Insanity In A. S. Byatt's The Pink Ribbon

An overwhelming fear of insanity and death can force even a decent man into a state of self-preservation in A.S. Byatt’s short story “The Pink Ribbon”. At the beginning of his role as caretaker, James Ennis discards the memories of his wife Madeleine in order to psychologically survive his role as a caretaker. Madeleine’s disease induced memory-loss creates a suffocating and supernatural environment that causes James to doubt his own sanity. James’ fear that he is losing his mind is exacerbated by the arrival of Dido and the only way for James to preserve his sanity is to recall the memories of his wife. This establishes James Ennis as a complex character whose attempt at self-preservation, via his memories, is driven by a fear of insanity and death that is rooted in …show more content…
He is a good person and a dutiful husband. These attributes become evident when he shelters a stranger who is in trouble, when he is perfectly patient with Mado, and when he shows respect for Mrs. Bright by refusing to call her Diana and worries about “imping[ing] on [her]” (Byatt 204). And through his diligent care of Mado, James reveals himself as a dutiful husband despite the fact that “it required more courage to…watch over Mado’s wandering mind and shambling body, than anything he, or they, had faced” (Byatt 225). Despite his positive characteristics, James is full of rage and aggression. He explicitly states that he is “a vessel of seething rage” (Byatt 206). His aggression is alluded to when he braids Mado’s hair painfully tight and adorns it with a pink ribbon. Because James knows that Madeleine hated the color pink, the ribbon is an act of aggression. James’ aggression is a symptom of the suffocation that he feels as a result of the environment that he is trapped in. His feelings of suffocation are blatantly obvious when the narrator describes him as “breathing the outside air in great gulps, like a man who has been