The Double Bind - book review
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
I’ve read several novels by Chris Bohjalian. Each time I close the books feeling a little depleted and possibly misused. It’s a curious sensation, because I enjoy every minute of every novel while I’m reading them – it’s just that the endings leave me with a sense of betrayal.
Perhaps it is my trite and feisty longing always to be on the side of the woman who was wronged. If I am so shallow then I disappoint myself. Maybe life isn’t really so black and white! Bohjalian’s plots turn the tables on his women protagonists, leaving them in either an overtly bad light, or floundering with serious ambiguity as to their ability to avoid consequences of poor decision-making or their actual feminine nature, which in his eyes appears to invite said dire consequences for these women protagonists and those unfortunate enough to become involved with them.
The Double Bind is not a novel about blaming victims. Much of what it has to say about PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is valid. Bohjalian’s compassionate view of his character’s world is not offensive in itself. At least in this plot, the hurt that protagonist Laurel Estabrook inflicts upon the people in her life is clearly unintended and unavoidable. What Laurel suffers is the fault only of the men who attacked her. The consequences of their attack can never be blamed on their victim. The people who love Laurel understand clearly that she does not intend to cause them harm; indeed that her every action is directed from the vantage point to which she has withdrawn. To protect themselves, they keep Laurel at arm’s length every bit as much as she keeps them at bay.
The book for me was a head-spin in that it left me questioning my own sense of reality. I wondered to what extent I have created an illusion of health, a glamour of safety, a delusion that the world still belongs to me even as I still belong to the world, when in fact, perhaps I would be better off dead. Do I need my fantasies in order to continue to function? Are my delusions necessary for my survival? Must I trick myself into believing I am more than that to which I was reduced, through the actions of the men who damaged me, so that I can convince myself that life is still worth living?
I did not drift for too long, in the howling winds of such existential agonies. I am not a fictional character – I know there is a lot more to me and to my life, than a few isolated events that had far-reaching effects on the way I choose to live my life.
Instead, I pursued this thread by questioning to whose benefit it is, that Laurel confront, define, acknowledge and own every nasty little detail of her experience. In order to be a “true survivor” is she to be left undefended and indefensible, with no dignity of choice and no delicacy of privacy? Is it necessary, in order for her to wear the mantle of “survivor” as opposed to “victim”, to somehow step out from under the burden of her experience and say – hey look at me, I’m still a valuable, contributing human being, even though those men did this and this and this and this to me?
In this sense, the demand that Laurel be open about her experience runs parallel to the demands that every person whose identity falls outside the mainstream, whether through race, gender, ability, or affiliation come out repeatedly, consistently and continuously, in order to be validated as a healthy human being. These demands call for superhuman effort. Most of us are too busy living our lives to waste our time constantly bringing our differences to the attention of those who would just as soon ignore them.
Is not Laurel, by the nature of the life that she is leading, proving her worth and her survival with each and every waking moment? She remains defiant, intelligent, unbeaten and spirited to the end.
I wondered anew about the nature of true healing. The sour taste that was left in my mouth when I finished Double Bind was more to do with the big question of – is it possible or even desirable to heal from such a major traumatic event? Clearly, if PTSD leads directly to madness, and if madness by its definition is mental disease, than the most that can be hoped for is a set of coping mechanisms and a network of support people to prop up the unfortunate victim.
It is unquestionable that no one should go through what Laurel goes through. It is undeniable that many people do experience abuse and torture, and that most of us do not die as a direct consequence of such maltreatment. So what should be done to us, or what should we do, in order to choose a different path, than the path that Laurel takes on her quest for survival? How different are our journeys, from Laurel’s experience of survival?
If healing means denying oneself the liberty or luxury of rewriting the past to something that is more acceptable and tolerable to us, than what other people know really happened, than do we all not live in a state of denial? Do we all not tend to rewrite our pasts, dampen down the emotional states to bearable levels, in order that we continue to function?
We do not all descend into madness. Nor is madness necessarily a permanent state. Madness can provide the respite we need sometimes, in order to regroup and find our feet again. PTSD perhaps, is a life sentence – a direct result of specific traumatic experiences. Not everyone with PTSD experiences madness all, or even some of the time. Nearly everyone with PTSD is accused at some stage, of at least being emotionally extravagant and at worst, of being mad.
The human mind and spirit is incredible in many ways. Those of us who live successfully with PTSD develop our meaning-making skills of intuition and connectivity to a level that others can barely glimpse as possible. It is difficult to verbalise this amongst ourselves, let alone to medicos whose understandings are relegated to regulated mechanical understandings.
Bohjalian does not seem to realize in his PTSD character, the depth and levels of self-talk that must necessarily interweave in a complex and strangely harmonious manner to enable Laurel’s survival in this hostile world. Her world is indisputably hostile, despite the mostly benign characters with whom Bohjalian has peopled it. Were it not hostile, at least in the way Laurel perceives it, why would she have needed to develop such strong defences against it? Laurel’s defenses range way beyond the defense of her own mutilated body. Her purpose is to defend anyone she cares about, from being affected and destroyed by the forces that came so close to destroying her.
So for Laurel herself, since the novel deals mostly with her internalized world as she comes to externalize it, I was gripped by the buzzing current that keeps her sleepless, that runs through her body and circulates in her blood. How could she appear to be anything but calm, in the face of constant panic? How can she possibly escape her past? She is guarded, day and night; vigilant against any attack upon the semblance of sanity and good health that she has created around herself.
Would it be better for Laurel to meditate every morning about the horrors that were enacted upon her body, count them off in a litany of gruesome acknowledgement, and then rise from her bed and go about her day along with the constant physical reminders of these acts? Perhaps it’s her ability to repress part of the knowledge from her everyday consciousness that enables her to function at all? Perhaps it’s amazing that she functions as she does, despite the unvarying murmuring of self-talk, panic and mind-messages that are playing in the background? Perhaps this ability to hear around and despite all this, is healing and health.
What is not spoken of in this book is the question which drives Laurel. Her story, and the story in this book, is infused with the question “WHY?”
Why did this happen to me?
What is it in me that caused this to happen?
Why did they do this to me?
What kind of people imagine and consciously carry out such horrifying acts?
Why did I survive?
What does it mean for the rest of my life, that I must carry the scars from these unspeakable acts?
When there are no answers to these questions and yet these questions cannot be avoided, the only way open is for Laurel to deal with them herself. She seeks meaning, and she finds it on a level that others define as madness. The other people in her life cannot follow her, because they do not understand the path she took to reach that place. Their experience of Laurel is not her experience of herself. That doesn’t make her completely wrong, misguided and crazy. When there is no one left to blame, the blame must be self-inflicted. And that is precisely the shame.
There is no Goddess in Laurel’s world. She must birth herself. Life is hard. To find new meaning in her life, Laurel looks beyond the confines of her own rich inner world, and extends her compassion to those whose realities are even harsher and stranger than her own. Such is the depth of her character.
