Week 7 - A Whisper in the Dark

By introducing the concept of insanity into the story, Alcott warns the reader not to get comfortable with what they are reading because they can no longer trust their perceptions. Being unable to know what is coming can be scary by itself, and introducing that into A Whisper in the Dark allows Alcott to manipulate that unease to catch onto and hold the reader’s attention. It makes the reader feel like they have to keep reading because unlike our other stories, this one doesn’t seem to have the guarantee of a happy ending. 

Since the story is being told in the first person, we are receiving all of our information from one source: Sybil. But in the second half of the book, she is committed to an insane asylum after throwing a tantrum. Though she loudly insists that "I am the best judge of my own health," we can't really be certain that she is (229). She could be unable to accurately judge her own health due to her skewed mental state and really does need to be put away.

As to how insanity being present in the story affects the reader is quite a different story. Even though when I started reading the story Sybil seemed like a perfectly stable young woman, being brought to the insane asylum really does make you doubt if what she is seeing is real or not. For example, when she is sleeping walking and hears “through the keyhole came a whisper that chilled me to the marrow of my bones, so distinct and imploring was it. “Find it! For God’s sake find it before it is too late!”” (235). The reader has no present guarantee that this is anything except the product of a deranged mind, so it begs you to continue to read to find out if Sybil really is insane or not.

Though we find out in the end that Sybil’s mother is indeed present in the story as the other resident of the asylum, she had no impact whatsoever on Sybil’s upbringing; the typical mother/daughter relationship was almost entirely absent. Almost. In many of the other stories we have read, the children typically have loving, caring mothers who try to help them to become successful in the world, such as Mrs. Montgomery in The Wide, Wide World and Marah Rocke in The Hidden Hand. Though Sybil’s mother has a very limited role in her life (that isn’t even discovered until after she is dead), she is the one who effectively hands Sybil her freedom from the asylum by hiding the key in the dogs collar.

But at the same time, her mother was legitimately insane. Though we again only find this out at the end of the story, Sybil must live with the knowledge that her mother was never a suitable guardian for her. For a society that put so much value into the relationship between a mother and a daughter, to have someone tell you that at times you may not be able to trust yourself, but also not be able to trust the people that are supposed to be looking out for you, would produce quite a chilling effect indeed.