who is violent and potentially dangerous. In this story, Jack takes a caretaker’s position over the winter off-season at an isolated hotel in the mountains of Colorado. He moves into the vacant hotel with his wife and son, Wendy and Danny, and plans to work on his latest writing project – a play – while overseeing the work on the inn.
But Jack and Danny have a special mental condition which King terms the shining, a state in which a person can see and communicate with the dead. (The person can also communicate with other living people telepathically, particularly those who also have the shining and thus are able to receive the message.) The story centers on this condition and how it affects the lives of Jack and Danny…not in good ways, FYI. Thus, without this mental state, there would be no story.
Character
In other stories, a mental impairment or illness plays a stronger role in rounding out a character. By that I mean that the story might have been able to happen the same (or in a roughly similar) way without the illness, but we wouldn’t have the very unique character that we do because of it. The following are a few examples of this situation:
Merricat in We’ve Always Lived in the Castle – If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know that Merricat is, hands down, my favorite protagonist in all of literary history. She isn’t the most universally likeable, but she’s unbelievably fascinating. And from the first paragraph of the book, it’s clear that she’s not right in the head. Here’s a look at that notable paragraph:
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.
p.1
It gives me tingles. There’s so much in there. If you want to read my book review of this one, you can find it here. If you read the book (novella, really), you’ll discover that what happens [possibly] could have happened if Merricat were mentally typical. But it wouldn’t be interesting. All of the nuance and character depth comes through because she’s severely mentally ill. Jackson uses this very atypical character to grab the reader’s attention and put her in a state of unease. That way readers are ready to receive her theme about the collective versus the individual. I wrote about the benefits of having uneasy readers here.
Amy Dunne in Gone Girl – Amy is another fascinating character. At face value, she seems pretty normal. At the beginning of the novel, we read excerpts from her diary because she’s missing. And as in most missing person cases, the suspicion falls on the surviving spouse. Did her husband kill her, as many are claiming? Or is there something else a foot here?
As with Merricat above, this story could technically occur if Amy wasn’t mentally ill. But she is and that’s what makes this story so much more interesting. It isn’t long before readers begin to wonder what’s true and what isn’t. Is Amy telling us something through her diary? Or is she omitting more than she’s telling? That’s where this book shines: in Amy’s character.
Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – Heathcliff is brash. He’s abusive. He’s vengeful. But have you ever considered that he’s mentally ill? When Heathcliff comes home from his time abroad (I’ll leave it to you to discover why), we see clear signs of narcissism in him. But what’s more interesting is the madness that he descends into at the end of the book.
Readers see glimpses of it in the beginning of the story, before the narrator tells the tale of her childhood experiences with the Linton and Earnshaw families. But when she wraps up the tale, we see more of his mental illness – a madness that stems from Heathcliff’s grief. And though he’s vicious and vindictive and all of the things I said above, readers feel for him because of that grief and the love that he has for Catherine. His mental illness is what makes him such a compelling and sympathizable character.
Theme
And then lastly, there are mental impairments that link very tightly to the theme. So tightly that the story wouldn’t have the same underlying message without them. I’ll tread lightly with these because discussing the themes, particularly in the first two, would give away too much of the story.
Uncle Julian in We’ve Always Lived in the Castle – there’s another character with a mental illness in Jackson’s brilliant novella. It’s Uncle Julian, the oft-overlooked character who’s suffering and near death. Some claim that he has dementia, but it’s more likely that the preceding events in the story have left his mind less than whole.
But the most interesting aspect of his mental condition is that he has repressed a great deal of his memories surrounding the night that the family died. And there’s a reason for that. I won’t give it away if you haven’t read the book, but suffice it to say that it demonstrates Jackson’s sympathy for what happened. If you want to read about that in more [plot-spoiling] detail, you can find it under the Repressed Memories section in my book review here.
Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island – At the beginning of the story, U.S. Marshall Teddy and his new partner, Chuck, arrive at an island where a psychiatric hospital houses the criminally insane. They’re there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. But as the story unravels, readers suspect that there’s more going on. That perhaps Teddy’s version of the story isn’t entirely true.
Which is, of course, the case. Teddy is severely delusional. But he’s delusional because Lehane is making a point about reality versus fantasy and which is better. The answer isn’t as simple as it seems. (If you’re looking for the theme that Lehane is asking in this work, the movie version captures it well in Teddy’s last comment. Or I discuss it briefly here.)
Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein – Victor is a medical student. But what captures his attention is the possibility of regeneration. After all, he lost his mother as a young man and his grief over that event has overshadowed his concern for the living. The theme of this book is a simple but profound one: what are the consequences of man attempting to play God?
Victor’s mental condition – his monomania for sure – ties into this. Some have argued that he is actually paranoid schizophrenic. That the monster is nothing but a visible symbol of himself. There’s an argument to be made there. In either case, the more he attempts to bring the dead back to life, the more he descends into madness, leaving a wake of destruction. Thus illustrating Shelley’s point.
Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye – and last, but not least, there’s Holden, our perennial, angst-ridden, depressed teenager. But Holden isn’t just struggling with puberty. He’s living in the shadow of the loss of his brother Allie. His consistent attempts – and failures – to connect with any of the other characters, highlight the extent to which he is unable to replace what he lost.
The theme of this book is Holden’s desire – and inability – to protect the innocent, especially children. He wants to be the one who catches children as they run through a field of rye, before they fall off of a cliff to their death. It’s this desperation that Salinger reflects in Holden’s anxiety and depression. The story couldn’t make this point without the mental illness from which Holden suffers.
Conclusion
These are rich. Each of these examples adds so much to the plot, character depth or thematic exploration, if not all of the above. These stories wouldn’t be the same – perhaps wouldn’t exist at all – if not for the mental illness or other impairment of the characters. That makes mental impairment an invaluable trope in many genres, including the Gothic one.
If you’ve ever written using a character with some mental abnormality, or you have a favorite book with one, let me know. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this trope.
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