Madness and Psychological Breakdown
How both playwrights use madness to question social sanity and dramatize the psychological consequences of patriarchal violence.
Overview
Both playwrights use madness to question social sanity—in worlds where brothers murder sisters and men rape vulnerable women, the “mad” may see most clearly—yet they dramatize madness through radically different theatrical techniques that reflect changing medical and cultural understandings. Webster stages madness as both external spectacle and internal psychology: the eight madmen who torment the Duchess in Act 4, Scene 2 with their “dismal, howling” are emblematic figures representing social disorder and the Duchess’s supposedly “mad” transgression reflected back at her, while Ferdinand’s lycanthropy is simultaneously literal (within the play’s symbolic logic, he becomes wolf-like) and psychological (medical texts of the period documented clinical lycanthropy as melancholic disorder). Crucially, Webster refuses to make the Duchess herself mad despite torture designed to break her psychologically; her “I am full of daggers” expresses rational suffering, not derangement, preserving her dignity and indicting her torturers rather than pathologizing her resistance. Williams, writing in the wake of Freudian psychoanalysis and widespread psychiatric institutionalization, charts Blanche’s gradual mental collapse through expressionistic staging that externalizes her subjective experience: the rising Varsouviana polka “filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle” makes audiences experience her trauma’s intrusion into present consciousness, while the “lurid reflections” and “grotesque and menacing shadows” of Scene 10 visualize her psychological terror during the rape.
Where Webster uses madness allegorically (madmen as symbols, lycanthropy as moral lesson about violence’s self-destructive nature), Williams uses it psychologically (showing process of breakdown through accumulating trauma, PTSD symptoms externalized as sound and light). The endings crystallize this difference: Ferdinand’s madness leads to death, restoring moral order through elimination of the mad/evil, while Blanche’s leads to indefinite institutionalization, showing how modernity doesn’t punish madness through death but manages it through medical systems. Feminist critics have argued that both plays expose how patriarchy weaponizes the concept of female madness—the Duchess is tortured with madmen to suggest her sexuality is insanity; Blanche is labeled mad to justify removing her after she’s been raped—revealing “madness” as social construction used to control women who transgress norms. Both Webster and Williams ultimately suggest that in corrupt, violent worlds, maintaining “sanity” may itself be form of madness, as it requires accepting the unacceptable. The Duchess’s rational suffering under torture and Blanche’s breakdown after rape both indict the societies that produce such conditions, asking whether it’s the victims or the perpetrators who are truly mad.
Key Similarity
Both plays show madness as consequence of patriarchal violence—Ferdinand goes mad after destroying the Duchess; Blanche breaks down after Stanley’s rape. Madness results from trauma, not inherent defect.
Key Difference
Webster uses madness allegorically (symbolic figures, moral lessons about sin’s consequences). Williams uses it psychologically (realistic depiction of PTSD, breakdown as medical/psychiatric phenomenon requiring treatment).
Historical and Cultural Context
Jacobean England
Humoral Theory and Melancholy
Early modern medicine explained personality and illness through four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler), and black bile (melancholy). Imbalance caused illness or personality extremes. Excess black bile caused melancholic disorder: depression, paranoia, violent outbursts, and in extreme cases, lycanthropy (believing oneself transformed into wolf). Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621, contemporary with the play) extensively catalogued melancholic conditions. Ferdinand’s rage and lycanthropy fit melancholic profile—his excessive black bile creates psychological and physical disorder that Webster’s audiences would recognize as medical condition with moral dimensions.
Madness as Divine Punishment or Demonic Possession
Jacobean culture understood madness through both medical and religious frameworks. Some saw it as God’s punishment for sin; others as demonic possession requiring exorcism. Madhouses existed (Bethlem/Bedlam Hospital in London) where mad people were chained, displayed to paying visitors as entertainment. The mad were simultaneously objects of fear, pity, and mockery—their condition both medicalized and moralized as consequence of vice or divine displeasure.
Revenge Tragedy and Madness Convention
The genre frequently featured madness—revengers often feigned madness (Hamlet) or went genuinely mad from violence and guilt. Madness allowed characters to speak truths that sanity would censor (mad = outside social norms, therefore able to critique them). The eight madmen in Duchess follow this convention, but Webster complicates it by making them external spectacle rather than the Duchess’s own condition—she remains rational, exposing madness as weapon used against her rather than her response to trauma.
Lycanthropy in Medical Texts
Clinical lycanthropy (believing oneself a wolf) was documented in early modern medical literature as extreme melancholic disorder. Sufferers believed they transformed into wolves, exhibited animalistic behavior (eating raw meat, howling, moving on all fours). Webster’s staging of Ferdinand’s lycanthropy would be legible to audiences as both literal (in play’s symbolic world) and clinical (recognized medical condition), merging supernatural and natural explanations.
1940s America
Freudian Psychoanalysis
By the 1940s, Freud’s ideas had permeated American culture. Concepts like repression, unconscious, trauma, defense mechanisms, and psychosexual development were widely known. Mental illness was understood psychologically—rooted in childhood experiences, unconscious conflicts, unresolved traumas. Blanche’s breakdown would be read through this framework: her compulsive sexuality as repetition compulsion (unconsciously reenacting Allan’s death), her fantasy life as ego defense against unbearable reality, her collapse as failure of psychological defenses under overwhelming stress. Williams was in therapy himself and incorporated psychoanalytic concepts throughout.
Psychiatric Institutionalization Boom
The 1940s-50s saw massive expansion of psychiatric institutions. Mental hospitals warehoused patients, often indefinitely, with minimal due process—family members or doctors could commit people with little legal recourse, especially women. “Treatments” included electroshock therapy (ECT), insulin shock therapy, hydrotherapy, and (from 1949) lobotomy, often involuntary and permanently damaging. Women were disproportionately institutionalized for behaviors challenging social norms: sexual promiscuity, defying husbands, assertiveness. Blanche’s removal represents this system—she’s committed not because she’s dangerous but because she’s inconvenient and has accused a man (Stanley) of rape, making her testimony need to be discredited.
PTSD (Not Yet Named)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t formally recognized until 1980, but Williams depicts its symptoms accurately. Blanche’s intrusive memories (Varsouviana polka returns when she’s stressed), hypervigilance (startles easily, fears Stanley), dissociation (Fire! Fire! Fire! episode), and avoidance (refuses to face harsh reality, creates fantasies) are classic PTSD symptoms. Williams shows trauma’s psychological aftermath before medical establishment had vocabulary for it, demonstrating how literature can illuminate human experience ahead of clinical diagnosis.
Method Acting and Psychological Realism
Stanislavski’s acting system (popularized in America through Group Theatre and Actors Studio) emphasized psychological realism—actors accessing real emotions and traumas to create authentic performances. Marlon Brando (original Stanley) and Jessica Tandy (original Blanche) were trained in Method, bringing psychological depth to roles. Williams wrote for this acting style, creating psychologically complex characters whose inner lives actors could inhabit. The play’s success depended partly on Method’s ability to make mental breakdown viscerally real for audiences through actors’ embodied psychological work.
The Duchess of Malfi Analysis
Madness as spectacle, allegory, and moral consequence
The Eight Madmen (Act 4, Scene 2)
Ferdinand sends eight madmen to "howl" around the imprisoned Duchess, creating cacophonous nightmare. Bosola explains: "Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste." The madmen represent chaos and disorder—socially, their presence suggests the Duchess's transgression has unleashed madness into the world (her "mad" decision to remarry creates literal madmen). Theatrically, they're emblematic figures more than realistic patients—Webster uses them symbolically. Each madman represents type: the mad lawyer obsessed with legal language, the mad doctor spouting medical gibberish, etc. Their professional identities gone mad suggest social order collapsing when women transgress patriarchal rules. Yet the scene also reveals madness as weapon used against the Duchess—she doesn't go mad herself but is subjected to external madness designed to break her. Webster's staging shows patriarchal violence as attempting to drive autonomous women insane, literalizing the gaslighting that questions their sanity for resisting male control.
“Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy”
Bosola, Act 4, Scene 2
The Duchess's Rational Suffering
Despite torture explicitly designed to break her mentally, the Duchess never goes mad. She tells Bosola "I am acquainted with sad misery / As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar"—acknowledging deep suffering but maintaining metaphorical coherence and self-awareness. Her "I am full of daggers" expresses psychological pain as physical sensation (she feels internal torture as bodily wounding) but this is rational description of agony, not deranged speech. Webster's choice to keep her sane is crucial: it preserves her dignity and shows her strength, but it also means she experiences every moment of suffering consciously rather than escaping into madness. Some critics argue this is Webster's feminist gesture—refusing to pathologize her, keeping her rational and therefore credible witness to her own torture. Others note it's also cruel—madness might offer escape she's denied. When she faces execution, she instructs her executioners calmly, maintains Christian faith, and asserts "I am Duchess of Malfi still"—complete psychological integrity even at death. Her sanity indicts her brothers' madness.
“I am full of daggers”
The Duchess, Act 4, Scene 2
Ferdinand's Lycanthropy (Act 5, Scene 2)
After the Duchess's death, Ferdinand goes mad, developing lycanthropy—he believes he's transformed into wolf. Ferdinand himself declares "I'll go hunt the badger by owl-light. 'Tis a deed of darkness"—the badger-hunting metaphor recalls his "deed of darkness" (murdering the Duchess), showing his madness reflects his crimes. He later appears on all fours, exhibiting animalistic behavior, saying "Strangling is a very quiet death" compulsively. Webster uses lycanthropy symbolically—Ferdinand's violence was always bestial (calling her children "cubs," comparing her sexuality to animal breeding), and now his outer form matches inner brutality. His madness is both punishment (divine or psychological consequence of fratricide) and revelation (the wolf he always was is now visible). Jacobean audiences familiar with clinical lycanthropy would read this as extreme melancholic disorder caused by guilt, making it simultaneously medical and moral. His death shortly after (stabbed in madness-induced fight) shows madness as terminal condition requiring elimination to restore order.
“I'll go hunt the badger by owl-light. 'Tis a deed of darkness”
Ferdinand, Act 5, Scene 2
Bosola's Moral Anguish
Bosola doesn't go clinically mad, but experiences psychological torment throughout—he knows he's doing evil but continues, creating internal split. His constant cynical commentary ("Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out") reveals moral awareness coexisting with moral failure. After killing the Duchess, he has brief moment of conscience: "She stirs; here's life. / Return, fair soul, from darkness"—wanting to undo what he's done. His attempted repentance and revenge in Act 5 (trying to save Antonio, killing the Cardinal and Ferdinand) is psychological attempt to restore integrity, but it fails (he accidentally kills Antonio, dies himself). Bosola represents compromised conscience—not mad but morally anguished, his psychology more complex than Ferdinand's spectacular lycanthropy. Webster shows how participating in evil damages psychologically even when one knows it's wrong.
“Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out”
Bosola, Act 4, Scene 2
A Streetcar Named Desire Analysis
Expressionistic staging of psychological collapse
The Varsouviana Polka as Trauma Trigger
The Varsouviana (Mexican polka) played the night Allan killed himself returns throughout the play as auditory hallucination only Blanche hears. Stage directions specify it "filters into weird distortion" when Blanche is stressed, accompanied sometimes by "the cries and noises of the jungle" representing her psychological chaos. The polka is PTSD symptom—intrusive memory that erupts when she's reminded of guilt or experiences stress. It plays when Mitch interrogates her (Scene 9), during the rape (Scene 10), and continues in Scene 11 until the Doctor speaks kindly to her, suggesting kindness temporarily quiets her trauma. Williams externalizes Blanche's internal experience through sound design—audiences hear what she hears, making her subjective reality accessible. This expressionistic technique differs from Webster's emblematic madmen—the Varsouviana is psychologically realistic representation of how trauma intrudes into present consciousness, while madmen are symbolic spectacle. Williams shows mental illness from inside the breakdown, not as external spectacle.
“The 'Varsouviana' is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle”
Stage direction, Scene 10
Blanche's Dissociative Episodes
Blanche has several moments where reality fractures. In Scene 9, she suddenly cries "Fire! Fire! Fire!" then returns to conversation as if nothing happened—brief dissociative break where she's reliving Moon Lake Casino fire (where Allan died) or expressing internal burning (guilt, shame). In Scene 10 before the rape, stage directions indicate "lurid reflections," "grotesque and menacing shadows," and jungle cries—we see/hear Blanche's subjective terror as objective reality distorts. She screams and smashes bottle to defend herself, perceiving Stanley as predatory threat (which he is, but her perception is heightened to hallucinatory intensity). Williams uses expressionistic lighting and sound to show how trauma makes reality untrustworthy for Blanche—she can't distinguish memory from present, fantasy from fact, threat from safety. This is psychologically realistic depiction of dissociation under extreme stress, not symbolic madness.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Blanche, Scene 9
Progressive Deterioration Structure
Williams structures the play as Blanche's gradual breakdown over several months (May through September). Each scene shows her becoming more fragile: Scene 1 she's anxious but composed; Scene 6 she reveals Allan's death; Scene 9 Mitch exposes her and the Varsouviana intensifies; Scene 10 she's in full crisis (talking to imaginary admirers, experiencing hallucinations) before the rape; Scene 11 she's in post-traumatic delusional state. This episodic structure shows psychological deterioration as process, not sudden snap—accumulating stresses (loss of Belle Reve, loss of teaching job, dependence on Stella/Stanley, hope for Mitch then his rejection, rape) compound until her defenses collapse entirely. Williams demonstrates how trauma, stress, and lack of support create mental breakdown—she doesn't go mad from inherent defect but from overwhelming circumstances. This reflects modern psychological understanding vs. Webster's emblematic approach.
“I'll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard”
Blanche, Scene 11
The Final Delusion (Scene 11)
In the final scene, Blanche has constructed complete fantasy to cope with rape. She believes she's going on vacation with Shep Huntleigh (wealthy old suitor who probably doesn't exist or doesn't remember her), tells Stella "I want to be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard"—romanticized death fantasy—and says "It's Della Robbia blue. The blue of the robe in the old Madonna pictures"—seeing beauty in ordinary jacket. When the Doctor and Matron arrive, she initially resists, then the Doctor speaks "gently" and she says "Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," trusting him despite knowing nothing about him. This is ambiguous: is it dignity (grace under pressure) or complete delusion (she trusts the man institutionalizing her)? Williams refuses to clarify whether Blanche has lost all grip on reality or maintains core dignity through catastrophe. Unlike the Duchess's clear-eyed rationality at death, Blanche's mental state is uncertain—she may be too broken to understand what's happening, or performing composure despite terror. This ambiguity is modern—madness as complex psychological state, not clear binary of sane/insane.
“Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”
Blanche, Scene 11
Institutionalization as Response
Rather than dying like Ferdinand, Blanche is removed to psychiatric institution for indefinite treatment. Eunice tells Stella "Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on"—pragmatic counsel to deny the rape so life can continue. Blanche's madness becomes explanation for her accusation: if she's insane, her testimony is invalid, Stanley's rape need not be believed. Williams exposes how psychiatric diagnosis serves patriarchal interests—inconvenient women are labeled mad and removed. The Doctor and Matron represent bureaucratic medical authority—they don't judge whether Blanche is actually mentally ill or traumatized; they simply process her. Modern power doesn't kill visibly (like Ferdinand killing the Duchess) but manages and controls through institutions. Blanche disappears into medical system that may "treat" her indefinitely, erasing her from society while claiming therapeutic purpose. Williams shows this as violence masked as care.
“Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on”
Eunice, Scene 11
Comparative Analysis
Similarities
Madness as consequence of violence
Both plays show madness resulting from patriarchal violence. Ferdinand goes mad after murdering the Duchess (guilt and loss); Blanche breaks down after Stanley rapes her (trauma). Madness isn't inherent defect but response to unbearable circumstances—both plays indict the violence that produces psychological damage.
Gendered dimension of madness
Both explore how "madness" is gendered concept used to control women. The Duchess is tortured with madmen to suggest her sexuality is insanity; Blanche is labeled insane to discredit her rape accusation. Female resistance to male authority is pathologized as madness, while male violence (Ferdinand's rage, Stanley's brutality) is either naturalized or only late recognized as insanity.
Madness questions social sanity
Both playwrights use madness to critique societies that produce it. In world where brothers murder sisters, is the Duchess "mad" to marry for love, or are her brothers mad to kill her? In world where rape is denied and victims blamed, is Blanche mad, or is society mad? Both plays suggest the "mad" may see truths the "sane" deny.
Sound and spectacle
Both use theatrical techniques to represent madness. Webster stages madmen howling around the Duchess (auditory assault); Williams uses Varsouviana polka and jungle cries as expressionistic soundscape. Both make audiences experience psychological disturbance through sound—making the audience feel the character's disorientation and terror.
Differences
Allegorical vs. psychological madness
Webster's madmen are emblematic figures (mad lawyer, mad doctor) representing social disorder—symbolic, not psychologically realistic. Williams charts Blanche's breakdown through accumulating symptoms (intrusive memories, dissociation, hallucinations) that reflect modern psychiatric understanding. Webster uses madness to make moral points; Williams uses it to show psychological process.
Resistance vs. submission
The Duchess maintains rational suffering—she never goes mad despite torture designed to break her, preserving dignity and agency. Blanche's defenses collapse entirely—she can't resist breakdown because the trauma (rape) is too overwhelming and she has no support. Webster's heroine transcends through resistance; Williams's heroine is destroyed because modern systems offer no transcendence.
Death vs. institutionalization
Ferdinand's madness leads to death (stabbed in fight)—early modern resolution where madness is eliminated through physical death. Blanche's madness leads to indefinite institutionalization—modern resolution where madness is managed through medical systems. Webster ends madness; Williams shows it continuing indefinitely under institutional control.
Male vs. female madness centrality
Webster's most spectacular madness is male (Ferdinand's lycanthropy)—the woman stays sane, the man goes mad from guilt. Williams's central madness is female (Blanche's breakdown)—the woman breaks, the man (Stanley) remains brutally sane. This reversal reflects changing cultural anxieties: Jacobean fear of male violence/tyranny vs. modern anxiety about female vulnerability/breakdown.
Critical Interpretations
Feminist Readings
Feminist critics read both plays as exposing patriarchy's fundamental investment in controlling female sexuality as means of controlling reproduction, inheritance, and social order. Lisa Jardine argues Webster creates genuinely radical female character whose sexual autonomy must be violently eliminated to restore patriarchal order—the Duchess threatens male control at its foundation. Feminist readings of Streetcar emphasize how Blanche is destroyed through confluence of patriarchal mechanisms: sexual double standards (she's judged; Stanley isn't), economic dependence (she has nowhere to go), psychiatric medicalization (institutionalized), and women's complicity (Stella's denial). Both plays show patriarchy requires female sexual submission—the Duchess and Blanche refuse, and patriarchy mobilizes all available violence to destroy them. The Duchess is killed; Blanche is erased. Both methods achieve same goal: eliminating threat of autonomous female sexuality.
Psychoanalytic Readings
Psychoanalytic critics read Ferdinand's violence as stemming from repressed incestuous desire—his obsession with the Duchess's body, rage at her remarriage, and lycanthropy after destroying her all suggest psychosexual pathology. Frank Whigham and others argue Ferdinand wants to possess the Duchess sexually, destroys her when he cannot, creating trauma he cannot survive psychologically. Psychoanalytic readings of Blanche emphasize her sexuality as repetition compulsion—unconsciously attempting to master/undo trauma (Allan's death) by reenacting it (intimacies with strangers). Stanley's rape is read as assertion of phallic masculine dominance against castrating female (Blanche's refinement threatens his masculine identity, so he reasserts it through sexual violence). Psychoanalytic approaches risk individualizing structural problems—focusing on Ferdinand's pathology or Blanche's trauma rather than analyzing how patriarchy creates these dynamics systematically.
Queer Theory Readings
Queer theorists note both plays center heterosexuality's violence and failures. Allan Grey's homosexuality and suicide haunt Streetcar—his inability to survive in homophobic society creates Blanche's trauma. Williams (closeted gay man) shows heterosexual marriage and desire as compulsory and damaging—Blanche must perform heterosexual desirability to survive economically; Stanley's aggressive heterosexual masculinity is violence. Some queer readings note Ferdinand's possible homoerotic desire for Antonio (rival for the Duchess's affection) or argue his incestuous desire for the Duchess is queerly non-reproductive—he wants to possess her but abhors her pregnancy/children. Both plays can be read as exposing how compulsory heterosexuality and rigid gender roles damage everyone, though women suffer most visibly. Blanche's excessive femininity (performative, theatrical) might be read as drag performance—femininity as costume worn for survival, revealing gender as performance rather than nature.
Key Quotations to Memorize
“I am acquainted with sad misery / As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar”
Acknowledges deep suffering but maintains metaphorical coherence and self-awareness. Compares herself to galley slave—repetitive, exhausting labor of endurance. She suffers but doesn't break. Rational suffering, not derangement.
“I am full of daggers”
Psychological pain externalized as physical sensation—she feels internal torture as bodily wounding. But this is rational description of agony, not deranged speech. She can articulate her suffering clearly, preserving dignity through language even as she's destroyed.
“I'll go hunt the badger by owl-light. 'Tis a deed of darkness”
Ferdinand's lycanthropy—believes he's wolf hunting at night. "Deed of darkness" applies to both badger-hunting and his murder of the Duchess. Madness makes him speak truth metaphorically—his crime was "deed of darkness" now replayed in bestial delusion.
“My sister! O, my sister! There's the cause on't”
Lucid moment within madness—Ferdinand recognizes his guilt. "There's the cause" = he knows destroying her caused his own destruction. Brief self-awareness before death, showing madness contains truth the sane state denied.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Dissociative break—reality rupturing. Repetition shows language fragmenting. "Fire" may symbolize guilt (Allan), desire, or hell. Moment passes—in/out of reality. Brief glimpse of how fragile Blanche's psychological defenses have become.
“The 'Varsouviana' is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle”
Expressionistic externalization of Blanche's psychological state. Polka (trauma trigger) distorts; jungle cries represent mental chaos. We hear her subjective reality—Williams makes audience experience her breakdown from inside.
“I'll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard”
Romanticized death fantasy rather than face institutionalization. "Clean white sack" = purified burial. Complete delusion but also metaphor—she is being "buried" socially. She imagines beautiful death because reality offers no beautiful life.
“Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”
Final line—devastatingly ambiguous. "Whoever you are" = doesn't know Doctor (taking her to asylum) but trusts graciously. Dignity or delusion? Both? Williams refuses to resolve whether she's maintaining composure or has lost all grip on reality.
“Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on”
Eunice counsels pragmatic denial over truth. Stella must disbelieve Blanche's rape accusation to maintain life with Stanley. Shows how society enables madness diagnosis—easier to call victim mad than confront perpetrator's crime.