"When women defend themselves against violence, they are called crazy"

A conversation with Chelsea Bieker, author of the novel Madwoman

This week, I was listening to an Ezra Klein show episode that covered The Goldwater Rule, which insists on the political and social importance of not diagnosing political leaders with whom we don’t agree. I found myself having a reaction. While I understand the necessity of such a rule, and believe it to be sensible, it feels like such an odd moral position to take given the political culture in which we actually live right now. This kind of loose diagnosis happens to women all the time. Arguably, it’s the reason we’ve never had an American president who is not a woman— because of the assumption that women are inherently emotionally and psychologically unstable.

Kamala Harris, for example, has been called crazy, crazy again, the devil, and a whore. The belief that women are inherently mad, in other words, is no relic of the past. It is threaded into the fabric of our cultural and political institutions, leveraged against women who seek power through public office, but also all women, whenever men find their opinions or worldviews disagreeable.

We are days away from an historic election, and I wonder how anyone is operating right now. The journalist Jessica Grose pointed out that many are still scratching their heads, wondering why this election is so close. Clearly, this country hates women, but we continue to deny that reality, too. By doing so, we also deny the lived experience of millions of women.

We have a popular term for this. It’s called gaslighting. This word has, however, become so overused that many believe it has lost its true meaning. Lately, I have been feeling gaslighted by everybody in my life, except my female friends. This could be a sign that I, too, am overusing the term. Or, it could be a sign that we live in a culture in which women constantly feel their reality is swiftly denied and replaced by some other, more palatable, by which I mean patriarchal, way of seeing things.

I saw an Adrienne Rich quote circulating online this week, one I believe I have included is several essays here. “Women have been driven mad, ‘gaslighted,’ for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience,” Rich says in an essay first published in 1977. For Rich, the constant political and personal denial of women’s realities is why we write. “Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

All to say that this week— as so many women in America are feeling unhinged, crazy, and gaslighted by the new norms of American politics— feels like the perfect time to share my conversation with

Chelsea Bieker

, author of the novel Madwoman.

Madwoman is a book about violence against women, about feeling anxious and unhinged, about the past resurfacing as one tries to create, through motherhood, another life. It is also about the life-sustaining bonds women forge with each other to survive, and the ways women go searching for healing, wellness, meaning, and some semblance of sanity in a culture that tells them they are hysterical.

Madwoman is the perfect book to escape into in the coming weeks. It is funny, feminist, propulsive, but with teeth.

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Obviously, I want to start by asking you about women and madness! How did you land on the title, and as you were writing, when did it become clear to you that this was not only a story about domestic violence, but also women’s madness?

The first seed of this book was a short story that I wrote in a desperate flash. It was following a night out to a reading and post reading hang out—the first time I’d really gone out late since having my daughter who was probably two. I came home and felt this intense realization of how different I was on this side of becoming a mother, all the ways I’d changed. I was moving through the world differently, which, of course I was, but also, I think I’d been in my bubble for so long that I hadn’t really reckoned with it.

The story I wrote was about these two women who collide and form a quick and intense bond and their relationship escalates into territory that feels a little unhinged. The things they wanted to convey to each other had to do with motherhood and trauma and the sort of maddening nature of daily life where so much goes unspoken. The story reflected the ways that I myself was feeling unhinged.

I was dealing with post-weaning anxiety and wasn’t sleeping, and really had no idea the extent to which I was suffering—that was something I could only see once I wasn’t suffering anymore, but it felt like I was plugged into an electrical outlet at all hours. From the outside I’m sure I just looked like any other parent at the park, but my internal world was swirling and doubling back on itself, memories were surfacing and I felt desperate to talk about things that felt hard to talk about.

So the story started in that energy. Madwoman was the first title I slapped up on the document, and when I shared the story with my agent, I nearly immediately knew it was a novel. I got serious about drafting it years later though in 2020, and I was in a time in my own life where I was so so angry, claustrophobic, and just, detached from my body. I had just had a second child by then, and we all know what was going on in 2020.

I think as I drafted the story filled out and it wasn’t enough to just have the character grappling with reality and feeling a bit crazy…the root of those things had to do with suppressed anger. Mad Woman.

So often when women defend themselves against violence, they are called crazy, or when they are worried about their children they are told to stifle their instincts. Madness becomes this blanket that is thrown over them so we can walk right over the reason they are mad in the first place, and the women in Madwoman are angry because of the decades of domestic violence they have endured, and the way this violence has shaped the way they move through the world.

In the story, the main character’s mother is serving a life sentence in prison for killing her husband in self defense, which is a common tale. But where is the nuance for women who are defending themselves? Well, you get shows like Snapped. It all becomes simplified. Most of the time something much deeper is going on. So I liked the title because it plays in multiple ways.

Madness becomes this blanket that is thrown over [women] so we can walk right over the reason they are mad in the first place.

To me it’s about female anger more than anything, but also, if you’ve endured decades of DV, then there’s a high likelihood that it has made you mentally unwell. I think I just witnessed in my life, that piece never being taken into consideration, the complex PTSD of it all. And then it’s the woman’s burden to seek her own wellness. 

I love that we have this title in common too and I notice you separate the word which feels to me like it’s emphasizing anger as well, maybe or drawing attention to the composition of the word allowing us to re-see it? I like to think about it almost like a take back of the word. I also love one word titles that can be interpreted multiple ways, just stylistically. But the title was always there for me, which is so nice. It’s much harder if the title feels elusive. The book I’m writing now, I’m not sure of the title yet and it drives me…mad. Ha. 

Yes, I sometimes think I should have called the newsletter Madwoman, because these days I’m more interested in madness than anger per se, for all the reasons you outline here, especially how easily women are written off as mad, crazy, hysterical, when they’re responding quite reasonably to a culture that excuses so much violence against women. There’s also such a rich feminist history of literary criticism around the so-called madwoman.

I imagine you were thinking of that literary history, too. One thing that dawned on me reading your book is that I don’t think the “madwoman,” as a literary figure, has yet been put meaningfully into conversation with what we now know about domestic violence— and I think this is one of the most brilliant connections in your book.

Thank you so much for saying that. That means a lot. I think mainly my intention with the book was to not hold back at all on the realities of the long term effects of violence and also the expression of the Full Truth.

What does it look like to carry trauma in daily life, really? Trauma is a word that’s thrown around so much, and we all are exposed now on social media to tons of therapy-speak, but I worry that these flashes are surface level and we’re all thinking we’re doing deep work but really we’re not, we’re just co-opting a language of healing.

I wanted to read a book that was showing in very real ways what it’s like to move through the world with the past always at your heels. How does it affect your ability to mother? To create? To be in partnership? How does it touch all the choices you are making for your life?

I wanted the characters to be taking up space versus fading into the background or being put away—often the madwoman is institutionalized or imprisoned and in this story it’s sort of a revolt against that where the plot is really not quiet and noise will be made. I like that a lot. 

I do, too. Relatedly, I have been thinking a lot lately about how so many books about women trying to operate within the impossible conditions of this world get reduced to books about women’s anger. Obviously, anger happens in this book. But there are a lot of other emotions, too. How do you see this book dialoguing with other texts that are (supposedly only) about women’s anger?

Going back to anger…it’s interesting. I wasn’t really given an example for how women are supposed to express anger, or men either, right?

I think I saw suppression or extreme acts of violence, or some other psychological game of withholding or passive aggressiveness. I’ve had to learn as an adult how to confront anger, and move it through my body, make boundaries, and process the shame that can come with them. That shame is interesting, sometimes I feel ashamed on the heels of simply stating a need or advocating for myself, and I immediately try to name it—like that shame is patriarchy trying to shut me up, and it’s in there deep.

It’s an active practice to combat it. Under anger is usually sadness so confronting that too. Admitting that you have unmet needs, and being okay with allowing them to take up space. It’s hard to do! But really necessary.

I think in terms of dialoguing with other texts… I think each book by a woman that “goes there” we bolster each other to keep going. Rachel Yoder says she wrote Nightbitch in the hopes that women would read it and create their own art and I really love that idea… we’re all placing these stepping stones down for each other to continue along this path.

I love imagining the book is in dialogue with books like Nightbitch, and Animal by Lisa Taddeo, and The Shame by Makenna Goodman. Have you ever read The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin? That book was written in the 50s and it blew my mind, it felt so current. It’s a book about female madness and motherhood and wow, it knocked me out.

I mean none of this is new obviously. These feelings and urges are as old as time, but I feel honored to be writing feminist books that shine a light on the way male violence disrupts female connection and intimacy. And like you say, the book is about a ton of other stuff too. It’s not just that. The violence does not define these women, they are still striving toward love, beauty, and connection despite it as women have always done and will continue to do. 

I love that last reminder. Okay, can we talk about grocery as “the opposite of violence”? For those who have not yet read the book, grocery stores are a central theme! I am a lover of grocery stores who has also found myself incredibly frustrated with how gendered the labor of grocery can be. Even so, when I was a new mom, and again when I got sober, grocery stores were a fantastical space of possibility, health, and escape for me, as they are for the protagonist in this book. You’ve written about your own connection to commercial wellness, and how it provided for you an antidote to a painful childhood and to addiction. What is it about grocery stores, and wellness more broadly, that makes them so alluring?

I’m glad you mentioned being sober, because I’m sure that’s a big part of it. I’ve been sober for almost seventeen years which feels like a wild amount of time that I never could have dreamed of at 20 years old when I set out on this path. But on a very base level I need little treats to get by, and instead of booze and cigarettes, you know, I love a bubbly probiotic elixir, so be it.

It’s sort of a safe place to play for me, and has been since those early days of sobriety and became even more important in early motherhood where I felt suddenly that most spaces were not made for me anymore. The grocery store felt like a place I could walk around with my kid and be generally tolerated, like, my daughter thought one of the employees was her grandmother, so that tells you how much we were there. And you know, Lynn at New Seasons was like a grandmother.

But I think the allure is the idea that you’re one supplement away from being truly free, or finally being healed. I think for much of my life, I felt this deep desire to shed the past and graduate from it. I didn’t want to carry it!

I think that’s also part of the impetus of the book, in creating a character who really does make the radical decision to totally reinvent herself on a very literal level. I had that fantasy for a long time because my past, my childhood, felt so burdensome to me—I felt I was the carrier of the energy of all that happened.

I think the levity of wellness, or the pursuit of something that is claiming to be all good, is attractive, feels like the opposite of alcohol to me. I think it has all sorts of layers, some are problematic for sure, but I also sort of honor the fact that this character is making an attempt at mothering herself with the best form of vitamin C. I mean, so be it. I think we have to give ourselves that softness in a world with so many sharp edges.

You also can’t talk about wellness without talking about class–this character grows up poor and so as an adult there’s a feeling of… don’t I deserve these nice things after what I’ve been through? But she grapples with that, too. It’s layered. She’s in a ton of debt! It’s chaotic, but core of the desire is pure I do think, to sort of be like, I get to have these nice things despite what I was told growing up. In some ways, it’s an act of protest, or self worth. 

The thread of post-weaning anxiety in the book is also fascinating and relatable to me. I experienced this, but was never able to name it as such when I was going through it. But I want to talk about this anxiety as a narrative device. The book really uses this anxiety, and the threat of a buried past, to build tension. For you, as a writer, was there something about that particular physical, maternal anxiety and the fear of the past resurfacing that felt parallel?

I knew that I needed to write a book that accurately conveyed the feeling of sitting in your house, totally safe, and feeling like something terrible is happening. There is such urgency to that feeling, and I needed to figure out how to make memory dangerous on the page, because memory can feel so dangerous in real life. Sufferers of PTSD, C-PTSD, anxiety, etc, know what I’m talking about. I wanted memory and that feeling to feel very alive, very suspenseful.

Maternal anxiety started for me soon after my daughter was born. I look back at the me of then with so much tenderness. I was twenty seven with a newborn with no maternal support of my own, and the feeling of total terror that something could happen to my child was consuming to me. I felt like the only person in the world who could keep her safe, I felt like danger was just humming all the time around me.

I love this essay by Claudia Dey, because I find it absolutely true. When we birth life, we also birth death and the portal of motherhood asks us to contend with this. I remember thinking that my own motherlessness felt akin to laying on a bed with the fan turned up with no blanket, like just so exposed and without cover. I didn’t have a lot of tools back then even though maybe I thought it did. But yeah, there was no way anxiety wouldn’t be a part of the book.

What does it feel like to have your mind lit up at all hours about what could possibly go wrong? Constant defense? And then the real loneliness when you have seen things that a lot of other people haven’t… you know how awful the world can be.

In the book, the main character’s husband is optimistic, thinks people are good, assumes the outcomes will go his way… it creates a lot of burden for her to hold, and the set up that yeah, she’s crazy for worrying. So she becomes lonely in that worry.

I think that’s the darker side of the love and light aspect to the wellness and spirituality world she’s trying to fit herself in… she’s sort of at rock bottom but her friends are sending crystal and juice cleanse recommendations. Like, there’s a time and place, but it can feel isolating if you’re like, hey, so this rose quartz hasn’t really solved anything today… It’s pretty, though. 

This line from the book has been haunting me lately: “Silence was often the best course with men.” I have been thinking about how men and women do or do not communicate— and how when women do articulate with precision the madness of the world, or the madness they feel as a result, they too are labeled “crazy.” You depict this so well in the book. I wonder if there is something here about the possibility of women’s fiction— the unique ability, that is, of a book like this to verbalize the unsaid in a culture in which women’s voices are too often cut off and pathologized?

I think for me writing is the best tool I have to explain myself. Sometimes in conversation I will be talking, especially in an emotionally charged conversation, and I’ll think gosh I could articulate this so much better if I was writing it out. When I’ve had moments of confrontation with men about things that are important to me, it can feel incredibly depleting when it’s not understood. And I like to protect myself from that if I can, or know when it’s worth it and when it’s not. I’m always shifting between being like, that’s not my job, and also, advocating for change.

But I mean, the book is funny, and this line to me is a little bit funny in the sense that she is sort of eye-rolling, like what’s the point? Silence is easier, they don’t get it.

But also, of course, silence is often what literally keeps women safe. I am often silent or agreeable in say an Uber with a man because I want to get to my destination without being killed. I don’t think that’s a dramatic fear to have. Women are killed all the time by men. Silence or being agreeable… listening and pretending to be interested. It’s defense. I wish it wasn’t.

But a book allows me the ability to push back and say things directly. This is what I think and what I feel, and I’m not mincing words.

I think that’s what women’s fiction can do. I am not interested in a moral high ground. I’m interested in what justice looks like in our lived lives, if it’s even possible. Our society seems to love watered down, simple soda pop stories. I hate that. It makes me cringe. I need stories that are doing the most, saying the things, snarky, full of rage, smart as hell, stylish, and a full fuck-you to the patriarchy and systems of oppression. I just want to keep writing books like that.

Grateful to do it alongside you, Amanda. 

Me too. More of those stories, please.