Elizabeth Bishop���s sounds of sanity

In this article, I examine the implications of rewriting definitions of sanity and insanity through the use of noise, silence, and language,positioningElizabeth Bishop���s short story ���In the Village��� as a form of resistance against traditional readings of madness, logocentrism, and identity. I suggest that by writing her characters as undivided from the world of sound, Elizabeth Bishop���s story shifts understandings of insanity, which is often conceptualized through denials of agency, allowing her characters to escape in noises and hesitations in language and communication. ���In the Village��� avoids silencing the ���insane��� mother through her placement in a caesura of sound and silence. This article avoids a biographical reading of ���In the Village,��� which is often connected with her own mother���s ���mental breakdown,��� because Bishop���s writing would have been as much affected by her conscious awareness of her past as it was by the unconscious impulses and histories of writing in the West. Rather, I take into account Bishop���s own personal history as well as the repetitions that reflect a placement in a tradition appearing in the story itself. Using this particular lens, I believe a rereading of ���In the Village��� is in order, where the ���mad mother��� is not silenced by the oppressive social structures that control the insane,��� but she instead finds escape in the multitudes of sounds that associate with her, erasing the power of language and opening a new world where agency exists in a scream or in a striking hammer.