Sally Hepworth’s “Mad Mabel” explores how experience and perception affect the main character’s development of identity. The novel deals with mental health and the ways people create stories about themselves and each other. In this regard, it touches on how memory can create gaps in perception of self and of others.
As Hepworth gradually reveals Mabel’s story, we see how the trauma embedded in her mind and body was reinforced by the words and actions of others. These characters also seem to be acting out of their own embodied experiences, such as the mother who died by suicide, and the small neighbour child who develops a strong bond to Mabel because she has moved around so much.
My MFA research explores how the body holds trauma and seeks to understand how this is experienced. Passages such as “I didn’t hold my son after he was born. I think I could have if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t see the point since I knew what was coming. Perhaps I should have? Still, I felt the little stabbing pains in my heart the moment I first heard him cry.” (page 331).
There were many other times when an emotional experience is described through bodily sensations – emphasising the link between trauma and bodily responses. In that regard, it was also a very moving book. It caused me to consider how I might use my chosen materials, rather than language, to demonstrate an embodied experience of trauma – whether through layering and repetition, as Hepworth does with her writing, or through incorporating physical traces in my work to act as a visual representation of how the body remembers.
I was also quite relieved that Hepworth completed the novel with a sense of healing from Mabel’s traumatic experiences – it was a happy/sad kind of ending. Whilst this is not how real life always plays out, I also want to bring the possibility of repair and hope to my work through processes of mending and reconstruction.