Madness, Isolation and the Female Condition in Gisèle Pineau’s Writing

Abstract

This article examines themes of madness and mental illness in fictional and non-fictional writing by Guadeloupean author Gisèle Pineau. Madness is an important trope in French Caribbean literature that critiques the enduring legacies of colonization, slavery and forced displacement. It is a prevalent theme in Pineau’s work because her writing is inspired by her parallel career as a psychiatric nurse. The article explores madness from a gendered perspective in her short stories “Ombres créoles” (1988) and “Ta mission, Marny” (2009). Arguing that here, madness is a specifically Antillean condition that both erases the agency of the female protagonists and grants them power to resist, the article then examines how Pineau explores the theme from a metropolitan viewpoint in the autobiographically inspired Folie, aller simple: journée ordinaire d’une infirmière (2010). Through her writing, Pineau bears witness to the ordeals of Caribbean women haunted by the collective trauma of slavery and patriarchal power.