"Klo-KU-BA", Hans and Elizabeth Krakauer's first marital apartment in the basement of the Jewish Hospital; Hannover, Germany Architecture; Residences; Interior

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Portrait of four generations of women: Henny Molling nee Meyerhof, Elizabeth Gottschalk, Julie Meyerhof nee Oppenheimer and Therese Gottschalk nee Molling Portraits; Family

From left to right: Henny Molling, born Meyerhof, Elizabeth Gottschalk, Julie Meyerhof born Oppenheimer, and Therese Gottschalk, born Molling.

Hans Krakauer and Elizabeth Krakauer nee Gottschalk; Boston, New York. Portraits Couples

Photograph taken in front of the house in Boston, in upstate New York outside of Buffalo, where in 1939 they set up their private medical practice. After WWII, they built a new house next door.

Henny Molling nee Meyerhof, Therese Gottschalk nee Molling, Kurt, Elizabeth and Hal Gottschalk on the beach; Norderney, Germany.

Sitting in the Strandkorb (beach chair) at Norderney are Henny Molling and Therese Gottschalk; sitting in the sand are Kurt, Elizabeth and Hal Gottschalk

Elizabeth Krakauer nee Gottschalk in an unknown early Krakauer apartment.

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Studio portrait of Elizabeth Krakauer nee Gottschalk; Hannover, Germany.

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Therese Godshaw (Gottschalk) nee Molling reading with her daughter Elizabeth; Hannover, Germany.

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Wedding portrait of Hans Krakauer and Elizabeth Gottschalk; Hannover, Germany. Portraits Couples

In the apartment on Ruemkorffstrasse that the Gottschalks occupied after being forced to sell their house.

Unidentified man, Elizabeth Krakauer nee Gottschalk and Hans Krakauer on board the ship Koenigstein traveling from Antwerp to New York City on their emigration voyage from Germany.

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Elizabeth Krakauer nee Gottschalk with her mother-in-law Auguste Krakauer nee Mayer in front of a house.

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Elizabeth nee Gottschalk and Hans Krakauer's first house in Boston with descriptions on the picture; Boston, Erie County, New York.

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Portrait of Liesel (Elizabeth) Gottschalk as a baby; Hannover, Germany.

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Portrait of Liesel (Elizabeth) Gottschalk with her grandfather Adolf Molling; Germany.

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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.