I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, aims at portraying the experience of living with schizophrenia to a society who have characterised such people as violent and ‘insane’. Greenberg aims to humanise people with schizophrenia and give a voice to their – and her own – true experiences.
The main protagonist of the novel - Deborah Blau - retreats into her imaginary kingdom Yr as her identity fractures. With the aid of psychiatrist Dr Freid Deborah tries to find her path back to reality. Greenberg explores the stigma of mental illness throughout the novel, but most prominently at the beginning, on the drive to the hospital. The hospital is describes as having ‘a good façade for a mad house’. Describing the hospital as having a ‘façade’ mimics the façade that Deborah and other patients wear in society. It is their façade that drives many of the patients – including Deborah – to cry out for help with “silly and theatrical wrist-cutting.” Describing Deborah’s self-harm as ‘theatrical’ gives the impression that it was dramatic and merely for attention. This reinforces the societal beliefs at the time and allows Deborah’s family to pretend that there were no issues, and that their family was still perfect.
This desire for perfection and to hide the faults in a family is clearest when Deborah’s parents leave her at the hospital and, ‘began to construct the story they would tell their acquaintances and those relatives who were not close or whose prejudices did not allow for mental hospitals in the family.’ The stigma in the society at the time that the novel is set – post WW2, 1950s America – meant that mental illness was still a taboo subject, viewed in a dehumanising way, which was reflected by the treatments and institutionalisations, which had “bars on all the windows” – keeping the patients caged in as if they were animals.
Deborah was aware of this societal expectation to be outwardly perfect, and recognised that her parents expected this of her, too. Deborah explains that when she became sick, her parents “found that their golden toy was flawed.” The use of the word ‘golden’ suggests that they expected perfection from Deborah, and the word ‘toy’ suggests that she was the puppet of her parents and had no real autonomy over her own life. Her parents unattainable expectations of Deborah meant that whenever she made a human mistake, she viewed herself as ‘flawed’ or broken. This is similar to the expectations of perfection in The Bell Jar, however in The Bell Jar the expectations are self-imposed, whereas in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, they are imposed and enforced by an outward source. “Deborah Blau, who is Jewish, psychotic, and capable of acts of violence and gruesome self-harm, is comparatively difficult to glamorise (to Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar)” (Wang, E.W.) Deborah’s parents recognise this flaw in their child, and also blame themselves for creating it by acknowledging the two possible causes for her illness “’Sick,’ Esther said. ‘Unhappy!’ Jacob shouted.” – but their argument suggests that the two factors are mutually exclusive, but it is difficult to determine the cause-and-effect of the two factors. Is Deborah unhappy because she is sick, or is she sick because she is unhappy?
The stigma of mental illness is also explored through the other patients at the hospital. When Deborah is moved up to the ‘Disturbed Ward’ after self-harming at the hospital, she realises that patients on D-ward have the “freedom to be crazy, bats, nuts, looney, and, more seriously, mad, insane, demented, out of one’s mind.” Whilst these terms are deemed by society to be derogatory, they are accepted by the patients and instead turned into an identity that does not cause them shame. Deborah also no longer feels the need to keep up false pretences whilst on D-ward, “what was good about D ward: no more lying gentility or need to live according to the incomprehensible rules of Earth,” since Deborah is with other people who are just as sick as her, and since nothing is expected of her on this ward, she is free to embrace her ‘madness’ and embrace this as a key part of her identity.
The ‘incomprehensible rules of Earth’ seem especially ridiculous through the eyes of Deborah. Why do we, as a society, create an environment where people must hide their suffering rather than be true to themselves? Greenberg showcases the stigma of mental illness with bitter objectivity, displaying the extremes of mental illness and how others view it from both the outside looking in, and from within looking out at society as a whole.
Dr Freid wants to help Deborah in her journey away from the comforts of Yr and there is a part of Dr Freid that is enamoured by Deborah’s illness, “Their very illness made them examine sanity as few ‘sane’ people could. Kept from loving, sharing, and simple communication, they often hungered for it with a purity of passion that she saw as beautiful.” Describe the raw human desires for love and companionship as ‘beautiful’ ostracises the patients from the rest of society by pointing out that they lack this quality. It also infantilises the patients by describing their passion for love as ‘pure’, giving them a naïve childlike quality.
As Joanne Greenberg herself has schizophrenia, she drew on her own experiences when writing about Deborah, and her symptoms. For a diagnosis to be made, a person needs several positive symptoms, and negative symptoms. Deborah’s positive symptoms include; auditory hallucinations, “the endless recitals of her wrongs in the chant of the Collect”; jumbled speech, “Deborah had later whispered to the nurse ‘wrong not.’”, as well as experiencing negative symptoms, such as avolition, “she could only see in gray now and she could barely hear. Her sense of touch was also leaving, so that the reality of contact with her own flesh and clothing was faint.” Greenberg uses this powerful imagery in order to explain to the audience what life is like with an illness that would be otherwise impossible to comprehend.
Deborah's fictitious land of Yr may be an analogy created by her mind to help her comprehend the world. Yr reflects reality; it began as something good but has since become corrupted. The Censor of Yr does not want Deborah to divulge Yr's secrets, just as people around the world do not want Deborah to uncover society's flaws and weaknesses. The Collect are a metaphor for the bullies in Deborah’s childhood (such as camp-councillors, peers, and teachers) as they belittle Deborah, “All the other mothers are proud of their young girls! The Collect was saying in the acid, mocking tone it took.” The hospital and the ward is also a microcosm for the world and Yr. For Deborah – the hospital, and Yr – are all simplified versions of the real world that she struggles to process. The real world is corrupt and hurtful, and so Deborah created Yr to protect herself. When Yr became corrupting, she went to the hospital. But the longer she spends in the hospital, the more cracks and faults show through the paintwork. The ward staff are corrupted, just like the real world, and just like the Collect of Yr. Deborah is unable to hide from the imperfections of these places, and so retreats further and further into Yr, which itself becomes more corrupting.
Dr Freid is the only person that exists separately from all worlds as she tries to combine all worlds into one, instead of trying to deny the existence of the others. She tries to bring Deborah back to reality where she can confront these imperfections and cope in society. The most crucial thing that Dr Freid does, is give Deborah the choice to live freely, “When it is over, you can choose Yr if you really wish it. It is only the choice which I wish to give you, your own true and conscious choice.” Dr Freid wants Deborah to be present enough to decide her own fate without the influence of her illness or society.
Choice is all that Deborah has wanted – the choice to live a life liberated from the clutches of her illness and the Collect, “Yr was forcing her to choose at last.” It is a choice that Deborah ultimately makes, a choice to live her life rather than just exist and survive on instincts driven by fear and suffering, “slowly, and steadily, Deborah began to see the colors in the world. She saw the form and the colors of the trees and the walkway . . . It came upon her with a steady, mounting clarity that she was going to be more than undead, that she was going to be alive.” Deborah begins to see colours again, the first sign that the tight grasp of her illness is loosening after years of battling. “It is a choice that Deborah makes – a ferocious decision to save herself, and to reach peace.” (Wang, E.W.).
Greenberg’s presentation of schizophrenia is incomparable as she is not afraid of throwing the reader between the world of puzzling reality, and the confusing world of Yr. whilst exploring Deborah’s cobwebbed mind, Greenberg isn’t afraid of challenging the readers to question the ‘sane world’ when many aspects of it make little sense. Is our world really as sane and civilised as we believe?
Reference: Wang, E.W. Foreword - I Never Promised You a Rose Garden – Penguin Modern Classics edition
